Laura Centemeri

Investigating the "Discrete Memory" of the Seveso Disaster in Italy

In this text, I bring a long-term perspective to bear on an industrial accident that resulted in the contamination of an inhabited territory. Going beyond the immediate temporality of the event itself, I seek to recount the manner in which a disaster persists, is diluted, and transformed in the life of the affected community. I also question the link often drawn in the literature between the experience of disaster and the emergence of a “local risk culture.”1 From a reflexive point of view, finally, I seek to shed light upon and discuss some of the difficulties and tensions involved in research that above all aims to understand how a population responds to the radical disruption of its relationship to a territory.