"As napalm": illustrating embodied and sensitive experiences of a slow disaster

Abstract

Since 2011, massive strandings of Sargassum seaweed have had a significant impact on the lives of coastal communities in the wider Caribbean and West Africa. The SaRiMed project is an interdisciplinary academic study examining the emerging relationships between the environment and the ontologies resulting from the proliferation and decomposition of the seaweed. The study focuses in particular on the adverse impact of gaseous emissions on the material life and psychological well-being of local residents. One of the questions addressed in the research project concerned the translation of embodied and sensory experiences of this slow-onset environmental disaster (Nixon, 2011). The aim of this study is to make visible the narratives of pain, the lack of well-being and the loss of habitability, in order to bring them to the attention of a wider audience. To this end, it incorporates photographs of damaged landscapes and objects, as well as drawings and comic strips, created during and after the subjects’ participation in semi-structured interviews conducted with two students, Alexia Carbeti and Lucas Pernock, during fieldwork in Martinique and Marie-Galante in 2021 and 2022. This presentation of the research field explains the photographic and graphic process employed and the significance it acquired in the dialogic relationship with the inhabitants of the affected areas.