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form of catastrophism. This latter consists of mixing the benefits and
the risks, the potential and the vulnerabilities. Indeed, the
anthropology of catastrophes is not the anthropology of the
catastrophic. Pondering what makes up an event (an earthquake, a
tsunami, a flood, etc.) and observing the ensemble of its
consequences, harmful as well as benefical, is not the same as tending
to be systematically pessimistic and normative. This type of attitude
tends to displace attention toward a certain category of people (the
victims) and the associated damage (the material costs). Yet, it is a
question, in order to understand the overall spectrum of the
consequences of a disaster on the scale of a human group
(a community, a society, a nation, an ecosystem, etc.), of considering
the ensemble of its incidences. In this sense, it would be convenient to
depict this complexity systematically and to envisage the disasters not
merely in terms of risks and impediments, but also as resources
(e.g. the benefits induced by a tabula rasa favorable to land building
work, and to generating jobs in the field of reconstruction) and
pleasure (e.g. the comical situations that have been experienced, as
well as the spectacles, films, stories, etc., for which they are the
inspiration).
An anthropological approach to catastrophes urges us to consider
vulnerabilities and major hazards as not arising from a classical
logic - even dialogical and “complex” [MOR 73], integrating the
“included middle” [BER 00], a rythmicity in “mixing” [LAP 01], or a
“multiplicity” [DEL 80] - which can be carried out by connection
logos , but from a graphic logic which examines and compares the
disparities of the impacts, the divergences in the interpretations, the
differences in the milieux and deviations between temporality
regimes. In this sense, it is sensible to link visual schema (which
works on the relationship between the signifier and the signified) to
the discursive treatment of catastrophes (which is built upon an
arbitrary sign, that is to say the relationship between the signifier and
the signified). In other words, there is not really an anthropological
“point of view”, but a succession of presentations of “effects of
perspective” which lend themselves to a grasp of the ways in which
particular points of view are formed and developed. The comparison
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