What role should the Haitian government play in helping the Haitian people record and remember the earthquake tragedy?
SM: Right now, with hundreds of thousands people dead and critically injured, this question is meaningless. The event itself is still in the realm of the real for most people, and far from that of memory. It will be a long time before it becomes the subject of memory, and in a sense it never fully will, as the consequences of something of this scale will always be tangible and immediate. If and when, in the future, the most that can be done to alleviate the loss and suffering has been done, this question might take on some significance – not so much in terms of commemorating the tragedy itself as that what it has destroyed. Art and architecture, always a prime site of national memory, have been heavily damaged in the earthquake, including the incredible Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince. Haiti’s national memory, and the world’s historical image of the nation, is a powerful one, and a triumphal one at that, as the first black-led republic in the world and the venue of the legendary slave-r
