Jana Evans Braziel
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812742
- eISBN:
- 9781496812780
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812742.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter assesses the concept of faux-dou, in contrast to the dominant framing of the art collective under the signs and symbols of Vodou. While actively resisting the art-historical reduction of ...
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This chapter assesses the concept of faux-dou, in contrast to the dominant framing of the art collective under the signs and symbols of Vodou. While actively resisting the art-historical reduction of the Grand Rue collective as merely productive of Vodou arts inspired by the lwas or spirits, Jean Hérard Celeur nevertheless does incorporate Vodou elements, but he does so in an ecstatic, métis (or mixed) fusion. Faux-dou, then, may be defined as a sort of “faux” Vodou or the artificial imposition or strategic marketing of the Grand Rue sculptors as “Vodou” artists: it functions, thus, as a sort of gallerist shorthand or even a facile fabrication that obscures the myriad, eclectic influences on the artists, particularly on Celeur and his wildly eclectic sculptures that are amalgams of aesthetic styles.Less
This chapter assesses the concept of faux-dou, in contrast to the dominant framing of the art collective under the signs and symbols of Vodou. While actively resisting the art-historical reduction of the Grand Rue collective as merely productive of Vodou arts inspired by the lwas or spirits, Jean Hérard Celeur nevertheless does incorporate Vodou elements, but he does so in an ecstatic, métis (or mixed) fusion. Faux-dou, then, may be defined as a sort of “faux” Vodou or the artificial imposition or strategic marketing of the Grand Rue sculptors as “Vodou” artists: it functions, thus, as a sort of gallerist shorthand or even a facile fabrication that obscures the myriad, eclectic influences on the artists, particularly on Celeur and his wildly eclectic sculptures that are amalgams of aesthetic styles.
Elizabeth McAlister
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- April 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195149180
- eISBN:
- 9780199835386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195149181.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This essay explores the contemporary legacies of colonial religious discourses, by examining how participants in Haiti’s annual Rara festival—a Lenten carnival and public performance of Haitian ...
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This essay explores the contemporary legacies of colonial religious discourses, by examining how participants in Haiti’s annual Rara festival—a Lenten carnival and public performance of Haitian Vodou—at once inherit and transform the anti-Jewish sentiments of the clergy in colonial Saint Domingue. Through an active identification with the Jews who “killed Jesus,” disenfranchised Haitians reinvent the European demonization of Jews and Africans, deconstructing colonial religious categories from within, in order to craft rituals of resistance to their country’s predominantly Catholic and mulatto elites.Less
This essay explores the contemporary legacies of colonial religious discourses, by examining how participants in Haiti’s annual Rara festival—a Lenten carnival and public performance of Haitian Vodou—at once inherit and transform the anti-Jewish sentiments of the clergy in colonial Saint Domingue. Through an active identification with the Jews who “killed Jesus,” disenfranchised Haitians reinvent the European demonization of Jews and Africans, deconstructing colonial religious categories from within, in order to craft rituals of resistance to their country’s predominantly Catholic and mulatto elites.
Kate Ramsey
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- April 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195149180
- eISBN:
- 9780199835386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195149181.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This article examines the nineteenth century Haitian state’s penal prohibition of “le vaudoux” as a form of “sortilege” or spell. It studies how, in the face of unremitting white Western hostility ...
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This article examines the nineteenth century Haitian state’s penal prohibition of “le vaudoux” as a form of “sortilege” or spell. It studies how, in the face of unremitting white Western hostility and racist malign, successive post-revolutionary Haitian governments relied on juridical law both as a sign of political modernity and as a space for the repudiation of the so-called primitive in Haiti. The article focuses on two significant episodes of enforcement of these laws following the return of the Roman Catholic Church to Haiti in 1860. At this point, popular ritual practice fell, in effect, under a second punitive regime, even as the newly arrived foreign clergy also pressed the Haitian state for stricter enforcement of the laws already in place. I argue, however, that the application of what were frequently consolidated after 1860 as “les lois divines et humaines” against “le vaudoux” proved, repeatedly, to be impossible for both state and Church. The disparity between how this word was constructed through penal and ecclesiastical laws versus how it was popularly understood became the key point on which both the state’s and the Church’s campaigns against popular ritual invariably foundered.Less
This article examines the nineteenth century Haitian state’s penal prohibition of “le vaudoux” as a form of “sortilege” or spell. It studies how, in the face of unremitting white Western hostility and racist malign, successive post-revolutionary Haitian governments relied on juridical law both as a sign of political modernity and as a space for the repudiation of the so-called primitive in Haiti. The article focuses on two significant episodes of enforcement of these laws following the return of the Roman Catholic Church to Haiti in 1860. At this point, popular ritual practice fell, in effect, under a second punitive regime, even as the newly arrived foreign clergy also pressed the Haitian state for stricter enforcement of the laws already in place. I argue, however, that the application of what were frequently consolidated after 1860 as “les lois divines et humaines” against “le vaudoux” proved, repeatedly, to be impossible for both state and Church. The disparity between how this word was constructed through penal and ecclesiastical laws versus how it was popularly understood became the key point on which both the state’s and the Church’s campaigns against popular ritual invariably foundered.
