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Spiritualism, Vodou and the Mimetic Literatures of Haiti and Louisiana Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2006 "Nos frères d'outre-golfe": Spiritualism, Vodou and the mimetic literatures of Haiti and Louisiana Jean-Marc Allard Duplantier Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Duplantier, Jean-Marc Allard, ""Nos frères d'outre-golfe": Spiritualism, Vodou and the mimetic literatures of Haiti and Louisiana" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3586. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3586 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. "NOS FRÈRES D'OUTRE-GOLFE": SPIRITUALISM, VODOU AND THE MIMETIC LITERATURES OF HAITI AND LOUISIANA A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of French Studies by Jean-Marc Allard Duplantier B.A. The Colorado College, 1996 M.A. Louisiana State University, 2002 December 2006 ©Copyright 2006 Jean-Marc Allard Duplantier All Rights Reserved ii For Sarah iii Acknowledgements At the beginning of a study about the persistence of the dead, I must first acknowledge my own dead whose voices still dance in my head: Sarah and B.J. Bordelon, Francis Fletcher, A.J. Duplantier, Brother Bill Parsons, Pamela, Latulipe, and Sidonie Lemoine. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Pius Ngandu, Dr. Jack Yeager, Dr. John Protevi and Dr. Jim Borck. They have shown a genuine interest in my topic and have helped me see this project through to its completion. The encouragement and suggestions from Dr. Ross Chambers helped me at very important moments during my research and writing. A very special thank-you goes to Dr. Nathaniel Wing, my director. His courses in nineteenth- century literature inspired this project. He is a generous and patient teacher and a kind mentor and friend. The Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship Program and the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Program provided funding for my research in Haiti. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the Social Science Research Council whose flexibility and generosity in the face of the coup d'état in Haiti enabled me to continue my research there. In Haiti, Frère Ernest Even at the library of the Frères de Saint Louis de Gonzague was a great help. His tireless efforts to preserve Haiti's patrimony make him one of that country's great cultural heroes. Patrick Tardieu, at the Bibliothèque des Pères du St. Esprit and Madame Françoise Thybulle of the Haitian Bibliothèque Nationale were also very generous with their time and enthusiastic about my research. Dr. Georges Michel, who befriended me as a member of the Creole diaspora, opened many doors for me in Haiti. Finally, Father Rick Frechette and everyone at Nos Petits Frères et Soeurs provided the friendship and support that allowed me to complete my research under difficult circumstances. iv In Louisiana, I owe a great deal to the many librarians who went out of their way to help me in my research, including Greg Osborne, Elaine Smyth, Christina Riquelmy, Mark Martin, and Florence Jumonville. Special thanks also go to Frédéric Spill, Salwa Nacouzi and Assia Djebar, whose collaboration on the Résonances Créoles exhibition opened up many avenues of research for this project. Karen Cossé Bell, Dana Kress, and Barbara Trevigne were generous with their time and research on Louisiana history and culture. My interest in Louisiana culture began when, as a child, I performed traditional Louisiana stories and songs in my parents’ traveling folk-life puppet troupe. I owe a great deal to their creativity and love. Finally, without the unflagging support, limitless patience and boundless love of my wife Sarah I would never have completed this project. v Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................ iv ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION.............................................................. 1 Narrative Syncretism in the Atlantic World.......................................... 6 The Medium's Hybrid Voice.................................................................. 14 Vodou's "Possessive" Alterity................................................................ 18 CHAPTER TWO: SPIRITUALISM AND THE FANTASTIC......................... 23 "Me voici revenu." Gautier's Spirite and Musset spirite. ..................... 26 "Le Horla" and the Colonial Other ........................................................ 41 CHAPTER THREE: SPECTRES DE HUGO...................................................... 47 "Écartons le trépied"............................................................................... 59 “Je Dis la Table Pour Abréger” ............................................................. 83 "His Soul Is Marching On"..................................................................... 100 CHAPTER FOUR: "FRÈRES DÉJÀ PAR LE SANG": LOUISIANA SPIRITUALISM AND MIMETIC CULTURE........ 105 Louisiana Spiritualism.............................................................................. 109 Creole Voices.......................................................................................... 113 "Quelques Petites Cailloux"................................................................... 124 Les Cenelles and Creole Romanticism................................................... 135 Creole Louisiana's Haitian Exile(s) ....................................................... 151 Louisiana Voodoo and Haitian Spiritualism........................................... 167 CHAPTER FIVE: CREOLE BOVARISM: JEAN PRICE-MARS, VODOU AND MIMETIC CULTURE........ 177 Haitian Bovarism ................................................................................... 181 Bovarism and Cultural Hybridity........................................................... 186 "[L]es agrégats de notre moi": Vodou Identity and the Hybrid Self...... 205 CHAPTER SIX: "COUTÉ LA LIBÈRTE": HAITI'S POSSESSIVE LITERATURE.......................... 212 Boukman's Repossessed "Serment"....................................................... 214 Boisrond Tonnerre's Ghostly Revolutionaries........................................ 218 "Il s'agit de moins ici": Creole Romanticism and the "École de 1836"................................................................................................. 224 Ignace Nau's "Isalina" and Vodou Authority......................................... 237 Bergeaud's Stella and Aggregate Identity............................................. 246 Demesvar Delorme's "Veau d'Or".......................................................... 248 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION: SPECTRES DE NAPOLÉON............... 257 vi WORKS CITED........................................................................................................ 273 VITA.......................................................................................................................... 282 vii Abstract The nineteenth-century Francophone literatures of Haiti and Louisiana are often dismissed as pale imitations of literary trends in metropolitan France. This study revisits these literatures and explores how Creole writers used borrowed ideas and imitated styles to assemble "relational" Creole identities. Two interrelated spiritual practices—the mid-century craze for “table turning” commonly known as modern Spiritualism, and the syncretistic New World religion Vodou—structured these writers’ mimetic methods, enabling them to speak as, and thereby subvert the hegemony of, their cultural forebears. In France, the mid-century interest in Spiritualism provided French fantastic literature with a useful system for producing the many "revenants" that populate fantastic fiction. These tales also reveal Spiritualism's larger role as a model for trans-Atlantic cultural production, and demonstrate metropolitan anxiety about the exotic colonial Other. In a similar way, Victor Hugo, confronted by the destabilizing possibility of a polyvocal au-delà, found it necessary to defend his singular visionary genius from the polluting voices of the spirits. In Louisiana, Spiritualism gave free-black poets a tool to channel and challenge the voices of their literary heroes in France. In the mouths of these Creole copyists, the singular Romantic subjectivity that Hugo sought to defend became splintered and distorted, allowing them to construct a hybrid identity by adopting calqued literary voices. In a similar way the Haitian Vodou adept served as a vessel for the diverse deities that displaced his or her personality. Haiti’s mimetic literature plays on the Vodou ritual practice of possession as it copies European models. Thus what Jean Price-Mars famously described as Haiti’s literary Bovarism is better understood as a nascent literary hybridity. viii The Spiritualist séance and the Vodou ceremony enabled adepts to harness
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