ABSTRACT
This chapter offers equally divergent interpretations of ruination, reconstruction and remaking in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake. Through their portrayal of urban landscapes, Rubble and Tout bouge offer commentaries on Haiti's devastation, processes of ruination that contributed to it, while also gesturing towards potential scenarios for Haiti's reconstruction, material as well as symbolic. In effect, Rubble, a narrative pledge of commitment, productively reveals the difficulties of reconciling the sense of urgency of post-disaster rebuilding, its teleological and linear logic of acceleration and leap into a rebuilt future, with the open-ended, necessarily slow and asynchronous individual/collective efforts to reconstruct one's life. Furthermore, the reconstruction process as envisaged in Tout bouge attempts to connect the past, present and future visions of the capital, by repeatedly emphasising the non-material dimensions of cityscapes: where previous entries contemplated the 'human landscape', here the narrator speaks directly of the spiritual significance of space.
