As P’Samlit claimed, Ayutthaya as a community is emerging through the remembering of floods, especially the 2011 flood, colloquially known as pi haa si.. Living within this active archiv
Trang 14 Performing a Community of Flood Memories
4.1 Overview: a community?
We have been through pi haa si 16 together That flood connected many
of us We do the same things now Sometimes I will go to the river [during the wet season] to check if the water is rising, and I will see others doing that too We don’t know each other, but we will talk and
wonder if [that year] will be another pi haa si [sic] We don’t always agree on how and why Ayutthaya floods, but everyone tells stories
about it Remembering pi haa si has made Ayutthaya a community
P’Samlit/ 46/Journalist/ Male/ April 2014
Scholars have increasingly critiqued that ‘community’ is a problematic construct Some question the folk romanticism and artificial boundedness associated with the concept (Amit, 2002; Day, 2006) The term is often charged to connote a false sense of homogeneity, and hence, obscures complex social differences and power relations (Panelli & Welch, 2005; Day, 2006; Aitken, 2009) Most poignant of all, in my opinion, is the view that ‘community’ is partly a wishful product of research, especially ethnography – ‘the field was the community’ (Amit, 2002: 15) Mindful of such intellectual baggage, I had intended to avoid the term all together However, the concept remains one of the most ‘common points of reference… for policy makers, politicians and the general public’ (Day, 2006:1) Indeed, talk of and oblique references to a ‘community’ permeated conversations I had in Ayutthaya Hence, instead of avoiding the concept, this chapter develops a more nuanced understanding of ‘community’ in Ayutthaya I avoid the fixed, ontological definition of the term – ‘a specific population living within a specific geographic area with shared institutions and values and significant social interaction’ (Warren, 1963: 2)
As P’Samlit claimed, Ayutthaya as a community is emerging through the
remembering of floods, especially the 2011 flood, colloquially known as pi haa si In
other words, the ‘community’ emerges through practices and communication of flood
16
Pi haa si literally translates to ‘year five four’; the Buddhist year 2554 is 2011 on the Gregorian calendar – the year of the 2011 flood.
Trang 2memories Thus, the community of memories is a process (see G Rose, 1997) that
has to be constantly performed and maintained This process is enacted through private-yet-collective practices, and via an assemblage of present and absent more-than-human materialities and actors To put it in another way, memories occur through bodily engagements with the world Hence, the landscape plays an important role in perpetuating the past in the present (Hill, 2013) Borrowing from Cresswell (2012), I will elucidate how the creative, yet mundane, collection and circulation of stories, image-objects and things associated with the 2011 flood continuously refashion the lived landscape into an ‘active archive’ of the flood
This ‘archive' is ‘active’ for two reasons Firstly, the stories, images and things within the landscape are constantly being ‘updated’ Knowingly or unknowingly, different memories of the flood are selectively and simultaneously sliding to-and-from the background and foreground of daily life Secondly, archives are ‘contingent, messy and permeable’ (Cresswell, 2012: 166) The openness of the prosaic practices of storytelling and gathering of images and things allow different – and at times conflicting – perspectives to emerge As Panelli and Welch (2005: 1596) assert,
‘bonds exist because of common position or situation rather than common perspective’ The community of flood memories, in this case, is also a community of differences Living within this active archive - where flood memories are mundane parts of everyday life - reinforces the sense of community and (re)center the riverine rhythms in the everyday lives of people in Ayutthaya
Trang 34.2 Storytelling: an act of remembering
Storytelling is not something we just happen to do, it is something we virtually have to do if we want to remember anything at all
Schank & Abelson (1995), Knowledge and Memory, pp 33
Memory is an action: essentially, it is the action of telling a story
Bal (1999), Acts of Memory, pp ix
Stories are inherently temporal and spatial (Pile, 2002) If we consider storytelling as the selective and creative practice of fusing the past(s) with the present(s), we are presented with the opportunity to understand memory as a practice – something we have to do in order to remember Why do we tell stories
then? Or, to rephrase this question, why do we want to remember? Walking around Ayutthaya answers this question – for walking ‘opens up a geography of stories and memories’ (Potteiger & Purinton, 1998:20) We were walking around Wat Mahathat17,
