Damage and Repair: Imagining Collective Dwelling in Rural Haiti

Abstract

in the physical disposition of houses and activity areas in lakou in different regions of Haiti. See J.B. Millet, “Arquitectura Haitiana,” Universidad Nacional Autónoma México, thesis, n.d. Personal papers. 9 Following the 2010 earthquake, many international non-governmental organizations and collaborating architects (including the author) drew on partial definitions and understanding of the lakou in design proposals for housing reconstruction. Many such examples of its rhetorical use can be found in the submissions to the Building Back Better Communities exposition, 2011. 10 Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2012), 104–11. 11 The complicated history of land rights and the transfer of lands seized by the Haitian government to military personnel and as political favors following the revolution is addressed in Robert K. Lacerte, “The First Land Reform in Latin America: The Reforms of Alexander Pétion, 1809-1814,” InterAmerican Economic Affairs 28, no. 4 (1975): 77–86; and Winter Rae Schneider, “Racial Property and Radical Memory: Epilogues to the Haitian Revolution,” in Global Raciality: Empire, PostColoniality, DeColoniality, eds. Paola Bacchetta, Sunaina Maira, and Howard Winant (New York: Routledge, 2018), 85-98. 12 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, State Against Nation (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 39. Irene Brisson DAMAGE AND REPAIR: IMAGINING COLLECTIVE DWELLING IN RURAL HAITI