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Vodou, Penises and Bones Ritual Performances of Death and Eroticism in the Cemetery and the Junk Yard of Port-Au-Prince MYRON M

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Vodou, Penises and Bones Ritual Performances of Death and Eroticism in the Cemetery and the Junk Yard of Port-Au-Prince MYRON M Vodou, Penises and Bones Ritual performances of death and eroticism in the cemetery and the junk yard of Port-au-Prince MYRON M. BEASLEY Viv Guede Viv Guede Death, like performance, is mysterious. Death Viv Guede Migueto Viv Guede just happens, it disappears, leaving many Papa Guede se ion neg solid o questions of the unknown and the absence. Also, Viv Guede like performance, it leaves traces of the what Praise the Guedes. was, a residue of a happening, a remorse, a Praise the Guedes. remembering, perhaps even a mourning of the Papa Guede is a strong spirit. thing no longer. Yet, performance occupies a Praise the Guedes. M. S. Laguerre (1980: 100) fluctuant and dual position of assisting with the death and dying while simultaneously being a We write history books to remember our ancestors, part of the very act of the disappearance. This and the Haitians call on Gede, the playful trickster essay is about ritual performances of death in who is the spirit of the dead. Mercurial Gede Haiti. Specifically, how ritual performances of appears in many forms and speaks through many voices. His special talent lies in viewing the facts of death function as a material way of engaging in life from refreshing new perspectives. the political realities of the here-and-now in the K. M. Brown (2001: 19) context of contemporary Haiti. ‘Vodou is who we are, it’s nothing to be afraid of … it protects us,’ In the Western society a cemetery is usually a place says the young man I met on my first night in for collective burials set apart from the ordinary Port-Au-Prince as he was clearing the recently living and working places of the folk. But a dead vacant tomb. ‘Death,’ he continues, ‘is both the Downloaded By: [Bates College] At: 15:42 4 June 2010 human body is commonly looked upon with beginning and the end, [Gede] death is a ambivalent feeling by kin … for hygienic reasons it welcomed friend.’ must be removed for the company of the living. In many societies a dead human body is also regarded My ethnographic practice is an attempt to as polluting in the sense of involving ritual danger, make sense of the complex dialectics embedded which must be removed by cleansing performances. in traditional ritual practices in contemporary Yes, some sorrow is usually felt at the loss of a society about death and loss within the African person formerly well-known. The mourning at the Diaspora (Beasley 2007 and 2008). Ritual funeral may be quite genuine, and the memory of performances are ‘site[s] of experimental the person may lead to the wish to have the remains practice of subversive poetics, of creative of the dead still near. D. Francis, L. Kellaher and G. Neophytou tensions and transformative action’ that (2005: xvii) produce ‘imaginative possibilities from which may emerge … new signs and meaning, conventions and intentions’ (Comeroff and Comeroff 1993: xxix). Such traditional performances in this contemporary society are 41 Performance Research 15(1), pp.41-47 © Taylor & Francis Ltd 2010 DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2010.4857 transgressive, to be sure. Foucault and Bataille GEDE AND DEATH Beasley make straightforward connections between Vodou spirits are not models of the well-lived life; religious ecstasy and the erotic impulse with rather, they mirror the full range of possibilities death. ‘The whole business of eroticism is to inherent in the particular slice of life over which strike to the inmost core of the living being, so they preside. K. M. Brown (2001: 6) that the heart stands still. The transition from the normal state to that of erotic desire For three years I have witnessed and presupposes a partial dissolution of the person participated in the Gede festival in Port-au– as he exists in the realm of discontinuity’ Prince. The Gede is a celebration to honour (Bataille 1962: 36). Articulated under the death, filled with ritual performances in the auspices of taboos and transgressive politics, grand cemetery. In 2008 I walked through the Bataille (1986) suggests transgression is a narrow pathways, surrounded by the gothic transcendence of sorts of societal, usually statuary of tombs – some with bare cement slabs oppressive, structures. To transgress is to extend revealing the empty lots – spaces I imagined as oneself beyond such laws only to fall back to once occupied by a physical body and which have a better sense of political strategies with perhaps once were and sometimes are. On a which to confront and combat such structures. most-holy of days, 1 November, bodies squeeze In the context of Vodou rituals of Gede there is a through the tight