a group of men and women were chatting and laughing near a rest stop18 We
stopped as we overheard the phrase “nam tuam haa si” - ‘flood ‘54’ Quietly, we
eavesdropped as much as we could - one of the men was animatedly recounting his
‘encounter’ with some crocodiles in Wat Mahathat towards the end of the 2011 flood Sensing our interest, he directed some of the theatricalities and gestures of the storytelling – such as pointing towards the locations of the ‘crocodiles’ – at us His friends, the listeners, interjected the storytelling with anecdotes and opinions of their own:
P’Dek (M): … I didn’t know they were in there! So I went in I wanted to
take photographs of the place when it is still flooded It was so peaceful
17
Wat Mahathat is a famous temple ruin in Ayutthaya – it houses one of the ‘icons’ of Ayutthaya, a Bodhisattva’s face protruding from tree roots The Bodhisattva’s half-submerged face became an iconic image of the 2011 flood in Ayutthaya (see Appendix 3a for image) See map in Chapter Three
18
They are souvenir vendors and tuktuk drivers who gather around that spot regularly to chat
and have tea
Trang 4and empty Not like those noisy westerners in there now I was walking around
P’Som (M): [Interrupts] How can you not know? Everyone was talking
about it Even my mother in Don Muang knew
P’Dek: I saw this thing near the big tree and the first chedi [gestures
to the direction] It looked like a big crocodile! I was so scared but I walked towards it quietly and slowly [walks slowly and deliberately for a few steps], then it moved away! So I panicked and I moved away too
P’Canchit (F): [playfully slaps his arm] Why would a crocodile move
away from you? How much did you drink before going [laughter from the group]?20
Conversation outside Wat Mahathat, April 2014
Whether or not crocodiles were actually in Wat Mahathat is secondary, it is also not a key concern if the story is, indeed, ‘real’ The telling of this story produced
a form of sociality and connection within the group, and the notion that everyone had experienced the flood together People tell stories to feel this sense of connection Storytelling – as a mnemonic practice – lies at the ‘subjective in-between’ of the personal and social (Arendt, 1958: 182-84; Jackson, 2002; Maynes et al, 2008) Storytelling connects individuals with the broader collective, as it ‘translates the felt, personal and known into a more collective realm’ (Cameron, 2012: 581; also see Jackson, 2002) Hence, storytelling is an integral part in the performance of a broader social collective – the community of flood memories This sense of connection extends beyond an imagined community As storytelling is enacted in and through bodies, the blurring of the boundaries between the private and collective is
‘lived through as a physical, sensual and vital interaction between the bodies of the storytellers and the listeners’ (Jackson, 2002: 28) This is obvious in the conversation reproduced above – the laughter, the playful slap on the arm and the interjections
Trang 5Additionally, storytelling is also a way of ‘guiding listeners into the landscape’ (Ingold,
1993: 153) Rather than simply layering meanings over the landscape, storytelling encourages listeners and storytellers to place themselves in relation to specific parts
of the landscape, thus, allows meanings to unfold Wat Mahathat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site usually associated with noisy tourists, was simultaneously emerging as key site associated with the flood through P’Dek’s storytelling
4.2.1 The recuperative politics of small stories
Like Lorimer (2003), I am interested in the telling of ‘small stories’ Telling small stories are ways in which everyday life unfolds They are creative expressions
of memory and emphasize the mundanity, particularities, and sometimes, peculiarities - like the crocodiles - of daily lives This is not to discount the fact that stories can be shaped by broader ideological processes, and some stories have the ability to discipline, and to perpetuate social, economic and political injustice (Price, 2010; Cameron, 2012) However, like the geographical work related to the politics of memory (reviewed in Chapter Two), this mode of understanding stories and storytelling has reached an epistemological limit Re-focusing on the prosaic stories
we tell everyday is a way to discuss life and experience ‘without immediately or unproblematically tethering them to concepts of power, and discourses of ideology’ (Cameron, 2012: 575) Yet, in their seemingly unimportant ways, the tellings of these
small stories are political Through the telling of the intimate and personal, and the
emotional registers they conjure, small stories can complement, supplement and even trouble the ‘grand, scholarly stories’ (Lorimer, 2003: 200; Price, 2010)
