At first glance, it looks like an earthquake. Walls ripped open, roofs torn away, gaping openings, buildings reduced to their concrete skeletons. Except earthquakes do not discriminate. They do not target the university more than the garage, they do not burn books, they do not spare doors only to carry them elsewhere. What the images from the areas reclaimed from Viv Ansanm have been showing for the past several weeks is not a natural disaster. It is a sorting process. And that sorting tells a story that no damage assessment will ever capture unless it is named.

The immediate reaction to these images is shock. The next word that comes to mind — and one that should be dismissed from the outset — is the laziest word in our collective vocabulary. This is not barbarism. Barbarism does not discriminate either. What we are witnessing is neither disaster, nor chaos, nor collapse. It is a grammar. And every grammar can be read, provided one is willing to learn its alphabet.