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I read the article called “Distant Disasters, Local Fears: Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Revolution, and Passion in The Atlantic Monthly, 1880-84″ by Sheila Hones. In it, Hones draws on essays about natural disasters, essays about social problems that included references to natural disasters, and fiction pieces that used natural disasters as part of the plot (173). From reading other blog posts, it seems that this article is unique. Instead of writing about Gilded Age disasters themselves, Hones writes about how authors published in The Atlantic during the period represented disasters in their stories and reporting (170). “Distant disasters thus provide the textual framework for an exploration of local anxieties,” Hones argues, and proceeds to explain how authors did this.
First, Hones demonstrates the connection between the “social atmosphere” and the attitude toward disasters of educated Bostonians during the 1880s: “the large natural world is meaningful and ordered while the local social world is prone at any particular moment to turmoil” (172-173). Next, authors created what Hones calls “narrative distance” between the upper-class writers and readership of The Atlantic and the disasters experienced far away, such as the eruption of Krakatoa (175). Finally, disasters were understood to be, though destructive, also creative of new life. In disasters, authors found a way to understand their local concerns about social change as possibly a good thing in the end. Hones says the example of the volcano is “a potent symbol for a conservative community proudly finding its roots in revolution” (190-191). The United States, then, was a volcano: eruptive democracy led to eventual stability. This corresponds to Brandon’s post about how disasters might/might not be a good thing. But the fact that they might even be considered a good thing is interesting in itself.
Hones has interesting things to say about the locale of disasters. One author wrote about the Mississippi River floods in The Atlantic. The author showed that the natural disaster threatened America’s “self-regulation at the national level” (187). With the Civil War recently concluded, the author saw the possibility of local governments responding to the disaster instead of the federal government and the author worried that it would “create the ‘gravest political dangers'” (187). This made me think about how natural disasters are also national disasters. In the moment of a natural disaster, a local community is unable to respond. It seems that communities outside of the one destroyed must respond if any rebuilding/assistance can occur. This is the case, at least, where humans have built second nature on top of first nature. If humans are living in first nature, then they can move somewhere else, right?
Some thoughts from the other readings:
In Steven Biel’s introduction, he states, “catastrophic disturbances of routine actually tell us a great deal about the ‘normal’ workings of culture, society, and politics” (5). This makes sense, but it also makes me wonder if a disaster can be a historical event? Because who are the actors? Can a disaster be an actor in the same way that nature can?
Also, in the overview article by Jonathan Bergman, he cites Matthew Mulcahy, who writes, “‘[d]isasters become disasters only when natural forces meet human ones'” (936), which means that disasters need humans (and to an extent, second nature) present in order to actually be a disaster. I think this is interesting and it reminds me of Crosby’s broad view of changes in nature in Ecological Imperialism. If a disaster occurred in an uninhabited place, could we really call it a disaster?