Haiti, History, and the Gods [Anglais] [Broché]

"There is much that historians can learn from Dayan's approach to historical sources. . . . Because she sees herself as exploring a 'history beyond the reach of written history,' she has successfully reached for nonwritten sources and found a very revealing one in Haitian voodoo. . . . Her use of popular historical interpretation to complicate nationalist and state representations of revolution will be of interest to scholars of other countries in the region, and perhaps especially to students of Mexico and Cuba."

"[A] provocative and demanding book. . . . revealing how Haiti and its history came to reflect a series of particularly European and, more specifically, French preoccupations. . . . Dayan's far-reaching mix of historiography and textual analysis is not confined to foreign perceptions of Haiti, in which the old demons of race, colour, sexual fetishisation, and bondage fantasies crop up relentlessly. She is also interested in trying to reconstruct a more authentically Haitian sense of Haitian history, exploring popular legends, songs, and other elements of a culture where voodoo plays a central role. . . . This is a complex and sophisticated study."

In Haiti, History, and the Gods Joan Dayan charts the cultural imagination of Haiti not only by reconstructing the island's history but by highlighting ambiguities and complexities that have been ignored. She investigates the confrontational space in which Haiti is created and recreated in fiction and fact, text and ritual, discourse and practice. Dayan's ambitious project is a research tour de force that 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, Dayan uncovers a silenced, submerged past. Instead of relying on familiar sources to reconstruct Haitian history, she uses a startling diversity of voices that have previously been unheard. Many of the materials recovered hereoverlooked or repressed historical texts, legal documents, religious works, secret memoirs, letters, and literary fictionshave never been translated into English. Others, such as Marie Vieux Chauvet's radical novel of vodou, Fonds des Ngres, are seldom used as historical sources. Dayan also argues provocatively for the consideration of both vodou rituals and narrative fiction as repositories of history. Her scholarship is enriched by the insights she has gleaned from conversations and experiences during her many trips to Haiti over the past twenty years. Taken together, the material presented in Haiti, History, and the Gods not only restores a lost chapter of Haitian history but suggests necessary revisions to the accepted histories of the New World. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"By viewing Revolutionary-era Haiti through the lenses of gender and sexuality, Joan Dayan breathes life into an important slice of history." (Karen McCarthy Brown, author of Mama Lola) --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Joan Dayan, Professor of English at the University of Arizona, is the author of Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction (1987) and A Rainbow for the Christian West (1977).