The Beach as the Site of Disaster: Coastal Disaster Representations in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

Current disaster research in the humanities has largely ignored the significance of the coast even though these areas are disproportionately affected by disasters and are inhabited by half the earth’s population (Gillis 2012, 1). While many scholars include what I would call coastal disaster representations (e.g. Rigby 2020; Rastogi 2020; O’Loughlin 2015), they do so from a cause-related point of view, as examples of one kind of “natural” disaster (e.g. flood, tsunami). Contrarily, I propose “coastal disaster” as a category that allows us to categorise and analyse literary disaster representations differently, namely from a spatial perspective. Such an approach allows for a more fluid definition of disaster, which emphasises connections rather than separations. Drawing on theories of ecocriticism, disaster studies and postcolonial studies, I aim to focus on the multiple meanings and effects the coastal setting has on postcolonial disaster narratives. The coast is prone to many different disasters: particularly in the Global South, oil spills, tsunamis, cyclones and flooding affect communities repeatedly.  Often, these disasters interconnect, making it hard to disentangle “natural” or “human” causes. The examined texts underline the multi-layered impact and long-lasting consequences of disasters. The categorisation into a presupposed normality (“before”) and a return to everyday-life (“after”) is questioned: pre-existing vulnerabilities blur the lines of the beginning of the disaster, while grief and ongoing destruction question the disaster’s end. By using recurring places to reconcile the timelines of “before” and “after”, disaster narratives depict disaster as a process rather than a rupture, as entangled rather than isolated. Thus, focusing on coastal disaster representations is an opportunity to address intersecting vulnerabilities, and expand and question extant disaster definitions.