African Religions in the Diaspora

Vodou, I Remember: My New Books on Haitian Vodou

Dr. Celucien Joseph African Religion, God, Haitian Vodou, Philosophy, Religion, Religious Freedom, Vodou, Vodou and Christianity , , , , ,

Hello, Friends: Please allow me to share my two new books with you, which are published by Lexington Books (2016). Dr. Nixon Cleophat and I edited both volumes on Haitian Vodou:  Vodou in the Haitian Experience: A Black Atlantic Perspective , and Vodou in Haitian Memory: The Idea and Representation of Vodou in Haitian Imagination. Both texts can be ordered on the publisher’s website, amazon.com, or any online bookstore.

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Description

One glaring lacuna in studies of Haitian Vodou is the scarcity of works exploring the connection between the religion and its main roots, traditional Yoruba religion. Discussions of Vodou very often seem to present the religion in vacuo, as a sui generis phenomenon that arose in Saint-Domingue and evolved in Haiti, with no antecedents. What is sorely needed then is more comparative studies of Haitian Vodou that would examine its connections to traditional Yoruba religion and thus illuminate certain aspects of its mythology, belief system, practices, and rituals. This book seeks to bridge these gaps.

Vodou in the Haitian Experience studies comparatively the connections and relationships between Vodou and African traditional religions such as Yoruba religion and Egyptian religion. Such studies might enhance our understanding of the religion, and the connections between Africa and its Diaspora through shared religious patterns and practices. The general reader should be mindful of the transnational and transcultural perspectives of Vodou, as well as the cultural, socio-economic, and political context which gave birth to different visions and ideas of Vodou.

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.

Table of Contents
Introduction: Contemporary and Transnational Vodou, and the African Perspective
Celucien L. Joseph and Nixon Cleophat
Part I. Vodou, Anthropology, Art, Performance, and the Black Diaspora

  1. Roots / Routes / Rasin: Rural Vodou and the Sacred Tree as Metaphor for the Multiplicity of Styles in Folkloric Dance and Mizik Rasin

Ann E. Mazzocca

  1. Circling the Cosmogram: Vodou Aesthetics, Feminism, and Queer Art in the

Second-Generation Haitian Dyaspora
Kantara Souffrant

  1. Dancing Difference and Disruption: Vodou Liturgy and Little Haiti on the Hill in “Seven Guitars”

Barbara Lewis

  1. Decoding Dress: Vodou, Cloth and Colonial Resistance in Pre- and Postrevolutionary Haiti

Charlotte Hammond
Part II. Vodou and African Traditional Religions

  1. The African Origin of Haitian Vodou: From the Nile Valley to the Haitian Valleys

Patrick Delices

  1. New World/Old World Vodun , Creolité, and the Alter-Renaissance

Bronwyn Mills

  1. The vibratory art of Haiti: a Yoruba heritage

Patricia Marie-Emmanuelle Donatien

  1. Ethnographic Interpretations of Traditional African Religious Practices and Haitian Vodou Ceremonial Rites in Zora Neale Hurston’s (1938) Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Maya Deren’s (1983) Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

Tammie Jenkins

  1. Oversouls and Egregores in Haitian Vodou

Patricia Scheu (Mambo Vye Zo Komande LaMenfo)

  1. Arabian Religion, Islam and Haitian Vodou:

The “Recent African Single-Origin Hypothesis” and the Comparison of World Religions
Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Michel Weber

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Description

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Towards New Visions and New Approaches to the Vodou Religion
Celucien L. Joseph 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