Jana Evans Braziel
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812742
- eISBN:
- 9781496812780
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812742.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter examines the aesthetics of Vodou bricolage in the sculptures of André Eugène, Frantz Jacques (Guyodo), and Alex Louis. The Grand Rue, like so many impoverished neighborhoods in Haiti's ...
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This chapter examines the aesthetics of Vodou bricolage in the sculptures of André Eugène, Frantz Jacques (Guyodo), and Alex Louis. The Grand Rue, like so many impoverished neighborhoods in Haiti's capital, survives through the willed intelligence and creative production of local bricoleurs, those workers and day laborers who frequently produce without pay and grab what is available or near at hand in order to optimistically build what is needed. Infused as it is with the lore and lyric, proverbs and rituals, symbols and myths of Vodou, this process of creative production is a wildly resourceful tool for survival in the daily perilous encounters confronted by those living precarious lives in spite of poverty, despite disease, with hunger, and, too often, against the odds. Indeed, it is a will to thrive through an imaginative Vodou bricolage.Less
This chapter examines the aesthetics of Vodou bricolage in the sculptures of André Eugène, Frantz Jacques (Guyodo), and Alex Louis. The Grand Rue, like so many impoverished neighborhoods in Haiti's capital, survives through the willed intelligence and creative production of local bricoleurs, those workers and day laborers who frequently produce without pay and grab what is available or near at hand in order to optimistically build what is needed. Infused as it is with the lore and lyric, proverbs and rituals, symbols and myths of Vodou, this process of creative production is a wildly resourceful tool for survival in the daily perilous encounters confronted by those living precarious lives in spite of poverty, despite disease, with hunger, and, too often, against the odds. Indeed, it is a will to thrive through an imaginative Vodou bricolage.
Joan Dayan
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520089006
- eISBN:
- 9780520920965
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520089006.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book charts the cultural imagination of Haiti, not only by reconstructing the island's history, but by highlighting ambiguities and complexities that have been ignored, investigating the ...
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This book charts the cultural imagination of Haiti, not only by reconstructing the island's history, but by highlighting ambiguities and complexities that have been ignored, investigating the confrontational space in which Haiti is created and recreated in fiction and fact, text and ritual, discourse and practice. It gives human dimensions to this eighteenth-century French colony and provides a template for understanding the Haiti of today. In examining the complex social fabric of French Saint-Domingue, which in 1804 became Haiti, the book uncovers a silenced, submerged past. Instead of relying on familiar sources to reconstruct Haitian history, it uses a diversity of voices that have previously been unheard. Many of the materials recovered here—overlooked or repressed historical texts, legal documents, religious works, secret memoirs, letters, and literary fictions—have never been translated into English. Others, such as Marie Vieux Chauvet's radical novel of vodou, Fonds des Nègres, are seldom used as historical sources. The book also argues provocatively for the consideration of both vodou rituals and narrative fiction as repositories of history. This scholarship is enriched by the insights the author has gleaned from conversations and experiences during her many trips to Haiti over the past twenty years.Less
This book charts the cultural imagination of Haiti, not only by reconstructing the island's history, but by highlighting ambiguities and complexities that have been ignored, investigating the confrontational space in which Haiti is created and recreated in fiction and fact, text and ritual, discourse and practice. It gives human dimensions to this eighteenth-century French colony and provides a template for understanding the Haiti of today. In examining the complex social fabric of French Saint-Domingue, which in 1804 became Haiti, the book uncovers a silenced, submerged past. Instead of relying on familiar sources to reconstruct Haitian history, it uses a diversity of voices that have previously been unheard. Many of the materials recovered here—overlooked or repressed historical texts, legal documents, religious works, secret memoirs, letters, and literary fictions—have never been translated into English. Others, such as Marie Vieux Chauvet's radical novel of vodou, Fonds des Nègres, are seldom used as historical sources. The book also argues provocatively for the consideration of both vodou rituals and narrative fiction as repositories of history. This scholarship is enriched by the insights the author has gleaned from conversations and experiences during her many trips to Haiti over the past twenty years.
