Negotiating “Normality” in the Aftermath of the “Brumadinho Dam Disaster” (Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Theresa Mentrup
University of Mainz, Department of Anthropology and African Studies Germany
tmentrup@uni-mainz.de
Author(s):
On January 25, 2019, the tailings dam of an iron ore mine near the city of Brumadinho, located in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, collapsed. The released wave of toxic mud not only killed 272 community members and devastated the surrounding environment but has also contaminated one of the major river systems in Latin America. Apart from provoking an international outcry, the case has likewise reinforced regional endeavors to publicly denounce the historical, socioeconomical, and -political fault lines of what local people call a “predatory system”. Such affective-political responses, however, not only include protests organized by social movements building upon a historical embeddedness in Brazilian society; they also entail smaller, seemingly mundane negotiations of what “normality” means in a socio-cultural context notoriously characterized by multiple crises formations. This even more as “[t]he logic of ‘like it used to be’ and ‘already normal again’ indeed reveals how the post-disaster everyday is at once normal and never the same” (Samuels 2019: 4).
Retracing the reflection of this paradoxical (re)arrangement of “normality” in the ambivalence(s) of life and death, this contribution sets out to anthropologically scrutinize the relation between the material and the political. In doing so, it enquires into the affective moments of reconfiguring the social world and everyday life in the aftermath of disastrous events (e.g., Das et al. 2001) – which necessarily implies critically engaging with those aspects neglected by a merely natural scientific, technical approach towards post-disaster management (e.g., Barrios 2017; Valencio 2014). The paper thus
addresses the question of how “normality” is politically and affectively negotiated, not despite being confronted with destruction, suffering, and death, but precisely out of experiences of devastation and loss (e.g., Carter 2018).
References
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Samuels, Annemarie. 2019. After the Tsunami: Disaster Narratives and the Remaking of Everyday Life in Aceh. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
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Deep cultures of disaster: The significance of the anthropological perspective for understanding the interstices of hazards and disaster