halls of this medina to the meshing, a transgressive set of performances shrine of the Baron Samdi (the lord of the where eroticism and death are paramount, Cemetery the incarnate of Gede). On this because in the realm of Africana cosmologies particular visit, I allowed my body to be whisked such distinctions between the sacred and into the midst of the crowd – body to body, profane collapse, as they are understood as sweating, the smell of the rum and chili peppers everyday lived practices. This essay and moonshine – the libations so generously contemplates such ‘collapsing’ and ‘everyday sprayed on bodies and the tall black cross in the lived practices’ to reveal the complexities of the middle of the cemetery mingled with the intense Haitian Vodou conceptions of death, represented smell of incense and the ever-potent Vodou by the sprite (lwa) Gede. candles. The graveyard was anxious and I went to Haiti to research Gede and rituals of rambunctious, it was, as Somé claims (1993), that death. After sharing with my guide the topic of sacred spaces are never solemn but boisterous my research, he claimed, ‘Oh, there is a funeral and exuberant moments in which we tend to Downloaded By: [Bates College] At: 15:42 4 June 2010 tomorrow at the cemetery’, to which I replied, make sense of the complexities of our daily lives ‘How do you know that there is a funeral – if we succumb to the ritual, Somé reminds us, tomorrow, Port-au-Prince is a big city?’ He said, and allow our spirit to be challenged and ‘Death is very common to us here in Haiti.’ What changed. Vodou rituals are mysterious just as they define as the commonality of death is what they are real and mundane. I want to explore in this work. How, through the Vodou is based on a series of lwa, spirits, who concept of traditional rituals, the lens of guide its followers. According to Brown, ‘Vodou performance provides insight as a literal way of spirits are larger than life but not other than life’ dealing with death. Traditional ritual (2001: 6). The practitioner maintains performances of Vodou are highly politically relationships with the lwa through an ongoing potent, as they – through subversive, poetic and cycle of alms-giving, both the ‘tangible (food, creation of new imaginative possibilities – speak shelter, money) and intangibles (respect, to the contemporary political conditions of the deference, love)’ (2001: 7). The Vodou spirits nation and the people who perform them. resemble life and everyday practices and are in tune with the daily travails of life. Gede – the 42 Vodou, Penises and Bones spirit of death – occupies a very special place in the essence of what was, the prevaricating death. the pantheon on Vodou spirits. He is the most To further explore how Gede (death) and powerful lwa, who serves both as the lord of the performance function to unravel the realities of cemetery and the porter of the spirits of the dead the living and the dead, I consider two sites – a to the outer realm. Noted as a trickster – a graveyard and a junkyard. The graveyard, the performance artist who embodies an essence dormitory of bodily remains, is the location to (both physical and intangible) that trembles the ask questions of corporeality, how the body, Downloaded By: [Bates College] At: 15:42 4 June 2010 here-and-now by making known the brunt through performance, is configured in death realities of the living – who is obsessed with rituals. And the junkyard, the dumping-ground of truth, often through hilarious, exaggerated and trash and remnants and objects of the ‘what was, at times bawdy performances that transgress the is transformed, through performance to mundanity of the living. All the while Gede is a contemplate social critique of the industrialized loving energy and is the great protector of world and a recycled aesthetic, thereby remaking children. The symbol of Gede is an erect penis. the domain of what is considered Haitian art. Once at a ceremony I attended, when the spirit of These two sites double as sacred and secular and Gede mounted one of the worshippers, many fled thus illustrate how death is negotiated through a the spiritual house. I was later told that when highly complex set of discourses that wander Gede enters a space, people flee because he between epistemologies of Africana diasporic exposes secrets and hidden desires, which like an thought and erotic contours of bodily yearnings. erect penis cannot be hidden. The tumescent Despite the largely adverse representation of organ is a symbol of both the generosity and Vodou in the West, it is a highly complex body of giving of life, the ethos of truth and honesty and thought with an exhaustive history. 43 BODIES IN THE GRAVEYARD: and to hear his voice. I witness a man whispering Beasley CIMETIÈRE EXTERIEUR to Gede, then begin crying as Gede hugs him and The Cimetière Exterieur is an expansive resting imparts sacred truths about his life.
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