Toni Pressley-Sanon
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813054407
- eISBN:
- 9780813053141
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813054407.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Istwa across the Water draws on the historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of tidalectics as cultural exchange that is patterned after the back and forth movement of the ocean’s waves, to ...
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Istwa across the Water draws on the historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of tidalectics as cultural exchange that is patterned after the back and forth movement of the ocean’s waves, to explore Haitian cultural production through the lenses of history and memory by way of the Vodou concept of the Marasa or twinned entities. Istwa across the Water takes on Haiti’s complementary or twinned sites of cultural production in the West African area of Dahomey/Benin Republic and the Central West African Kôngo region from which many Haitians originate. It discusses oral and visual art traditions from both sides of the Atlantic divide as a means to explore the dynamic and constantly evolving exchange of physical and spiritual energies between Haiti and its “motherlands” (sites of origin) as Spirit seeks to restore the balance that was lost during the transatlantic trade and slave era.Less
Istwa across the Water draws on the historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of tidalectics as cultural exchange that is patterned after the back and forth movement of the ocean’s waves, to explore Haitian cultural production through the lenses of history and memory by way of the Vodou concept of the Marasa or twinned entities. Istwa across the Water takes on Haiti’s complementary or twinned sites of cultural production in the West African area of Dahomey/Benin Republic and the Central West African Kôngo region from which many Haitians originate. It discusses oral and visual art traditions from both sides of the Atlantic divide as a means to explore the dynamic and constantly evolving exchange of physical and spiritual energies between Haiti and its “motherlands” (sites of origin) as Spirit seeks to restore the balance that was lost during the transatlantic trade and slave era.
Benjamin Hebblethwaite
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781496835604
- eISBN:
- 9781496835659
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496835604.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou focuses on the influence of the kingdoms of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda in the emergence of central rites in Haitian Vodou. Connecting four centuries of ...
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A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou focuses on the influence of the kingdoms of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda in the emergence of central rites in Haitian Vodou. Connecting four centuries of political, social, and religious history with fieldwork and language documentation, this book analyzes Haitian Vodou’s African origins, transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in contemporary Haiti.
The African chapters focus on history, economics and culture in Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda while scrutinizing the role of Europeans in fomenting tensions. The political, military, and slave trading histories of the kingdoms in the Bight of Benin reveal the circumstances of enslavement, including the geographies, ethnicities, languages, and cultures of enslavers and enslaved. The study of the spirits, rituals, and music of the region’s religions sheds light on important sources for Haitian Vodou. Having royal, public, and private expressions, Vodun spirit-based traditions served as cultural systems that supported or contested power and enslavement. At once suppliers and victims of the European slave trade, Aja, Fon, and Yoruba people deeply shaped the emergence of Haiti’s creolized culture.
The Haitian chapters focus on Vodou’s Rada Rite (from Allada) and Gede Rite (from Abomey) through the songs of Rasin Figuier’s Vodou Lakay and Rasin Bwa Kayiman’s Guede, rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor’s Miami label, “Mass Kompa Records.” All the Vodou songs on the discs are analyzed with a method dubbed “Vodou hermeneutics” that harnesses history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and ethnomusicology in order to advance a scholarly approach to Vodou songs.Less
A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou focuses on the influence of the kingdoms of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda in the emergence of central rites in Haitian Vodou. Connecting four centuries of political, social, and religious history with fieldwork and language documentation, this book analyzes Haitian Vodou’s African origins, transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in contemporary Haiti.
The African chapters focus on history, economics and culture in Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda while scrutinizing the role of Europeans in fomenting tensions. The political, military, and slave trading histories of the kingdoms in the Bight of Benin reveal the circumstances of enslavement, including the geographies, ethnicities, languages, and cultures of enslavers and enslaved. The study of the spirits, rituals, and music of the region’s religions sheds light on important sources for Haitian Vodou. Having royal, public, and private expressions, Vodun spirit-based traditions served as cultural systems that supported or contested power and enslavement. At once suppliers and victims of the European slave trade, Aja, Fon, and Yoruba people deeply shaped the emergence of Haiti’s creolized culture.
The Haitian chapters focus on Vodou’s Rada Rite (from Allada) and Gede Rite (from Abomey) through the songs of Rasin Figuier’s Vodou Lakay and Rasin Bwa Kayiman’s Guede, rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor’s Miami label, “Mass Kompa Records.” All the Vodou songs on the discs are analyzed with a method dubbed “Vodou hermeneutics” that harnesses history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and ethnomusicology in order to advance a scholarly approach to Vodou songs.