Academics and political critics posit that the 2011 floods in the provinces north and east of Bangkok were unjustly prolonged as waters were diverted from the Bangkok Metropolitan Area (see Caballero-Anthnoy & Jamil, 2011; Dalpino, 2012; Chomsri & Sherer, 2013; Sophonpanich, 2013) While some parts of this sentiment were echoed in some participants’ stories, their stories brought new light to this
Trang 6perspective Standing at the Pasak riverside, about thirty meters from his house in Hua Ro, P’Charong pointed to the directions of the yearly flood water flow (Figure 4.1):
P’Charong: The water was
2 months! [We walk back to his backyard] It was quite
deep here, not like the usual yearly floods My children swam here
[motions at the area we are standing, smiles at the memory] My brother brought home a big Styrofoam board… I think it
is still somewhere around
here [looks around]… They
took turns floating around and jumping off it I think
they liked the flood very much [laughs] But I didn’t [laughs]
[Everyone laughs, Serene asks, ‘Aww, why?’]
P’Charong: [laughs, continues] I remember feeling very frustrated with
the flood I think about the flood sometimes, especially during the wet season, I still feel very frustrated Not only because of the hardship we had faced The central government saw what happened to Ayutthaya and they were embarrassed because Ayutthaya is a UNESCO heritage site [sic] They didn’t want to feel embarrassed again so they cannot let
it happen to Bangkok [Agitatedly] They had to stop the waters from
reaching Bangkok, so they flooded Ayutthaya more! Don’t you think this
is a funny reason? To flood our city, homes and places dear to us, so they don’t lose face?
P’Charong/ 35/ Salesman/ Male/ May 2014 Figure 4.1: P’Charong indicating the height of the water in his
backyard during the 2011 flood
Storytelling is a mutable and fluid process - a story about his children’s enjoyment of the flood became an expression of P’Charong’s indignance with the deluge While his story supplemented the grand story of the ‘unjust sacrifice’, it was not couched in
Trang 7the usual financial terms Scholarly and media discourses cited largely financial reasons for the diversion The supposed ‘sacrifice’ some provinces made was primarily to prevent the disruption of Bangkok’s financial core (Caballero-Anthony & Jamil, 2011; Sophonpanich, 2013;) P’Charong, instead, explained the important symbolisms of landscapes It was a national embarrassment that the Thai state was unable to control the flooding of one of its ancient capital cities, now an important World Heritage site It would be additionally detrimental to the government’s credibility if they were unable to prevent the flooding of the current capital city as well Thus, the flood in the ancient capital was prolonged for the sake of the present Unlike the stories of men and women who removed and sabotaged floodwalls in
Bangkok (see The New York Times, 30 October 2011), P’Charong’s discontent did
not stem from the disruptions to his daily life Living thirty meters from the river, he is
‘used to a little flooding yearly’ Rather, he was – and is still - unhappy with the way his city, his home, was perceived as secondary to Bangkok
The ‘unjust sacrifice’ for Bangkok, however, was disputed by more than half
of the participants In addition to the grand, scholarly story, this also troubled the consensus towards the causes of the flood within the community Many, instead,
blamed neighbouring province, Suphan Buri, for the prolonged deluge Paa Bun was
taking us on a stroll around Hua Ro, resting under a tree, she told us about a phone conversation she had with her sister in Suphan Buri:
paa Bun: I called my sister to let her know we were safe in our
neighbor’s house and that we will stay here until the flood subsides I called her everyday and she told me Suphan Buri was not flooded! I was surprised… Suphan Buri always floods when Ayutthaya floods! It’s the nature of the rivers After the flood, I heard from neighbours that Suphan Buri was not flooded because our ex-prime minister was from Suphan Buri21 He pulled strings to save Suphan Buri by pushing the waters to Ayutthaya So Ayutthaya was flooded for a longer time
21
Paa Bun did not mention his name, but it is likely that she is talking about Banhan
Silpa-archa He was banned from Thai politics in 2008, but he is still perceived as having significant influence and connections in the Thai political arena
Trang 8Serene/P’Chon: Oh? P’Charong told us Ayutthaya was flooded for a longer time because of Bangkok
paa Bun: Awww, yes, yes Some people think that! People still argue
sometimes where the water came from But Bangkok got flooded later I remember my sister saying that Suphan Buri was not flooded at all That
is very unfair for us
Serene: Ah, why?
