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Chapter 2 traces how the notion of future disaster is negotiated. Amid momentous social and political changes in Sri Lanka, many people have experienced a palpable lack of change. Despite a cessation of war, an anticipation of violence persists. This chapter depicts how it is to live with that specter of violence and with the possibility that life can be disrupted, taken, broken by a natural disaster. These anticipations are part and parcel of everyday life in Sri Lanka. This chapter weaves together various states of anticipation—from a mode of technocratic governance, to the everyday emotional and sensory infrastructures people employ to face daily life, to the scientific and the astrological. By juxtaposing these “anticipatory states,” the chapter illustrates how forms of state power are enacted and articulated, and how the limits of these powers are exhibited by the very practices of the Sri Lankan state.

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