Karen McCarthy Brown
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The demonstration for Abner Louima in 1997 in New York City marked a new stage in the growing involvement of Haitians in local politics. Many protest signs blamed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for what ...
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The demonstration for Abner Louima in 1997 in New York City marked a new stage in the growing involvement of Haitians in local politics. Many protest signs blamed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for what happened to Louima, a victim of police brutality. Issues of secrecy, especially the malevolent kind, are overdetermined in relation to anything that has to do with Haiti, a country and culture that, in the eyes of white America, is virtually synonymous with black magic. The dense, racially charged images that public personalities and journalists called up so effortlessly in commentary on the cases of Louima and Amadou Diallo, who was shot and killed by New York City police, are representations constructed “in the shadow of the fetish”. Like the charms Haitian Vodou priestess and healer Mama Lola made to help Louima, they are wanga.Less
The demonstration for Abner Louima in 1997 in New York City marked a new stage in the growing involvement of Haitians in local politics. Many protest signs blamed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for what happened to Louima, a victim of police brutality. Issues of secrecy, especially the malevolent kind, are overdetermined in relation to anything that has to do with Haiti, a country and culture that, in the eyes of white America, is virtually synonymous with black magic. The dense, racially charged images that public personalities and journalists called up so effortlessly in commentary on the cases of Louima and Amadou Diallo, who was shot and killed by New York City police, are representations constructed “in the shadow of the fetish”. Like the charms Haitian Vodou priestess and healer Mama Lola made to help Louima, they are wanga.
Terry Rey and Alex Stepick
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814777084
- eISBN:
- 9781479802678
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814777084.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, significant numbers of Haitian immigrants began to arrive and settle in Miami. Overcoming some of the most foreboding obstacles ever to face immigrants in ...
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Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, significant numbers of Haitian immigrants began to arrive and settle in Miami. Overcoming some of the most foreboding obstacles ever to face immigrants in America, they, their children, and now their grandchildren, as well as more recently arriving immigrants from Haiti, have diversified socioeconomically. Together, they have made South Florida home to the largest population of native-born Haitians and diasporic Haitians outside of the Caribbean and one of the most significant Caribbean immigrant communities in the world. Religion has played a central role in making all of this happen. This book is a historical and ethnographic study of Haitian religion in immigrant communities. Where many studies of Haitian religion limit themselves to one faith, the book explores Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou in conversation with one another, suggesting that despite the differences between these practices, the three faiths ultimately create a sense of unity, fulfillment, and self-worth in Haitian communities. The book contributes to the growing body of literature on religion among new immigrants, as well as providing a rich exploration of Haitian faith communities.Less
Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, significant numbers of Haitian immigrants began to arrive and settle in Miami. Overcoming some of the most foreboding obstacles ever to face immigrants in America, they, their children, and now their grandchildren, as well as more recently arriving immigrants from Haiti, have diversified socioeconomically. Together, they have made South Florida home to the largest population of native-born Haitians and diasporic Haitians outside of the Caribbean and one of the most significant Caribbean immigrant communities in the world. Religion has played a central role in making all of this happen. This book is a historical and ethnographic study of Haitian religion in immigrant communities. Where many studies of Haitian religion limit themselves to one faith, the book explores Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou in conversation with one another, suggesting that despite the differences between these practices, the three faiths ultimately create a sense of unity, fulfillment, and self-worth in Haitian communities. The book contributes to the growing body of literature on religion among new immigrants, as well as providing a rich exploration of Haitian faith communities.
Andrew Apter
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226506388
- eISBN:
- 9780226506555
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226506555.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This book challenges the seasoned trend of disavowing Africa in the Black Atlantic, showing how Yoruba cultural frameworks from West Africa remade black kingdoms and communities in the Americas. ...
