Building from Scratch: The aesthetics of post‐disaster reconstruction(Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate) |
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| Authors: | Maj Nygaard‐Christensen |
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| Institution: | 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. |
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| Abstract: | This article looks at the visual character of post‐conflict and post‐disaster settings, and shows how states of physical ruin can help to produce an ‘aesthetics of post‐disaster reconstruction’. With examples primarily drawn from the author's field site in Timor‐Leste, the article shows how ruins, ashes and demolition may be perceived as enabling particular kinds of agency and opportunity. Thus, some of the most hopeful of international‐intervention dreams of recent decades have been produced out of sites of mass‐scale destruction. |
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