DISASTER AND CATASTROPHE: A CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY STUDIES

Abstract

This paper discusses the concepts of disaster and catastrophe from the perspective of literary theory. It also reflects on testimony as an expression of both in contemporary literature. The paper argues that disaster and catastrophe are interrelated paradigms but argues that there is a point of schism between them: the possibility of reversal of material and psychosocial impacts and damage underlying disaster, and the explicit impossibility of social reality returning to how it was before a catastrophe. By implying solidarity between individuals and communities, as well as state relief of the victims, the disaster is inscribed in the framework of otherness. The framework of the catastrophe, on the other hand, is that of barbarism, a consequence of the permanent state of exception in modernity. The authors of reference are Adorno and Horkheimer (1985), Agamben (2004), Benjamin (2012), Hobsbawm (2013), Löwy (2000), Quarantelli (2015), Seligmann-Silva (2000; 2003; 2005; 2018), Ginzburg (2010), and Sarmento-Pantoja (2014).