paa Bun: [Raises her voice, heatedly] They should not push the water
to us [shakes head]! We also have homes and families here in Ayutthaya! Suphan Buri should have shared the flood [Softens] It was
heart-breaking to see people go through that long flood, especially the old people So many people had to live on their roofs Even though Ayutthaya is used to the water, we [had] never experienced such a long flood
Paa Bun/ 57/ Odd job worker/ Female/ May 2014
Despite the difference in perspectives about why Ayutthaya was flooded for
an extended period of time, what is common in the telling of these individual stories was the performance of an alternative, individual-yet-collective subjectivity (Gibson-Graham, 2008; Cameron, 2012) Instead of conforming to the expectations of an
‘understanding and self-sacrificing’ Thai citizen in light of the flood (see The New York Times, 28 October 2011), the participants’ sharing of their flood memories
allowed strikingly similar expressions of discontent at how the flood was handled to emerge Through the telling of these stories, the participants re-asserted the importance of Ayutthaya, which they believed was overlooked by the national government in their management of the 2011 flood They also subverted the popular imagination of Ayutthaya as a ‘historical landscape’ Ayutthaya, in this case, is not simply an ancient capital or a World Heritage site It is home to the participants and is
a lived landscape of interactions and relations - a ‘place dear [to them]’ This subjectivity was also closely associated with the emotional response triggered by the telling of the stories (Maynes et al, 2008), Connecting the within and the without, underpinning this performance of community are frustration and anger The emotionally charged and impassionate storytelling further projected the participants’
Trang 9sense of attachment to Ayutthaya and the broader community Loong Pichit, who
was incredibly composed (some might even say stoic) during our walk around Soi Si, summarized this sentiment:
To me, it doesn’t matter if the water came from Suphan Buri or even
Bangkok [sardonic laughter] Ayutthaya was in the middle so it affected
us badly I am angry that people forget that [Raises his voice] They
remember Wat Mahathat being flooded They remember factories in Rojana being flooded22 But they forget that people who live around Wat Mahathat and the factories were also flooded But all of us who have been through it, our community will not forget
Loong Pichit/ 52/ Shop owner/ Male/ April 2014
4.2.2 Reclaiming agency with small stories
In addition to the recuperative politics of attending to marginal perspectives and valuing the local and specific, turning to small stories also reveals how agency is sustained in the face of disempowering and difficult circumstances (Jackson, 2002; Gibson-Graham, 2008) The experience 2011 flood was traumatic for many in Ayutthaya Most participants shared very similar, nightmarish stories of ‘floating furniture’, the sounds of ‘gushing waters’ and the ‘terrifying feeling of being push and pulled by strong currents’ (Interviews, April/May 2014) Many claimed that the last flood in 1995 was almost one meter lower than the 2011 flood and almost all described the general experience of 2011 as ‘surreal’ Evidently, the 2011 flood was
an event that confounded the participants and rendered many of them helpless Hence, storytelling becomes an important coping mechanism to live with a traumatic past in the present (Jackson, 2002) To remember and articulate an event as a story
is not to relive those events passively, but to actively rework them, in dialogue with others and in relation to the landscape In the process, this ‘changes one’s
22
The Rojana Industrial Park was flooded badly in 2011 The central government had initially attempted to divert water away from it but to no avail Another iconic image of the 2011 flood depicts partially submerged Honda cars in Rojana (see Appendix 3b for image)
For more information see: http://www.rojana.com/ayutthaya_project.html and
http://www.chiangraitimes.com/japanese-car manufacturers-hit-twice-in-1-year.html
Trang 10experience of the world’ (Jackson, 2002: 18) Sitting under the tree, paa Bun continued her story on life during the flood:
