Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Appalachians display memory markers of a 2001 flood as forms of strategic resistance to suggested out-migration. In the absence of official support for (re)building livability after disaster, how do residents aesthetically force continuous witnessing to trauma and survival?

Paper long abstract:

In July 2001, a flash flood wiped out southern West Virginia’s Wyoming County. Twenty years later, residents still remember and tell stories about the flood and their ongoing attempts to overcome and endure the insidious social and environmental effects that linger. The year 2001 also brought other traumas like the rise of the opioid epidemic and 9/11, so storytellers often relate this local flood to larger disasters, especially as the area lost institutional aid and attention to more inter/national problems. In the heart of rural Appalachia, the county experienced increased out-migration after the flood; yet, others stayed put, dedicated to resiling and creating a livable future despite both capitalist and environmental ruins and constant calls to abandon the economically failing coalfields. This paper will explore some aesthetic expressions and reminders—like unofficial memorials and flood markers—of the 2001 flood that residents continue to publicly display as forms of resistance to suggested out-migration after disaster. In the absence of official support for (re)building livability after destruction, how do residents force continuous witnessing to both their trauma and their endurance of the flood? What do intentional (like a framed flood photo) and unintentional (like a lingering flood line) memory markers reveal about how residents negotiate precarity, marginality, power, and resistance in a stigmatized place? In maintaining public memory of environmental disaster and ongoing life despite institutional abandonment, how do residents frame attachment and local investment despite ruin as forms of strategic resistance?