When Geology Encounters a Real Catastrophe
55
to electricity occurring in the atmosphere. Its author concluded with
the wish “que les expériances de l’électricité ne fussent pas si
fréquantes et même pour parler naturellement, qu’on les supprime
entièrement, car pour quoy vouloir contraindre les éléments à produire
des effets contraires à ce qui leur est naturel”.
58 The truly Europe-wide
impact of the events in Lisbon is cast in a peculiarly new light by such
responses.
Conclusion
With the Lisbon disaster, natural catastrophe became an historical
event. It was no longer one among many other interchangeable signifiers of Nature, or of the natural world, grounding its meaning in an
ahistorical transcendence. Catastrophe here moved away from its etymological sense of a theatrical denouement which promises at once a
new beginning. It became instead a break in the ordinary run of things,
demarcating a “before” and an “after”. The secularization of catastrophe had less to do with a wholesale rejection of religious connotations
that it did with the transformation of catastrophe into a contingent
event occurring at a specific time and in a specific place.
The historicization of natural catastrophe established a new
relation with the present. For the first time in centuries the degree of
risk deemed acceptable by mankind had changed; in escalating a sense
of risk in society at large, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 opened the
way for other dangers to become quantifiable risks, from volcanic
eruptions to the incidence of lead poisoning. For the first time too, the
impact of the events in Lisbon brought into direct contact the localized
experience of disaster and the nationwide debates about it, thereby
giving a voice to sections of the population who previously had had
little or none. The sense, then, of a proliferation of seismic events
gave rise to a new creative tension between the heightened awareness
of man’s vulnerability and the renewed promise of his eventual triumph over nature. The politicization of the catastrophe in Lisbon also
collapsed the safe distance that had hitherto separated sovereigns from
natural disasters; these latter would henceforth represent crises capa___________________________
58 Bibliothèque municipale de Rouen, fonds de l’Académie, MS C 20, “Concours de
1756 sur les tremblements de terre, mémoire n° 10”.
55
to electricity occurring in the atmosphere. Its author concluded with
the wish “que les expériances de l’électricité ne fussent pas si
fréquantes et même pour parler naturellement, qu’on les supprime
entièrement, car pour quoy vouloir contraindre les éléments à produire
des effets contraires à ce qui leur est naturel”.
58 The truly Europe-wide
impact of the events in Lisbon is cast in a peculiarly new light by such
responses.
Conclusion
With the Lisbon disaster, natural catastrophe became an historical
event. It was no longer one among many other interchangeable signifiers of Nature, or of the natural world, grounding its meaning in an
ahistorical transcendence. Catastrophe here moved away from its etymological sense of a theatrical denouement which promises at once a
new beginning. It became instead a break in the ordinary run of things,
demarcating a “before” and an “after”. The secularization of catastrophe had less to do with a wholesale rejection of religious connotations
that it did with the transformation of catastrophe into a contingent
event occurring at a specific time and in a specific place.
The historicization of natural catastrophe established a new
relation with the present. For the first time in centuries the degree of
risk deemed acceptable by mankind had changed; in escalating a sense
of risk in society at large, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 opened the
way for other dangers to become quantifiable risks, from volcanic
eruptions to the incidence of lead poisoning. For the first time too, the
impact of the events in Lisbon brought into direct contact the localized
experience of disaster and the nationwide debates about it, thereby
giving a voice to sections of the population who previously had had
little or none. The sense, then, of a proliferation of seismic events
gave rise to a new creative tension between the heightened awareness
of man’s vulnerability and the renewed promise of his eventual triumph over nature. The politicization of the catastrophe in Lisbon also
collapsed the safe distance that had hitherto separated sovereigns from
natural disasters; these latter would henceforth represent crises capa___________________________
58 Bibliothèque municipale de Rouen, fonds de l’Académie, MS C 20, “Concours de
1756 sur les tremblements de terre, mémoire n° 10”.