Building from scratch: The aesthetics of post-disaster reconstruction

Author(s): Maj Nygaard-Christensen

Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 27, No. 6 (December 2011), pp. 8-10
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41320230
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Maj Nygaard-
Christensen
Maj Nygaard-Christensen
is a postdoctoral researcher
at Aarhus University in
Denmark. She has carried
out 18 months of fieldwork
in Timor-Leste and does
research on the political
landscapes of international
interventions, with a focus
on political practices among
international democracy
promoters in Timor-Leste.
Her email is
maj. nygaard@gmail. com.
Fig. l.A burnt out office
building in Baucau, Timor-
Leste, following electoral
violence in 2007.
8 ANTHROPOLOGY
Building from scratch
The aesthetics of post-disaster reconstruction
In the aftermath of major conflicts and natural disasters
that manifest visually in large-scale destruction, a partic-
ular kind of discourse typically emerges in media coverage
and development debates. Media reports documenting
the tragedy and scale of the event are often, and remark- z
UJ
(O
ably quickly, followed by highly optimistic portrayals of z
IS
the demolished landscape as a unique canvas for change. C/3
K
z
From post-conflict Timor-Leste to tsunami-devastated
!
Aceh and post-earthquake Haiti, grand claims have been
made that their destroyed landscapes offer unique chances
for 'new beginnings', and 'unprecedented' opportunities
for development intervention and other external involve-
I
ments (Lochhead 2010; Klein 2005). tainous interior and Indonesian West Timor were met with
Through a particular focus on Timor-Leste 's violence-the daunting task of continuing their lives with almost no
fraught transition to independence, this article looks atproperty to their names. All that remained of most homes
how some of the most hopeful of international interven-was soot-coloured shells. Water and electricity systems and
tion dreams of recent decades have been produced outpublic buildings, including schools, hospitals and adminis-
of sites of mass-scale destruction. The article attends in trative centres, had been destroyed. There were hardly any
surviving buildings available to house the incoming inter-
particular to the visual character of post-conflict and post-
disaster settings, arguing that the material environmentnational aid organizations or the local administrations that
in which many international reconstruction interventionsnow had to be formed under the guidance of UNTAET,
operate helps to produce what might be termed an 'aes- one of the most comprehensive UN transitional adminis-
trations to date.
thetics of post-disaster reconstruction', a visual aesthetics
that hinges on certain images, discourses and metaphors. And yet, Timor-Leste soon became the imaginative site
As these tropes and images are deployed in newspaper of one of the development community's most optimistic
articles, development discussions and political commen-'success-story' narratives; an imagined miracle nation in
tary in the aftermath of a disaster, widely divergent post- the making. What I suggest in the following is that the
disaster and post-conflict destruction settings becomeimagery of ruin created by the 1999 destruction was far
from detrimental to the formulation of the vision of a
grouped together as sites of a particular kind of agency
and opportunity. future 'model state' by international nation-state planners;
rather, it directly facilitated these development dreams.
Scorched earth
Ground
Phrases such as 'Ground Zero' and 'apocalyptic', Zero
com-
Here the
monly applied to post-disaster settings, were among it may be useful to look more closely at one of the
termson
terms used by academics and political commentators frequently invoked in discourses on sites of post-
Timor-Leste when they described the territory conflict
in 1999 or post-disaster reconstruction. In her discussion
(Dunn 2003: 360, 366; Nevins 2002: 623; Traub of 2000:
New4;York's post-September 1 1 'Ground Zero', Marika
Wheeler & Dunne 2001: 816). That year, a referendum
Sturken notes how this term, which 'began as a term used
had been held on whether or not to continue asby part of
scientists to designate a bomb's point of designation,
Indonesia, which had occupied the half-islandhence,for 24its site of ultimate destruction', now 'conveys
years. The majority had voted against remaining theunder
idea of a starting point, a tabula rasa' (Sturken 2004:
Indonesian rule, thereby initiating a transition 311). Sturken examines the 'aesthetics of absence' at play
to inde-
pendent statehood. In response, Indonesian troopsin NewandYork's Ground Zero and points to the competing
pro-Indonesian militias began a massive campaign of projected onto this emotionally charged setting;
