Aftermath : the Fall and the Rise after the Event

What happens in the wake of the event? Is the event’s aftermath always characterised by the experience of disorder, fragmentation, and impermanence? Or, alternatively, can aftermath be seen as a new growth, a second crop of grass that can be sown and reaped and which gives rise to a new integrity, a new unity? The volume’s twenty-three essays by scholars from Australia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, and the United States re-visit the notion and representation of aftermath, understood here widely as a consequence/result/after-effect of a seminal event (to an individual, a community, society, regions or nations), and explore its transformative and life-changing characteristics. While acknowledging disastrous or catastrophic consequences of the event, Aftermath argues in favour of recognising some rejuvenating potential of its after-effects.