Commemorating a difficult disaster: Naturalizing and denaturalizing the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China

Abstract

This article addresses a gap in memory studies-memory of disasters-by asking what distinctive features of difficult disasters shape content and form of commemorations. I draw on textual and visual data to examine official and oppositional commemorations of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China. I argue that tension between natural and unnatural interpretations of the earthquake shapes both the content and form of the commemorations. This tension is manifested in three focal issues in the content of commemorations: natural or unnatural causes of the suffering and death, political and moral reaction to the earthquake, and consequences of the earthquake. In form, the state carries out large-scale rituals, builds memorials, and creates a "topography of forgetting" so that the ruins with a possible "natural explanation" are preserved and the ones with unnatural explanations removed and covered. In contrast, the oppositional commemorations are small in scale and only survive at the margins.

Ruins for the future

“…In the last decade or so, disaster ethnographers have examined the ruins of what they label "misguided development," which they criticize for its role in generating "natural" disasters (Angell 2014;Dawdy 2006Dawdy , 2010Dawdy , 2016González-Ruibal 2008;Hastrup 2010;Schäfers 2016;Wilford 2008;Xu 2017). Many of these critiques, like the wider literature on ruination that they form part of, build on the ideas of Walter Benjamin (1998, 178), who claimed that ruins are the material equivalent of allegories: they are figures that can be interpreted to reveal deeper truths.…”

“…Anything requiring alterations to reconstruction plans, like seawall locations, was also off the table. But official plans did not require passing over or demolishing sites that supposedly demonstrated governance failures, as in New Orleans (Dawdy 2010) and Sichuan (Xu 2017). Even places where governance failures had been successfully litigated-like the elementary school where many children died-would be accepted for preservation.…”

“…Other places bearing the residue of past traumas have seen similar struggles (Dawdy 2006;Low 2004;Xu 2017). In New York, for example, some wanted to preserve what remained of the World Trade Center, against the wishes of nearby residents (Sturken 2004, 315).…”

“…In New York, for example, some wanted to preserve what remained of the World Trade Center, against the wishes of nearby residents (Sturken 2004, 315). In Sichuan, the Chinese state removed, concealed, or covered any ruins that disturbed its narrative about the 2008 earthquake (Xu 2017, 488). Today, most of these sites are gone, and what remain are fragments, like the small piece of wall preserved at Oklahoma City's otherwise conventional bombing memorial.…”

The 1935 Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake

“…In the case of Sichuan, it was the schools that were covered and removed in order to assist in the 'forgetting' of parental and public concerns and their belief that the sheer number of collapsed schoolrooms were directly caused by 'government's negligence and corruption as well as contractors' greediness'. 32 Following the 1935 earthquake in Taiwan, disgruntlement was comparable. Yang Kui, a Taiwanese writer who had decided to journey to the most affected areas, reported that the people were critical of the attitude of the colonial government and highlighted the frustration being felt toward their rescue methods.…”