meanings
the that
destruction and violence. Geoffrey Robinson suggests tension between 'mourning' and 'aesthetics', between
the view of the families of September 11 victims, for
the purpose of the 'scorched-earth policy' of Indonesian
soldiers and their supporters was to ensure that in whom the site is primarily a burial ground, and architec-
an inde-
tural visions of 'Ground Zero' as a rare setting for archi-
pendent Timor-Leste, 'their pro-independence opponents
would have to start from nothing, and would not enjoyexperimentation.
tectural
any of the fruits of Indonesian rule. "If you wantShe recounts how some architects presenting proposals
inde-
pendence", one scrawled [graffiti] message declared, "six
for the site's development were criticized for viewing it as
months from now you will be eating rocks'" (Robinson a building site, and accused of turning its development into
2009: 172). an architectural 'beauty contest'. 'Indeed', Sturken sug-
Arson against both private homes and public buildings gests, 'one can read in the numerous designs proposed for
was the main weapon used in the destruction of Timor. the site an almost obsessive desire to fill it up, to imagine
An estimated 70% of the nascent country's infrastructure it as something other than it is, a wound in the cityscape'
was destroyed and some settlements were almost wiped (2004: 320).
out (Chopra 2000: 27; Traub 2000). As James Traub The language used to describe Timor-Leste in the imme-
noted, 'in two and a half weeks, almost every shred of diate aftermath of the events of 1999 and, more recently,
personal wealth in East Timor was stolen or destroyed - Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, indicates that broader
cattle, chickens, motorbikes, phones, furniture and books' post-conflict and post-disaster settings stir similar fanta-
(Traub 2000: 78). Thus, when international organizations sies. However, something different is at stake when it is
began pouring in following the referendum, villages and not a single site, but an entire nation that is perceived as
towns throughout the country lay in ashes. Thousands of a blank slate. Rather than being seen simply as sites of
displaced people returning from hideouts in the moun- architectural experimentation, such places come to be held
TODAY VOL 27 NO 6, DECEMBER 201 1
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Fig. 2. Remains of a school
in Los Palos, Timor-Leste,
burnt down in 1999.
Fig. 3. Tetun text on the
exterior wall of a house in
Dili, written in 1999 following
mass-scale displacement,
declares that 'this house has
owners ' to dissuade others
from moving in.
Fig. 4. Graffiti on a house
in Lautem district welcomes
international troops to Timor-
Leste.
Brooks, D. 2010. The
underlying tragedy. New
York Times , 14 January.
Cheong, S. 2003. 'Don't
call me Asia's Nelson
Mandela'. Sunday Times , 21
September.
Chopra, J. 2000. The UN's
kingdom of East Timor.
Survival 42(3): 27-39.
Downie, S. 2007. UNTAET:
State-building and peace-
building. In: Kingsbury,
D. & M. Leach (eds).
East Timor: Beyond
independence , pp. 29-42.
Clayton: Monash University
Press.
Dunn, J. 2003. East Timor:
A rough passage to
independence. Woollahra,
New South Wales:
Longueville.
Fund for Peace 2007. Failed
states index 2007. Available
at: http://www.fundforpeace.
org/global/?q=fsi-grid2007 .
Gusmao, X. 2005. Timor lives!
Speeches of freedom and
independence. Woollahra,
New South Wales:
Longueville.
Hohe, T. 2002. The clash of
paradigms: International
administration and local
political legitimacy in
East Timor. Contemporary
Southeast Asia 24(3): 569-
589.
Kahn, C. 201 1. Haiti aid groups
criticized as aid money sits
unspent. NPR, 1 1 January.
ANTHROPOLOGY
up as unique canvases upon which an entirely new socio-
political order may be drawn, sites available for experi-
mentation with models of nation building.
z
1
'Building from scratch'
cc
'Independence is like a blank piece of paper where we can z
write our dreams, and dreams of happiness for our children'
(First President of Timor-Leste Xanana Gusmao (quoted in
Cheong 2003)
'[Timor-Leste] is a test case, therefore, it is even a laboratory 1
case where we can transform Utopia into reality ... I think we
can try and get it right in the case of Timor' (Sergio Vieira de
Mello, United Nations Transitional Administrator quoted on
CNN, 15 March 2000 (quoted in Kammen 2009: 385)
Paradoxically, by ensuring that an independent Timor-
Leste would have to 'start from nothing' (Robinson 2009:
271), the Indonesian troops and pro-Indonesian militias
that laid waste to the country's infrastructure helped to 5
prepare a landscape that was viewed as uniquely suited
is
to development intervention. The 2002 United Nations CO
a.
z
