This essay examines how two twentieth-century writers, Janet Frame and W.G. Sebald, represent the ethical responsibilities of the witness in relation to melancholia.
Following natural disasters in urban environments, those who remain are left not only to occupy an unfamiliar space but also to experience a painfully drawn out temporality: the time of waiting. A decade after earthquakes struck Christchurch city, some residents are still inhabiting a time of limbo, awaiting decisions on the fate of their homes and businesses. In this paper, I examine various creative projects that appeared in exposed and vacant sites in post-earthquake Christchurch. These projects turned such sites into dwelling spaces in which passers-by are encouraged to hesitate and linger. Such sites thus encourage people to experience the temporality of waiting, but in a different and I argue more enabling way. This paper examines the ethical possibilities that emerge from lingering before such sites. Drawing on the notion that ethics is not so much a normative procedure and more an impetus that opens up the space of the encounter, I argue that when Cantabrians tarry before such sites, they recognise a world which is not constituted by replaceable objects, but, instead, in their responsiveness, they experience a self that is constituted by its immersion in the world.
Keywords: natural disaster; waiting; temporality; Christchurch earthquakes; ethical responsiveness
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