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This book challenges the seasoned trend of disavowing Africa in the Black Atlantic, showing how Yoruba cultural frameworks from West Africa remade black kingdoms and communities in the Americas. Highlighting revisionary strategies and regenerative schemes that are grounded in the dialectics of ritual renewal, it revisits classic topoi in Afro-American studies such as Herskovits’s syncretic paradigm, the petwo paradox in Haitian Vodou, the historical conditions of orisha cult clustering, re-mappings of gender in plantation societies, and the rise of Lucumí and Nagô houses in Cuba and Brazil, in each case offering new interpretations based on cognate dynamics in Yorubaland. The book thereby argues for a critically reformulated culture concept, in this case distinctively “Yoruba,” which designates something real, somewhat knowable, eminently historical, and even indispensable for locating Africa in the Black Atlantic.Less
This book challenges the seasoned trend of disavowing Africa in the Black Atlantic, showing how Yoruba cultural frameworks from West Africa remade black kingdoms and communities in the Americas. Highlighting revisionary strategies and regenerative schemes that are grounded in the dialectics of ritual renewal, it revisits classic topoi in Afro-American studies such as Herskovits’s syncretic paradigm, the petwo paradox in Haitian Vodou, the historical conditions of orisha cult clustering, re-mappings of gender in plantation societies, and the rise of Lucumí and Nagô houses in Cuba and Brazil, in each case offering new interpretations based on cognate dynamics in Yorubaland. The book thereby argues for a critically reformulated culture concept, in this case distinctively “Yoruba,” which designates something real, somewhat knowable, eminently historical, and even indispensable for locating Africa in the Black Atlantic.
Moira Fradinger
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199586196
- eISBN:
- 9780191728754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586196.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Félix Morisseau–Leroy's Antigòn an Kreyòl is ‘best understood as a staging of a Haitian historical drama rather than of a European drama staged in Haiti and as a postcolonial appropriation of foreign ...
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Félix Morisseau–Leroy's Antigòn an Kreyòl is ‘best understood as a staging of a Haitian historical drama rather than of a European drama staged in Haiti and as a postcolonial appropriation of foreign cultural material from within the cultural and political legacy of its appropriating culture, rather than as a simple adaptation’. Morrisseau–Leroy uses the Creole language and Vodou to ‘rethink the drama of the Haitian revolution and modernization’ in and on local terms. His conscious assertion of the legitimacy of Creole as a valid language of high culture, and one appropriate for the (re)production of a Greek classic, was a political act, as was his use of Vodou. This chapter points out that ‘the play effects a critique of modernity and national identity, contesting the meaning of modernity from within modernity's ideals, and not from the perspective of tradition: its recovery of Vodou, rather than a rejection of modernity, points to a recovery of the revolution's ideals’. In other words, his play is an assertion of an alternative modernity in and on Haitian terms.Less
Félix Morisseau–Leroy's Antigòn an Kreyòl is ‘best understood as a staging of a Haitian historical drama rather than of a European drama staged in Haiti and as a postcolonial appropriation of foreign cultural material from within the cultural and political legacy of its appropriating culture, rather than as a simple adaptation’. Morrisseau–Leroy uses the Creole language and Vodou to ‘rethink the drama of the Haitian revolution and modernization’ in and on local terms. His conscious assertion of the legitimacy of Creole as a valid language of high culture, and one appropriate for the (re)production of a Greek classic, was a political act, as was his use of Vodou. This chapter points out that ‘the play effects a critique of modernity and national identity, contesting the meaning of modernity from within modernity's ideals, and not from the perspective of tradition: its recovery of Vodou, rather than a rejection of modernity, points to a recovery of the revolution's ideals’. In other words, his play is an assertion of an alternative modernity in and on Haitian terms.
Marlene L. Daut
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381847
- eISBN:
- 9781781382394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381847.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
Concludes by arguing that virtually all of the “racial” tropologies of the nineteenth century, which had never completely gone away anyway, surfaced with a vengeance in the popular media storm that ...
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Concludes by arguing that virtually all of the “racial” tropologies of the nineteenth century, which had never completely gone away anyway, surfaced with a vengeance in the popular media storm that followed in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that practically destroyed the Haitian capital Port-au-PrinceLess
Concludes by arguing that virtually all of the “racial” tropologies of the nineteenth century, which had never completely gone away anyway, surfaced with a vengeance in the popular media storm that followed in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that practically destroyed the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince
Maria Cristina Fumagalli
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381601
- eISBN:
- 9781781382349
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381601.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter discusses Carlos Esteban Deive's historical novel Viento Negro, bosque del caimán (Black Wind, Bois Caiman, 2002), which deals with the slave revolt of 1791 and its consequences for the ...