Human Development Report on Timor-Leste, a kind of
road map for the country's independence, optimistically
stated:
East Timor faces life as a new nation in very difficult circum- 1
stances - with the lowest human development ranking in Asia.
But full independence also brings the opportunity to make a
fresh start - empowering the people of East Timor to set a new
course grounded firmly on the principle of human development
(UNDP 2002: 11).
The phrase 'starting' or 'building' 'from scratch' Z
UJ
became a term recurrently used by the international organ- CO
z
12
izations aiding Timor-Leste 's transition to independence. CO
tc.
Elsewhere in the 2002 report, the then head of the United z
Nations Transitional Administration in Timor-Leste, the
2
late Sergio Vieira de Mello, wrote in relation to the destruc-
tion of state institutions that reconstruction 'in everything,
had to commence literally from scratch' (UNDP 2002: iv).
1
Like New York's Ground Zero, post-conflict Timor-Leste and in state-administrative systems that, in normal times,
came to be perceived as a blank slate, an 'experimental officials might oppose' (2007: 278).
terrain' (Scott 1998) on which new approaches to interna-
tionally guided state-building could be tried out. 'Starting The visual aesthetics of the post-disaster site
from scratch' did not just denote the reconstruction of I would argue that in Timor-Leste, as in many other post-
buildings and infrastructure. The UN had also, as a UN disaster or post-conflict settings, such understandings are
employee excitedly told me in 2005, to 'institutionalize especially likely to emerge when visual representations of
from scratch!' a ruined territory depict that territory as a 'blank slate'.
Compared to many other post-conflict settings, Timor- Such representations, produced photographically and sub-
Leste was indeed exceptional in that it had no past as a sequently replicated in political commentary, journalism
nation-state on which to model its future. Since the country and development discourses, offer to development plan-
had never before existed as an independent nation, andners something resembling the kind of 'narrowed vision'
much of its administration had been run by Indonesian citi- described by James Scott in his work on state-initiated
zens who had now left for Indonesia, the United Nationssocial planning (Scott 1998).
transitional mission was tasked with establishing a polit- Scott's notion of 'state simplification' (1998: 77) is
ical system, formulating electoral processes and holding useful for understanding the significance of the visual
national elections, setting up financial systems, drafting appearance of post-disaster settings in development and
foreign policy, establishing a civil service, and training reconstruction imaginaries. Scott discusses how tools of
civil servants, health workers, teachers, lawyers, courtsimplification such as 'maps, censuses, cadastral lists, and
officials, police and politicians (Downie 2007: 30). standard units of measurement represent techniques for
Highly ambitious expectations fuelled the process of grasping a large and complex reality', techniques which
Timorese nation-state building. Anthropologist Tanjaallow officials to 'grasp aspects of the ensemble' with the
Hohe, who worked in Timor during the transition period, aim of reducing a 'complex reality. . .to schematic catego-
suggests that the initial lack of administrative systems inries' (1998: 77). State simplifications, according to Scott,
Timor-Leste caused international agencies in the countryfrequently have the character of maps (1998: 87), similar
to assume the presence of a 'power vacuum' (Hohe 2002: to aerial photographs of urban landscapes. The 'birds-eye'
579). In a similar vein, Tania Murray Li notes how devel-view of maps and aerial photographs, he notes, offers a
opment planners such as World Bank experts based inperspective that flattens 'the topography as if it were a
Indonesia 'imagine[d] building upon a clean slate not canvas' (1998: 58). Unlike the street-level view, the aerial
just physically but socially - constructing a new society view gives an impression of 'spatial order'.
in which the delinquent structures of the old order will With Scott's formulations in mind, it is worth exam-
not intrude' (Li 2007: 277-278). This imagined social and ining two kinds of image that often circulate in media
political vacuum was a place where international develop- coverage of disaster and conflict settings. One is that of
ment experts could 'instil new practices in communitiesthe destroyed territory as seen from above, in which entire
TODAY VOL 27 NO 6, DECEMBER 2011 9
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Fifl. 5. UN vehicle parked
in front of the National
Parliament building in Dili,
Timor-Leste.

