Embodied narratives of disaster: the expression of bodily experience in Aceh, Indonesia

Abstract

The devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004 caused massive destruction to coastal Aceh, Indonesia, and left countless numbers of people dead or wounded. This article focuses on the embodied narratives of three Acehnese women who survived the disaster and, like many others in Aceh, told their stories ‘through’ their bodies. A detailed ethnographic account of their narratives reveals how the body stretches temporally between the ‘narrated event’ and the ‘narrative event’, both through the representation of the body in narratives and through the embodied performance of narratives. Moving beyond meaning‐centred analyses of narratives, I argue that the central accomplishment of these narratives is that they convey poignant bodily experiences to others and thereby create a shared, post‐disaster, world. Ultimately, through these embodied narratives of disaster people remake their world, with others, in the wake of its ‘unmaking’.

Waiting for the flood: technocratic time and impending disaster in the Himalayas

“…As the literature on disaster and identity demonstrates, through social memories or shared experiences, these events also are profoundly emotional (Olivier‐Smith, 1986; Ullberg, 2013; Browne, 2015; Samuels, 2015). For anthropologist Robert E. Barrios (2017b), a focus on embodied experience and emotion is crucial to an understanding of the experience of disasters (see also Samuels, 2016). Barrios (2017b, p. 121) uses the term ‘ecology of affect’ to speak of the shaping of affective experiences by mechanisms of social exclusion, which define places, the built environment, and the social order.…”

Disaster mobilities, temporalities, and recovery: experiences of the tsunami in the Maldives

“…Rituals and commemorative events provide ways for survivors to express grief and reflect on their loss. Indeed, studies of other post‐tsunami contexts, such as in India, Japan, and Sri Lanka, reveal how personal and public acts and objects of memorialisation become intwined with people's efforts to remake their everyday lives (Samuels, 2016; Martini and Gasparri, 2021). Disaster healing, however, can be slow, even intergenerational, with visits to disaster areas or memorial sites being important components of this process (Mika and Kelman, 2020).…”

Computational Social Science of Disasters: Opportunities and Challenges

“…Anthropological work has shed light on the social production of disasters and the social structures that contribute to vulnerability and risk [4]. Theories of "embodiment" have contributed to a better understanding of how culture affects individuals experiences, along with how they comprehend and cope with traumatic experiences (e.g., [56][57][58][59][60]). Comparative work on multiple cultures has illuminated how different societies respond and adapt to environmental changes [61] and disasters with responsive belief systems and coping strategies [62].…”