Today marks one year since the fire at the National Museum. This date has much to tell us. To watch the National Museum being consumed by flames was to witness memoricide.
“Memoricide” is a neologism meaning “the deliberate intention to destroy all traces of a nation’s cultural and historical existence in a given territory.”
We live by the cliché that ours is a peaceful country, a meeting place of peoples. But
this has never existed. We are a racist, prejudiced, misogynistic country. A
culture of veiled and normalized hatred against Indigenous people, against
Black people, against Jews, against Muslims, against homosexuals,
against transgender people, against Northeasterners, against women.
Memoricide and erasure
Brazil’s history encompasses both the extermination of memory and the erasure of the other, both inscribed in its pages since the earliest days of colonization. We are consummate perpetrators of memoricide. The National Museum and its fire expose our relationship with history and memory.
Nothing is as paradoxical as becoming the guardian of a loss that leaves no
trace. Broadcast live on the night of September 2, 2018, the images of the relentless fire and the despair of faculty, students, and staff in the face of this irreversible tragedy left everyone stunned.
What was lost was much more than the building and its collection. A piece of knowledge
that had also been reserved for future
generations was taken away. It is irreversible. Despite the admirable efforts
made through the Museu Nacional Vive campaign, what we still see are enormous difficulties in raising funds and the equally great difficulty of coming to terms with the estimated loss of a substantial part of one of the world’s most important collections…
The National Museum fire therefore reveals much about how we deal with our heritage in Brazil. Culture and its meager budgets are a sad political constant. From this perspective, the fire is a tragic metaphor for our impasses. What remains, beyond the rubble, is a question: what kind of future can we dream of when we so systematically disregard our past? How can we deal with the present when we refuse to reflect on our traumatic past? May this mournful date, now entering our calendar as the day of the National Museum fire, help us imagine other futures.