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Paper short abstract

In the aftermath of great events, sometimes it is impossible to continue a previous life. For some, these events introduce an existential disturbance that leads to profound new commitments, or the abandonment of old ones. I examine this relation through two stories of refugee reception in Berlin.

Paper long abstract

In the aftermath of a great event, sometimes it becomes impossible to continue a previous life. Those that live through such transformative events might find themselves disturbed or fractured by them. The interruption of the everyday that such events introduce can also become the beginning of a new self, one that finds its existential anchor in a mode of commitment, a sense of purpose that feels urgent and necessary. Then again not all who live through such times are equally captured by them, and not all those who are, commit in the same way, or to the same things. How do we understand the relative success and failure of events to produce enduring commitments? In this paper I examine this question through two such events of refugee arrivals - the Oranienplatz refugee movement of 2012, and the Long Summer of Migration of 2015/16 - as they played out in the lives of interlocutors of mine. In doing so, I borrow and build on the work of philosophers like Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek. For Badiou, the event is the central piece of a puzzle for both persons and societies: how do new things/beings come into existence? The event, evidence of a “newness in being”, demands, Badiou contends, fidelity (commitment) to its truth. For Zizek, the “event is the effect that seems to exceed its causes”. As excessive effect, the event becomes one way of thinking about commitment’s allegiance to a certain disturbance. What can anthropology add to this conversation?