paa Bun: When the flood came, I was really scared My children were
stuck in Rojana so I had to take care of my grandchildren As the waters were rising very quickly, we went to the main road, where the temporary floodwall was Many of our neighbours were also there It was cold and rainy, and dark I was worried about my house, and that the kids will fall sick It is still scary to think about it now… Later, we met some very kind soldiers on a boat They offered to take us to a flood [evacuation] center, but most of us didn’t want to go because our families may not know where to find us Staying on the road that night made me feel like everyone was my family People shared blankets and food and
someone gave Din [her youngest grandson] his raincoat [smiles] It was
cold, but I think everyone felt warmth in their hearts that night
Serene/P’Chon: When did you move to your neighbour’s house?
paa Bun: The wall failed later that night, so the road was flooded too
The neighbour’s house was quite high, and we can see that the second and third levels were dry So he offered some of us a place to stay The kind soldiers took us to the house on their boat They came back every day to give us food and water and to see if we are okay One of them even gave us his cell phone number so we can call if there is an
emergency [smiles] These kind actions are the things I think about the
most when I remember the 2011 flood It makes me less worried about the future If it floods again, I know there will be good people in my
community to help me [smiles] And I will also try to help others
Paa Bun/ 57/ Odd job worker/ Female/ May 2014
In her reworking of the past, paa Bun – like many others – was remembering
not just the hardship she went through, but also the ‘warmth’ she felt from the kindness of strangers and neighbours during the event Price (2010: 208) argues that for a story to move beyond the representational, it must move beyond the ‘spoke
word’ Paa Bun’s storytelling moved beyond the spoken word by orienting itself
towards the future It participated in the materialization of new realities Graham, 2008; Maynes et al, 2008; Cameron, 2010) Although the memory of the
(Gibson-2011 flood continued to plague paa Bun with fear and worries, storytelling assuaged
some of her anxieties through the construction of a ‘new reality’ – that despite the
Trang 11hardship, the ‘community’ would be there to help Thus, the community was again given form with this creative reconstruction of the past
4.3 Collection and circulation of memory image-objects
Lorimer and Parr (2014) posit that different registers are employed for the telling of stories Again, moving beyond the spoken word, it is important to recognize that stories are constituted and told through more-than-human objects, beings, rhythms and emotions (also see Edensor, 2005a; DeSilvey, 2006) As ‘resonant blocks of space-time’ which continue to flow even if they appear still, images are closely tied to memory (Latham & McCormack, 2009: 253; Couch, 2010) Images are everyday features of our lives, and in the ‘ordinary stories we tell about ourselves and those closest to us’ (Kuhn, 2007: 284) In addition to the various ‘selfs’ and
‘collectives’, rivers and floods are also key actors in the stories that images in Ayutthaya tell An image, however, is not only about its content The term denotes
both a mental, imaginary entity and a physical object – a photograph, a painting (W
J T Mitchell, 2005) Thus, images lie between the representational and the material, and the two ‘haunt’ and inform one another continuously (Edwards, 2002; Della Dora, 2009; Roberts, 2013; G Rose & Tolia-Kelly, 2012) Hence, they are image-objects
The ubiquitous flood images in, and of, Ayutthaya take on different material forms They are part of one’s larger collection of family photographs, decorative images, commodities and exhibition materials (Figure 4.2) Hence, they are
embedded within various social practices and used differently (Langford, 2001; G
Rose, 2010) The material forms and uses of images largely influence the contents of the image, and in turn, the respective contents validate the material forms and uses
of the image Roberts (2012) encourages us to question whether the image-object