Kammen, D. 2009. Fragments

of Utopia: Popular
yearnings in East Timor.
Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies 40(2): 385-408.
Klein, N. 2005. Allure of the
blank slate. Guardian , 1 8
April.
Li, T.M. 2007. The will to
improve: Governmental ity,
development, and the
practice of politics.
Durham: Duke University
Press.
Lochhead, C. 2010. Pelosi:
z
Earthquake a chance for HI
w
'fresh start' in Haiti. San z
UJ

Francisco Chronicle 5
K
Politics Blog, 15 January. X

MacFarquhar, N. 2010. Haiti 3

is again a canvas for
approaches to aid. New
York Times , 30 January.
McHugh, D. 2010. Haiti:
Same old new beginning.
Irish Left Review , 16 June.
Nevins, J. 2002. The making
of 'Ground Zero' in East
Timor in 1999. Asian
Survey 42(4): 623-642.
Nygaard-Christensen, M.
2010. When Utopia fails:
Political dreams and
imaginaries of democracy
in Timor-Leste. Aarhus
University. MS.
Robinson, G. 2009. 'If you
leave us here, we will die
How genocide was stopped
in East Timor. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Schorr, D. 2010. Haiti quake
highlights need For UN
trusteeship. NPR , 20
January.
Scott, J.C. 1998. Seeing
like a state: How certain
schemes to improve the
human condition have
failed. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Sturken, M. 2004. The
aesthetics of absence:
Rebuilding Ground Zero.
American Ethnologist
31(3): 311-325.
Traub, J. 2000. Inventing East
Timor. Foreign Affairs
79(4): 74-89.
UNDP 2002. Ukun rasik
a'an: The way ahead.
East Timor Human
Development Report 2002.
Dili: UNDP.
Vohnsen, N.H. 2011.
Absurdity and the sensible
decision: Implementation
of Danish labour market
policy. PhD thesis, Aarhus
University, submitted
August 2011.
Wheeler, N.J. & T. Dunne
2001. East Timor and
the new humanitarian
interventionism.
International Affairs 77(4):
805-827.
Wolfowitz, P. 2006. Paul
Wolfowitz's arrival
statement at Dili, 8 April.
World Bank.
neighbourhoods, building upon building, lie in ruins.
Examples include aerial photographs of collapsed neigh-
bourhoods in post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, of torched
houses and neighbourhoods in the Timorese capital Dili
in 1999, and of post-tsunami landscapes of obliteration in
Aceh in 2004. Through the flattening aerial perspective,
complex post-disaster scenes acquire the appearance of
blank slates, of canvases to be drawn on anew. This visual
presentation of the landscape aids political commentators
and development planners in envisioning 'new beginnings'
and dreaming up success stories out of sites of annihilation
and destruction. In this way, 'state simplification' is central
to many post-disaster development interventions.
This leads us to the other kind of image that commonly
circulates in coverage of post-disaster settings, that of
ruined symbolic sites of power. Examples from Timor-
Leste include a burned-out building from the former
Indonesian provincial government that became known as
the 'Palace of Ashes' when the first post-independence
president, Xanana Gusmao, began his term in office there
when UNTAET handed over authority to the new Timorese
government. In post-earthquake Haiti, photographs of
the collapsed presidential palace quickly came to figure
in media accounts as a symbol of state collapse (Schorr
2010). The resulting understanding of post-earthquake
Haiti as the site of a power vacuum - echoing international
views of Timor-Leste a decade earlier - fed into the many
calls for international trusteeship of Haiti that were made
