Book review: An Everlasting Name: Cultural Remembrance and Traditions of Onymic Commemoration

Abstract

authors argue that the project creates a platform for the disaster stories of Langtangpas, employing memory work as ‘a recursive and adaptive process of gathering’ (p. 365). In the final chapter, ‘Bhukampa: Nepali Recitations of an Earthquake Aftermath’, Michael Hutt focusses on Nepali poetry post-earthquake. He investigates the literary form of memory by questioning whether the contents of poetry are an ‘endogenous response’ (p. 368) and, if so, how they differ from the broader ‘endogenous response’ to life. Hutt identifies six poetry motifs relating to the disaster: anguish and determination, witness, the bhukampa (earthquake) as a punisher, the bhukampa as unifier and leveller, the distribution of loss, and political anger and distrust. Although the poets are mainly men from dominant castes, they are also individuals with personal subjectivities and in the poems, they express a general unity as a Nepali nation. Overall, this edited work is of special significance in the field of disaster studies since it was completed by multidisciplinary authors who specialise in Nepal and Himalayan studies; of the 33 authors, 14 are Nepali nationals (p. 17). The work combines the memory of the past and the ongoing memorisation in an integrative collection, which encompasses memory studies and spans the timeline of an entire event. The volume raises many useful questions and presents valuable evidence, particularly for researchers and readers interested in disaster studies and contemporary Himalayan and South Asian studies.