‘flourishes, reproduces itself, thrives, circulates’ If it does, why does it stubbornly persist in having salience to society and the individual? In Ayutthaya, it is partly
Trang 12through encounters with these image-objects that stories are told (see Langford,
200123), and that individuals are enabled to perform their sense of ‘community’
paa Sao: I carry this [takes out a crinkled photograph from her purse]
with me all the time [looks at photograph and fiddles with its edges]
Having it with me makes me feel like I will never forget those two
months I have relatives and friends who came to visit last year [passes photograph to Serene] I brought them to the Reclining Buddha and showed them this picture to compare [laughs] Looking at it is like living
through it again… Take this picture with you - show it to your friends
Tell them about Ayutthaya’s flood [laughs]!
Serene/P’Chon: Thank you, paa! Don’t you want to carry it around with
you anymore? Do you take it out often to look at it?
paa Sao: [Laughs] No, not much I only take it out to show it to people
sometimes Take the photograph! It’s for your memory We have more
of them People have photographs of graduations and birthdays, people
in Ayutthaya also have photographs of the flood [laughs]
Paa Sao/ 52/ Souvenir vendor/ Female/ April 2014
Figure 4.2: Photographs of the flood as decorative images at a guesthouse, and exhibition materials at Ayutthaya hospital and outside Wat Mongkhon Bophit
Paa Sao lives in a wooden stilt house at Long Law with her daughter and
seven dogs The image she was carrying around is a printout of a photograph taken
23
Langford (2001:5) took this point further She argues that voices and stories must be heard
in order for a photograph(ic album) to fulfill its function – that is, the preservation and perpetuation of memories
Trang 13by a local photographer; it depicts paa Sao rowing a boat, with her daughter, in front
of the Reclining Buddha during the 2011 flood (see Figure 4.3) Images are often
engaged beyond the ocular: the doing of the visual is as material as matter is visual
(G Rose & Tolia-Kelly, 2012: 3) Recognizing that the image encompasses its material specificities, thus, allows us to consider the image as a practice – as something that is put to use (G Rose, 2010: 18; G Rose & Tolia-Kelly, 2012) This image of the flood was part of a broader collection of family photographs, listed alongside important life events such as ‘graduations and birthdays’ However, the capturing of the image was completely spontaneous – it was someone else’s
photographic record of the flood The image was only made a family photograph when it was purposefully printed by paa Sao, and literally, materialized The private practice of family photography is also a wider social practice As paa Sao suggested,
in addition to photographs of birthdays and graduations, the people of Ayutthaya have photographs of the 2011 flood as part of their collections of family photographs The conscious effort in creating and collecting flood-family photographs is something
people in Ayutthaya do – privately and collectively as a community - to remember the
flood
Family photographs are often kept in albums, or today, in digitized folders in our computers At times, they are carried around in wallets or in lockets as
mementos of a person or an event (Della Dora, 2009; G Rose, 2010) While paa
Sao’s act of printing and carrying the photograph around could be likened to having a memento of the flood, the act also gave the photograph an almost totemic status As long as she had it – the folded and crinkled square – in a compartment of her purse, she would ‘never forget those two months’ In this case, while the content was clearly
important, the tangible and touchable materiality of the photograph was also
pertinent in her practice of remembering However, the photograph did not simply sit,
Trang 14dormant, in her purse Instead, it travelled with her, and was part of her sharing and communication of memories
Trang 15Figure 4.3: In the spirit of considering the material affordances of an image, I have attached the photograph in one of the printouts of this thesis in an envelope Please feel free to take it out, touch it, look at it and share it with people around you
