Endurance Available to Purchase
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Published:April 2025
Chapter 3 highlights the texture and rhythms of east coast life as they unfold in the everyday. Where death and destruction have been swift and sweeping, the notion of “slow life” draws attention to the ways in which life—not just in the biological sense—persists in contexts of insecurity and sociopolitical anxiety. The chapter’s first section explores the experiences of those living in a temporary post-tsunami housing scheme while awaiting newly built tsunami homes—a form of endurance called “slow life.” The second section presents a series of text messages distributed by the Sri Lankan government, coordinated with the Ministry of Defense, to provide updates on their war efforts. These messages are juxtaposed with excerpts from conversations taken directly from fieldnotes on the dates the messages were sent, an ethnographic form that more performatively illustrates the chronopolitics of disaster nationalism: enduring forms of (slow) life in a disaster-obsessed state.
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