in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake by political
commentators and development planners (Brooks 2010;
Schorr 2010).
In Timor-Leste, where nation-building did take place
under a degree of trusteeship, the blank-slate appearance
of the post-conflict scene aided international nation-state
planners in viewing the territory in terms of absences and
power vacuums, thus enabling them to gloss over the
existence of local political structures and groupings, con-
flicting loyalties and diverse agendas, and the contesting
expectations around independence that took form during
the resistance struggle (Nygaard-Christensen 2010; see
also Vohnsen 201 1 : 169).
Conclusion building. On the contrary, they reveal a historical amnesia,
Here I have offered a brief examination of the visual aes-
with such dreams being in part products of the visual aes-
thetics of post-disaster settings, and the claims theythetics
enable of the post-disaster site that enable state simplifica-
in development and reconstruction discourses. Intions
bothto hold sway in the aftermath of destruction.
|
the post-disaster sites discussed, the Utopian dreams of
reconstruction success quickly collapsed. In Timor-Leste,
optimism was intact when the United Nations Transitional
Administration handed over power to the first Timorese
government, an event visually distilled in photographs
of Transitional Administrator Vieira de Mello handing to
President-elect Gusmao a gigantic mock key to his office
(see Gusmao 2005: 37, 249). Only a few years later, how-
ever, the country was listed as a 'failed state' in the annual
index published by US think tank the Fund for Peace and
Foreign Policy magazine, after violence erupted in Dili in
2006 (Fund for Peace 2007).
The 2006 crisis took external commentators and devel-
opment experts by surprise, with World Bank President
Paul Wolfowitz pronouncing Timor-Leste 'by far the best
performer' among post-conflict nations (Wolfowitz 2006)
even as the first signs of political crisis were becoming
evident to the inhabitants of Dili. The political infighting,
ethnic divisions among the civilian population, and dis-
putes between the army and the police came as a shock
to outsiders, I would suggest, because of the international
community's general enthralment to visions of an orderly,
easily managed reconstruction site.
A decade after Timor-Leste's transition, the 2010 earth-
quake in Haiti prompted a remarkably similar set of dis-
cussions. Like post-conflict Timor-Leste, the Haiti disaster
was portrayed as presenting an unprecedented opportunity
for change, both for local populations and for international
reconstruction efforts (see MacFarquhar 2010). Again, the
physical destruction was equated with a socio-political
vacuum, to be filled by international agencies (Schorr
2010). But not everyone felt the same optimism: 'Same
old new beginning', wrote one critical reporter, remarking
that the only 'opportunity' arising from the earthquake
was that of building from 'old blueprints' (McHugh 2010).
And, indeed, in Haiti as in Timor-Leste, optimism made
way for disappointment, as slow distribution and expendi-
ture of aid money for reconstruction dimmed hopes for any
speedy renewal (Kahn 201 1).
The frequency with which reconstruction dreams are
enthusiastically spun and claims of success made cannot
be ascribed to any historical record of successful state-

10 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 27 NO 6, DECEMBER 2011

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