Thus, in addition to presenting the photograph to my friends and colleagues in Singapore as paa Sao had asked me to, the
image is again put to a different use Performing a different function in this case, the photograph transforms and changes Also, notice the crinkles, folds and signs of use on the photograph
Trang 164.3.1 Emotional engagements with the re-presentation of the flood
Sturken (1997:11) argues that the image is the most ‘compelling of objects’ This is indeed the case, in addition to being a representation of the past, the
memory-image also re-presents it I mean the latter in its literal etymological sense – to
‘reappear that which has disappeared’ (Connerton, 1989: 69) With its physical
presence and via the stories people tell with it, the photograph makes a distant presence – the flood – present (Langford, 2001; Della Dora, 2009) Paa Sao
non-commented that ‘looking at [photographs of the 2011 flood] is like living through it
again’ This sentiment was echoed by many of the participants Paa Hom brought
along with her several photographs of the submerged neighbourhood and her house
as she walked with us around Soi Si (see Figure 4.4):
Paa Hom: It is difficult for me to look at these [photographs], but I
always take them out and show [them] to people who visit Usually [visitors] will ask about the 2011 flood, especially when they see my
house Look at the blue fence [hands photograph to Serene, then points
to neighbour’s house and blue fence] The water was that high, can you imagine living like this for two months [laughs]?
Serene/P’Chon: Why do you say it is difficult for you to look at these
photographs?
Paa Hom: [Looks at the other photograph] Looking at them is like going
back in time to the flood I don’t like that I remember the feeling of being scared and worried, especially because my daughter-in-law was
pregnant then She fell off the boat near the entrance of this road [points towards the entrance] That was very very scary24 After that came the hardship We had to worry about getting around, and getting food for two months These photographs take me back in time to the flood, like it
is happening all over again
Paa Hom/ 54/ Odd job worker/ Female/ April 2014
24 She emphasized greatly on the second ‘very’ – maak
Trang 17Figure 4.4: Paa Hom also insisted that I took the photographs back to SIngapore One of them is attached in one of
the printouts of this thesis Elizabeth Edwards (2002) reminds us the importance of material markings on photographs as signs of interaction and use One of the things that struck me immediately as I look at this
photograph is the muddy fingerprint on it As Paa Hom mentioned, she would often take these photographs out
and about to show it to visiting friends and family Through photographs like these, that she was able to share her memories of the 2011 flood The muddy fingerprint, then, is a material sign of the handling of, and her interaction with, the photograph
Trang 18In their re-presentations of the flood, these photographs have affect and
moved the participants by eliciting certain emotional responses and story-telling
Many participants - like paa Sao and paa Hom - referred to the fear and anxieties associated with their memories of the 2011 flood Hence, prompting paa Hom to
comment that ‘is difficult’ for her to look at the photographs again Others argued that
this re-presentation of the flood was related to a sense of ‘discomfort’ P’Decha reached into a shelf in his closet, rooting around, he found a stack of photographs, and the photographs were sealed in individual plastic slips (Figure 4.5) Looking at the pristine condition of the photographs, I asked:
Serene/P’Chon: [Serene takes the photographs from P’Decha] These
photographs are so well-preserved, you don’t take them out often?
P’Decha: [Laughs] I have no one to show it to
[His wife – P’Daw – corrects him from the background, “Aww! You forgot
I showed it to my mother when she came to visit after the flood.”]
P’Decha: Yes, yes She showed it to her mother [hands more
photographs to P’Chon and Serene]
Serene: What did you tell her mother about the photographs?
P’Decha: [Laughs] Not much She usually does all of the talking
Serene: [Everyone laughs] What can you tell us about the photographs?