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Zombies : an anthropological investigation of the living dead
\"Forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier - dubbed the \"Indiana Jones of the graveyards\" - travels to Haiti where rumors claim that some who die may return to life as zombies. Charlier investigates these far-fetched stories and finds that, in Haiti, the dead are a part of daily life. Families, fearing that loved ones may return from the grave, urge pallbearers to take rambling routes to prevent the recently departed from finding their way home from cemeteries. Corpses are sometimes killed a second time...just to be safe. And a person might spend their life preparing their funeral and grave to ensure they will not become a wandering soul after death...Zombies follows Charlier's journey to understand the fascinating and frightening world of Haiti's living dead, inviting readers to believe the unbelievable\"-- Back cover.
Book
Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies
The first decade of the new millennium saw renewed interest in popular culture featuring zombies. This essay shows that a comparative analysis of nightmares can be a productive method for analyzing salient themes in the imaginative products and practices of cultures in close contact. It is argued that zombies, as the first modern monster, are embedded in a set of deeply symbolic structures that are a matter of religious thought. The author draws from her ethnographic work in Haiti to argue that the zonbi is at once part of the mystical arts that developed there since the colonial period, and comprises a form of mythmaking that represents, responds to, and mystifies the fear of slavery, collusion with it, and rebellion against it. In turn, some elements of the Haitian zonbi figure can be found in patterns that haunt recent American zombie films. Zombies in these films are read as figures in a parable about whiteness and death-dealing consumption. This essay suggests that the messianic mood surrounding the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama was consistent with a pattern in zombie films since the 1960s where many zombie-killing heroes are figured as black American males. Zombies are used in both ethnographic and film contexts to think through the conditions of embodiment, the boundaries between life and death, repression and freedom, and the racialized ways in which humans consume other humans.
Journal Article
HAITIAN (PRE)OCCUPATIONS: IDEOLOGICAL AND DISCURSIVE REPETITIONS: 1915-1934 AND 2004 TO PRESENT
This essay explores ideological and discursive connections between international imperialism and Haitian victimization through the lens of the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934 and the current occupation by MINUSTAH that began in 2004. It lingers on moments of resistance to these military forces from a grassroots front in both instances, drawing parallels between the two. Este ensayo explora las conexiones ideológicas y discursivas entre el imperialismo internacional y la victimización haitiana y se enfoca en la ocupación de Haití por parte de los Estados Unidos entre 1915 y 1934 y la ocupación actual de MINUSTAH, la cual empezó en 2004. El ensayo se detiene en los momentos de resistencia local hacia las fuerzas militares de ambos movimientos y establece puntos de contacto entre los dos. Cet article explore les relations idéologiques et discursives entre l'impérialisme international et les victimes haïtiens. Il se concentre sur l'occupation Américaine d'Haïti entre 1915 et 1934 et l'occupation actuelle de la MINUSTAH qui a commencé en 2004. L'article analyse les moments de résistance locale contre les forces militaires de ces occupations, en présentant les rapports existants entre les deux.
Journal Article
The Aesthetics of Degradation in Haitian Literature
Between the end of the American Occupation in Haïti (1934) an the beginning of the Duvalier regime in the 1960s, Haitian literature is posited around three codes of positive reference: indigenism, magical realism, and Marxism. The obscurantism and totalitarianism of the Duvalier dictatorship (1957-86) with its spiral of underdevelopment and its destructive and destructuring tendencies, left a mark on both the environment and the imaginary. The symbolism of Ruin becomes a powerful presence in literature, and the result is a break with the descriptive system of magical realism and the emergence of a new aesthetic: the Aesthetics of Decay, highly visible in the title of works. This can be observed notably through the theme of zombification, the treatment of space (particularly urban space), and the replacement of Promethean hero by collective heroes, heroines or anti-heroes. It is a new literature based on a new system of aesthetics, but also one that aims to denounce social ills in the strongest possible terms and places a quasi-mystical value on change.
Journal Article
Haiti and the Memorial Discourses of Slavery after 1804
Esclavage! que ce mot par lui-même est dur et repoussant! Combien il retrace de souvenirs amers! Que de turpitudes, d'attentats il renferme, à lui seul, contre l'espèce humaine! Que de tourmens il a causés à ses déplorables victimes, et que de fléaux il apprête encore à ses abominables auteurs!(Chanlatte, 1810: 10)Of all of the countries of the Americas, the people of Haiti have to go the furthest back in time to access collectively the ‘souvenirs amers’ [‘bitter memories’] of colonial slavery. The beginning of the end of plantation slavery in the Americas occurred there, in August 1791, when a mass revolt broke out across the northern plain of what was then the French colony of Saint Domingue. Hundreds of sugar and coffee plantations were razed to the ground, and the de facto end of slavery began, as the former slaves-turnedrevolutionaries deserted the ruins, forming rebel camps in the hills. By October 1793, the end of slavery had been officially proclaimed throughout Saint Domingue by the French commissioners Léger Félicité Sonthonax and Etienne Polverel, who were desperately trying to maintain French control over what had, prior to the outbreak of revolution, been the most valuable sugar plantation colony in the world. The proclamations constituted the first legal abolition of slavery by representatives of a European colonial power. The colonial universe of sugar plantations, overseers, Creoles and African slaves, which persisted elsewhere in the Americas for nearly a century, thus largely ceased to exist in Saint Domingue from the early 1790s. After a further ten years of revolutionary politics, civil war and conflict with the British, Spanish and French armies, the independence of the renamed Republic of Haiti was proclaimed on 1 January 1804 by former slaves Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe and their leading generals. With this gesture, a population of predominantly African-born former slaves ‘stood up for the first time and said it believed in its humanity’ (Césaire, 1995: 24).Whether because of or despite the lasting impact of this transformational revolutionary history, the memorial traces of colonial slavery among the Haitian people have been largely obscured.
Book Chapter
We are the mirror of your fears
How does the outside world perceive Haiti in light of its practice of zombification, and how does Haiti position itself in relation to this “exteriority” by making use of the way the practice is imagined?¹ These are the questions that will be addressed in this article. Though the group that I designate as the “exteriority” is, of course, variable in nature, the essential relationship in question here will be that which concerns Haiti and the United States. While this relationship appears to write itself into contemporary history, it is the object of numerous representations in various discourses that one encounters
Book Chapter