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This chapter discusses Carlos Esteban Deive's historical novel Viento Negro, bosque del caimán (Black Wind, Bois Caiman, 2002), which deals with the slave revolt of 1791 and its consequences for the Spanish side. Deive chronicles Toussaint Louverture's entrance to Santo Domingo and his decision to immediately abolish slavery, recasting it as a fugitive but glorious moment in the shared history of Hispaniola. He reconstructs the effects of the rebellion on Santo Domingo and depicts the borderland as a site for rich cross-cultural exchange. In recasting of Hispaniola's past, Deive revisits dominant discourses related to the magical world of the island and to the representation of Vodou, one of the many manifestations of the process of creolisation which shaped the life and culture of the slaves. In the Dominican Republic, Vodou has long been associated exclusively with Haiti.Less
This chapter discusses Carlos Esteban Deive's historical novel Viento Negro, bosque del caimán (Black Wind, Bois Caiman, 2002), which deals with the slave revolt of 1791 and its consequences for the Spanish side. Deive chronicles Toussaint Louverture's entrance to Santo Domingo and his decision to immediately abolish slavery, recasting it as a fugitive but glorious moment in the shared history of Hispaniola. He reconstructs the effects of the rebellion on Santo Domingo and depicts the borderland as a site for rich cross-cultural exchange. In recasting of Hispaniola's past, Deive revisits dominant discourses related to the magical world of the island and to the representation of Vodou, one of the many manifestations of the process of creolisation which shaped the life and culture of the slaves. In the Dominican Republic, Vodou has long been associated exclusively with Haiti.
Benjamin Hebblethwaite
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781496835604
- eISBN:
- 9781496835659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496835604.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter introduces slave trading between the kingdoms of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda and French traders, exploring how it impacted the emergence of Haitian Vodou in Saint-Domingue. The study of ...
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This chapter introduces slave trading between the kingdoms of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda and French traders, exploring how it impacted the emergence of Haitian Vodou in Saint-Domingue. The study of Saint-Domingue between 1650 and 1803 reveals the atrocious conditions in which enslaved people preserved Vodou. The prominence of people from the Bight of Benin in the early period of the colony explains the salience of Allada’s Rada Rite. The Bight of Benin’s Sèvis Ginen emerged on the plains near sugar plantations while Central African traditions tended to emerge on coffee plantations in the mountains. Central features of Vodou’s values, beliefs and practices are introduced alongside a comparison of Vodun and Vodou theologies. Vodou’s history is traced from Saint-Domingue into contemporary days. The features of Vodou are analyzed and Vodou hermeneutics’ use of methodologies in history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and ethnomusicology is introduced.Less
This chapter introduces slave trading between the kingdoms of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda and French traders, exploring how it impacted the emergence of Haitian Vodou in Saint-Domingue. The study of Saint-Domingue between 1650 and 1803 reveals the atrocious conditions in which enslaved people preserved Vodou. The prominence of people from the Bight of Benin in the early period of the colony explains the salience of Allada’s Rada Rite. The Bight of Benin’s Sèvis Ginen emerged on the plains near sugar plantations while Central African traditions tended to emerge on coffee plantations in the mountains. Central features of Vodou’s values, beliefs and practices are introduced alongside a comparison of Vodun and Vodou theologies. Vodou’s history is traced from Saint-Domingue into contemporary days. The features of Vodou are analyzed and Vodou hermeneutics’ use of methodologies in history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and ethnomusicology is introduced.
Hannah Durkin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042621
- eISBN:
- 9780252051463
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042621.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This chapter investigates Katherine Dunham’s book-length ethnographies, Journey to Accompong (1946) and Island Possessed (1969), as autobiographical narratives that document the origins of her ...
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This chapter investigates Katherine Dunham’s book-length ethnographies, Journey to Accompong (1946) and Island Possessed (1969), as autobiographical narratives that document the origins of her cross-cultural artistry. These texts recount Dunham’s experiences as a dance anthropologist in mid-1930s Jamaica and Haiti, shortly before she postponed her academic training to pursue a career on the stage and screen. Like Baker’s narratives, both works are highly reflexive and ambiguous and thus deserve recognition within an African American women’s autobiographical tradition. They position Dunham as a self-conscious narrator who immerses herself physically in the cultural practices that she has been assigned to record. Both texts therefore shed light on a much wider lifelong project, namely, Dunham’s attempt to legitimize Caribbean cultures by incorporating their dance rituals into concert dance.Less
This chapter investigates Katherine Dunham’s book-length ethnographies, Journey to Accompong (1946) and Island Possessed (1969), as autobiographical narratives that document the origins of her cross-cultural artistry. These texts recount Dunham’s experiences as a dance anthropologist in mid-1930s Jamaica and Haiti, shortly before she postponed her academic training to pursue a career on the stage and screen. Like Baker’s narratives, both works are highly reflexive and ambiguous and thus deserve recognition within an African American women’s autobiographical tradition. They position Dunham as a self-conscious narrator who immerses herself physically in the cultural practices that she has been assigned to record. Both texts therefore shed light on a much wider lifelong project, namely, Dunham’s attempt to legitimize Caribbean cultures by incorporating their dance rituals into concert dance.
