By narrating the event, human being make past present, and at the same time, by doing so it make present past. Especially to those who encounter the catastrophe this dimension of time and narrative is crucial because humanity is a creature of narrating the event. How is it possible and how did this species do so? Focusing on the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, the 3.11 Tohoku triple catastrophe in 2011, both happened in Japan, and other natural and man-made disasters including war and the Holocaust (the Shoah), the author Masahiro Terada, historian and “meta-historian” of human-nature relationship, investigates the way how the catastrophe passes across time from present to past and from past to present in museums, at memorials, and on the sites of place of memory. This is an inquiry into the modality of Anthropocenic response to one of the dramatic changes of the Earth.
Publication
Katasutorofu to jikan : kioku/katari to rekishi no enerugeia カタストロフと時間 : 記憶/語りと歴史の生成 = Catastrophe and Time: Memory, Narrative, and the Energeia of History