Vodou in Haitian Memory

The Idea and Representation of Vodou in Haitian Imagination

Edited by Celucien L. Joseph and Nixon S. Cleophat - Contributions by Wiebke Beushausen; Anne Brüske; Brandon R. Byrd; Asselin Charles; Patrick Delices; Crystal Andrea Felima; Myriam Moïse and Shallum Pierre

Throughout Haitian history—from 17th century colonial Saint-Domingue to 21st century postcolonial Haiti—arguably, the Afro-Haitian religion of Vodou has been represented as an “unsettling faith” and a “cultural paradox,” as expressed in various forms and modes of Haitian thought and life including literature, history, law, politics, painting, music, and art. Competing voices and conflicting ideas of Vodou have emerged from each of these cultural symbols and intellectual expressions. The Vodouist discourse has not only pervaded every aspect of the Haitian life and experience, it has defined the Haitian cosmology and worldview. Further, the Vodou faith has had a momentous impact on the evolution of Haitian intellectual, aesthetic, and literary imagination; comparatively, Vodou has shaped Haitian social ethics, sexual and gender identity, and theological discourse such as in the intellectual works and poetic imagination of Jean Price-Mars, Dantes Bellegarde, Jacques Roumain, Jacques Stephen Alexis, etc. Similarly, Vodou has shaped the discourse on the intersections of memory, trauma, history, collective redemption, and Haitian diasporic identity in Haitian women’s writings such as in the fiction of Edwidge Danticat, Myriam Chancy, etc.

The chapters in this collection tell a story about the dynamics of the Vodou faith and the rich ways Vodou has molded the Haitian narrative and psyche. The contributors of this book examine this constructed narrative from a multicultural voice that engages critically the discipline of ethnomusicology, drama, performance, art, anthropology, ethnography, economics, literature, intellectual history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, and theology. Vodou is also studied from multiple theoretical approaches including queer, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, postcolonial criticism, postmodernism, and psychoanalysis.

Lexington Books

Pages: 248 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-4985-0834-6 • Hardback • May 2016 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4985-0835-3 • eBook • May 2016 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Literary Collections / Caribbean & Latin American, Literary Criticism / Caribbean & Latin American, History / Caribbean & West Indies / General, Religion / Ethnic & Tribal, Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural, Social Science / Customs & Traditions, Social Science / Folklore & Mythology, Social Science / Regional Studies

Vodou in Haitian Memory

The Idea and Representation of Vodou in Haitian Imagination

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Throughout Haitian history—from 17th century colonial Saint-Domingue to 21st century postcolonial Haiti—arguably, the Afro-Haitian religion of Vodou has been represented as an “unsettling faith” and a “cultural paradox,” as expressed in various forms and modes of Haitian thought and life including literature, history, law, politics, painting, music, and art. Competing voices and conflicting ideas of Vodou have emerged from each of these cultural symbols and intellectual expressions. The Vodouist discourse has not only pervaded every aspect of the Haitian life and experience, it has defined the Haitian cosmology and worldview. Further, the Vodou faith has had a momentous impact on the evolution of Haitian intellectual, aesthetic, and literary imagination; comparatively, Vodou has shaped Haitian social ethics, sexual and gender identity, and theological discourse such as in the intellectual works and poetic imagination of Jean Price-Mars, Dantes Bellegarde, Jacques Roumain, Jacques Stephen Alexis, etc. Similarly, Vodou has shaped the discourse on the intersections of memory, trauma, history, collective redemption, and Haitian diasporic identity in Haitian women’s writings such as in the fiction of Edwidge Danticat, Myriam Chancy, etc.

The chapters in this collection tell a story about the dynamics of the Vodou faith and the rich ways Vodou has molded the Haitian narrative and psyche. The contributors of this book examine this constructed narrative from a multicultural voice that engages critically the discipline of ethnomusicology, drama, performance, art, anthropology, ethnography, economics, literature, intellectual history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, and theology. Vodou is also studied from multiple theoretical approaches including queer, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, postcolonial criticism, postmodernism, and psychoanalysis.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 248 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-4985-0834-6 • Hardback • May 2016 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4985-0835-3 • eBook • May 2016 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Literary Collections / Caribbean & Latin American, Literary Criticism / Caribbean & Latin American, History / Caribbean & West Indies / General, Religion / Ethnic & Tribal, Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural, Social Science / Customs & Traditions, Social Science / Folklore & Mythology, Social Science / Regional Studies

Author

Celucien L. Joseph is assistant professor of English at Indian River State College

Nixon S. Cleophat is assistant professor of religion at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Towards New Visions and New Approaches to the Vodou Religion
Celucien L. Joseph, Asselin Charles, Schallum Pierre, and Nixon Cleophat

Part I: Vodou, Modernity, Resistance, and Haitian Cultural Identity and Nationalism

Chapter One: James Theodore Holly, Fabre Geffrard, and the Construction of a “Civilized’ Haiti”
Brandon R. Byrd
Chapter Two: Oath To Our Ancestors: The Flag of Haiti is Rooted in Vodou
Patrick Delices

Part II. Vodou, Vodouphobia, and Haitian Male Intellectuals and Cultural Critics

Chapter Three: The Role of Vodou in the Religious Philosophy of Jean Price-Mars
Celucien L. Joseph
Chapter Four: Jacques Stephen Alexis, Haitian Vodou and Medicine: Between Cure and Care
Shallum Pierre

Part III. Vodou, Christian Theology, and Collective Redemption

Chapter Five: Haitian Vodou: The Ethics of Social Sin & the Praxis of Liberation
Nixon S. Cleophat
Chapter Six: Vodouphobia and Afrophobic Discourse in Haitian Thought: An Analysis of Dantès Bellegarde’s Religious Sensibility
Celucien L. Joseph
Chapter Seven: Haitian Vodou, a Politico-Realist Theology of Survival: Resistance in the Face of Colonial Violence and Social Suffering
Nixon S. Cleophat

Part IV. Vodou, Memory, Trauma, and Haitian Women Intellectuals and Cultural Critics

Chapter Eight: Vodou Symbolism and “Poto Mitan:” Women in Edwidge Danticat’s Work
Myriam Moïse
Chapter Nine: Writing from lòt bò dlo: Vodou Aesthetics and Poetics in Edwidge Danticat and Myriam Chancy
Anne Brüske and Wiebke Beushausen
Chapter Ten: The Economics of Vodou: Haitian Women, Entrepreneurship, and Empowerment
Crystal Andrea Felima

Reviews

Joseph and Cleophat offer to the field of Haitian Studies a very original, comprehensive and complex work that attempt to grasp Haitian Vodou in its complexities. The phenomenological, philosophical, theological, anthropological, sociological and literary approaches presented are all written according to the epistemological view of decoloniality, and consequently embraced pluriversalism instead universalism. Vodou in Haitian Memory… is an important and imaginative book for the intellectual understanding of Haitian Vodou in the post-secular age.
— Jean Eddy Saint Paul, Universidad de Guanajuato

Vodou in Haitian Memory

The Idea and Representation of Vodou in Haitian Imagination

Edited by Celucien L. Joseph and Nixon S. Cleophat - Contributions by Wiebke Beushausen; Anne Brüske; Brandon R. Byrd; Asselin Charles; Patrick Delices; Crystal Andrea Felima; Myriam Moïse and Shallum Pierre

Vodou in Haitian Memory

The Idea and Representation of Vodou in Haitian Imagination

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