Celia Weiss Bambara (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Celia Weiss Bambara focuses on three dancemakers of different generations in early 21st century Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Viviane Gauthier, Florencia Pierre, and Nicole Lumarque. Each of these Haitian ...
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Celia Weiss Bambara focuses on three dancemakers of different generations in early 21st century Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Viviane Gauthier, Florencia Pierre, and Nicole Lumarque. Each of these Haitian choreographers and company heads has a different relationship to the religion of Vodou, important in their lives and work, and to the concept of indigenism, formulated in the early 20th century by Haitian intellectuals, particularly Jean Price-Mars. Each has innovations—Gauthier uses the Haitian training technique, kultur physik, while Pierre and Lumarque fuse other elements and extend ideas of folklore to make contemporary pieces like “Chimin Kwaze,” a program by Pierre's company to which Bambara herself contributed and danced in. She concludes by mentioning other artists who have been taking Haitian dance into the 21st century.Less
Celia Weiss Bambara focuses on three dancemakers of different generations in early 21st century Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Viviane Gauthier, Florencia Pierre, and Nicole Lumarque. Each of these Haitian choreographers and company heads has a different relationship to the religion of Vodou, important in their lives and work, and to the concept of indigenism, formulated in the early 20th century by Haitian intellectuals, particularly Jean Price-Mars. Each has innovations—Gauthier uses the Haitian training technique, kultur physik, while Pierre and Lumarque fuse other elements and extend ideas of folklore to make contemporary pieces like “Chimin Kwaze,” a program by Pierre's company to which Bambara herself contributed and danced in. She concludes by mentioning other artists who have been taking Haitian dance into the 21st century.
Martha Ellen Davis (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813034676
- eISBN:
- 9780813046303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034676.003.0012
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Martha Ellen Davis illustrates how the Dominican misterios, the spirits influenced by the Vodou of adjacent Haiti, and also the spirits of the dead manifest themselves to Dominican mediums trained to ...
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Martha Ellen Davis illustrates how the Dominican misterios, the spirits influenced by the Vodou of adjacent Haiti, and also the spirits of the dead manifest themselves to Dominican mediums trained to receive them. She reveals the procedures, ceremonies, dances, music, and distinctiveness of this and its relationship to Dominican folk Catholicism. Los misterios, like gagá, which Davis also discusses, are part of a continuum of spiritual practices in the Dominican Republic that Davis terms Vodú-spiritism, which range from the almost purely spiritual, as in the spiritism descended from Allan Kardec, to saints festivals mixing the spiritual and the material, to a spirituality with a strong material component that includes music, dance, and possession by los misterios.Less
Martha Ellen Davis illustrates how the Dominican misterios, the spirits influenced by the Vodou of adjacent Haiti, and also the spirits of the dead manifest themselves to Dominican mediums trained to receive them. She reveals the procedures, ceremonies, dances, music, and distinctiveness of this and its relationship to Dominican folk Catholicism. Los misterios, like gagá, which Davis also discusses, are part of a continuum of spiritual practices in the Dominican Republic that Davis terms Vodú-spiritism, which range from the almost purely spiritual, as in the spiritism descended from Allan Kardec, to saints festivals mixing the spiritual and the material, to a spirituality with a strong material component that includes music, dance, and possession by los misterios.
Joan Dayan
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520089006
- eISBN:
- 9780520920965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520089006.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter analyzes the novels of Marie Chauvet to understand the social history of Haiti. Images of women, scenes of affectionate appropriation, and charades of love permeate the text of Chauvet's ...
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This chapter analyzes the novels of Marie Chauvet to understand the social history of Haiti. Images of women, scenes of affectionate appropriation, and charades of love permeate the text of Chauvet's works. She wrote in order to refuse clarity, to attack assumptions of Haitian nationalism and historical identity, to knock down heroes, and to confront the embarrassing claims of color that plague Haitian society. The chapter also explores the ethnographic precision of Haitian novelists and explains that vodou, while often denounced as superstition, is anchored to the intelligible plot of Haitian nationalist thought.Less
This chapter analyzes the novels of Marie Chauvet to understand the social history of Haiti. Images of women, scenes of affectionate appropriation, and charades of love permeate the text of Chauvet's works. She wrote in order to refuse clarity, to attack assumptions of Haitian nationalism and historical identity, to knock down heroes, and to confront the embarrassing claims of color that plague Haitian society. The chapter also explores the ethnographic precision of Haitian novelists and explains that vodou, while often denounced as superstition, is anchored to the intelligible plot of Haitian nationalist thought.
