Paper short abstract:

This paper examines contrasting interactions between people and the ruins of their city, destroyed in its entirety. Some people search for a sensory contact, while others prefer to avoid them. This paper proposes hypotheses on representations and practices, outlining schemes in presence.

Paper long abstract:

What happens when familiar spaces are irrevocably transformed by a destructive event – that is, when they enter a transitory state before cleaning or rebuilding, left abandoned to further deterioration, or preserved in a stage of decay in the disaster aftermath of a disaster? An ethnographic approach permits a close look at the transformative processes affecting the relations that people develop with such distorted spaces, that are invested with meaning, which feelings and memories are associated, and in which specific practices took place. This paper examines contrasting interactions between people and the ruins of their city, which was destroyed in its entirety a) intentionally and gradualy during the turn of the millennium, upstream of the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir the case of Yunyang (Chongqing), and b) suddenly and lethally by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008 in the case of Beichuan (Sichuan), advertised as the world’s biggest and best-preserved remnant of such a catastrophe. Yunyang and Beichuan people do not necessarily share the same anthropotopias of their city and of its ruins. Some search for a sensory contact, while others prefer to avoid such a relationship. This paper proposes hypotheses on representations and practices, outlining schemes in presence. The data allow to roughly identify several modalities of interaction with ruins, that are presented through a selection of representative ethnographic cases.