Virginia Garrard
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- July 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197529270
- eISBN:
- 9780197529300
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197529270.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This is a historically infused study of the intersection of local encounters with global religion (Christianity) in Latin America. Using a mixture of deep archival research and ethnographic methods, ...
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This is a historically infused study of the intersection of local encounters with global religion (Christianity) in Latin America. Using a mixture of deep archival research and ethnographic methods, this book discusses how everyday people inscribe supernormal spirit power (in a variety of guises) with the ability to provide alternative sources of authority and validate “otros saberes” (other knowledges or epistemologies) in the context of specific cultures to create order and meaning in a chaotic late-capitalist universe. This work is about emerging forms of “new” Christianity in Latin America—a Christianity that is as utilitarian as it is miraculous and as quotidian as it is supernatural. It is “new” in that it is innately modern in a very specific sense, directly empowering believers with a repertoire of strategies to survive, even thrive, in a challenging and often hostile modern world.Less
This is a historically infused study of the intersection of local encounters with global religion (Christianity) in Latin America. Using a mixture of deep archival research and ethnographic methods, this book discusses how everyday people inscribe supernormal spirit power (in a variety of guises) with the ability to provide alternative sources of authority and validate “otros saberes” (other knowledges or epistemologies) in the context of specific cultures to create order and meaning in a chaotic late-capitalist universe. This work is about emerging forms of “new” Christianity in Latin America—a Christianity that is as utilitarian as it is miraculous and as quotidian as it is supernatural. It is “new” in that it is innately modern in a very specific sense, directly empowering believers with a repertoire of strategies to survive, even thrive, in a challenging and often hostile modern world.
Terry Rey
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190625849
- eISBN:
- 9780190625870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190625849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Shortly after a slave revolt in the North Province of the French colony of Saint-Domingue sparked the Haitian Revolution in August 1791, a free black immigrant coffee farmer and gender-bending ...
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Shortly after a slave revolt in the North Province of the French colony of Saint-Domingue sparked the Haitian Revolution in August 1791, a free black immigrant coffee farmer and gender-bending religious visionary named Romaine-la-Prophétesse launched a separate insurgency on behalf of his own beleaguered people. Leading thousands of free colored insurgents and the slaves they liberated in the colony’s West Province, Romaine achieved something that no other rebel leader ever did in the colonial history of the Americas: conquering not one, but two coastal cities: Jacmel and Léogâne. His political adviser was a French Catholic priest named Abbé Ouvière, who brokered the treaty that formally tendered to Romaine rule over the latter city. What was the nature of their relationship? In what ways was each man instrumental in broader revolutionary events in the colony? This book answers these and related questions, deepening our understanding of the function of religion in the Haitian Revolution, along with those of race, science, and medicine, in the broader revolutionary Atlantic world, the latter topics impelled by the second half of the priest’s remarkable life as a scientist and physician in the United States, as Dr. Felix Pascalis. That Abbé Ouvière and Dr. Pascalis were one and the same person has heretofore been lost on scholars, and that Romaine-la-Prophétesse, though ultimately betrayed by the priest, would be judged by him as worthy of honor from his “tyrannized nation,” accentuate the historical significance of each man and the major contributions of this book.Less
Shortly after a slave revolt in the North Province of the French colony of Saint-Domingue sparked the Haitian Revolution in August 1791, a free black immigrant coffee farmer and gender-bending religious visionary named Romaine-la-Prophétesse launched a separate insurgency on behalf of his own beleaguered people. Leading thousands of free colored insurgents and the slaves they liberated in the colony’s West Province, Romaine achieved something that no other rebel leader ever did in the colonial history of the Americas: conquering not one, but two coastal cities: Jacmel and Léogâne. His political adviser was a French Catholic priest named Abbé Ouvière, who brokered the treaty that formally tendered to Romaine rule over the latter city. What was the nature of their relationship? In what ways was each man instrumental in broader revolutionary events in the colony? This book answers these and related questions, deepening our understanding of the function of religion in the Haitian Revolution, along with those of race, science, and medicine, in the broader revolutionary Atlantic world, the latter topics impelled by the second half of the priest’s remarkable life as a scientist and physician in the United States, as Dr. Felix Pascalis. That Abbé Ouvière and Dr. Pascalis were one and the same person has heretofore been lost on scholars, and that Romaine-la-Prophétesse, though ultimately betrayed by the priest, would be judged by him as worthy of honor from his “tyrannized nation,” accentuate the historical significance of each man and the major contributions of this book.