Leslie G. Desmangles, Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods
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Book Reviews -Leslie G. Desmangles, Joan Dayan, Haiti, history, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. xxiii + 339 pp. -Barry Chevannes, James T. Houk, Spirits, blood, and drums: The Orisha religion in Trinidad. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. xvi + 238 pp. -Barry Chevannes, Walter F. Pitts, Jr., Old ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist ritual in the African Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvi + 199 pp. -Robert J. Stewart, Lewin L. Williams, Caribbean theology. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. xiii + 231 pp. -Robert J. Stewart, Barry Chevannes, Rastafari and other African-Caribbean worldviews. London: Macmillan, 1995. xxv + 282 pp. -Michael Aceto, Maureen Warner-Lewis, Yoruba songs of Trinidad. London: Karnak House, 1994. 158 pp.''Trinidad Yoruba: From mother tongue to memory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996. xviii + 279 pp. -Erika Bourguignon, Nicola H. Götz, Obeah - Hexerei in der Karibik - zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995. 256 pp. -John Murphy, Hernando Calvo Ospina, Salsa! Havana heat: Bronx Beat. London: Latin America Bureau, 1995. viii + 151 pp. -Donald R. Hill, Stephen Stuempfle, The steelband movement: The forging of a national art in Trinidad and Tobago. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. xx + 289 pp. -Hilary McD. Beckles, Jay R. Mandle ,Caribbean Hoops: The development of West Indian basketball. Langhorne PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. ix + 121 pp., Joan D. Mandle (eds) -Edmund Burke, III, Lewis R. Gordon ,Fanon: A critical reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. xxi + 344 pp., T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Renée T. White (eds) -Keith Alan Sprouse, Ikenna Dieke, The primordial image: African, Afro-American, and Caribbean Mythopoetic text. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. xiv + 434 pp. -Keith Alan Sprouse, Wimal Dissanayake ,Self and colonial desire: Travel writings of V.S. Naipaul. New York : Peter Lang, 1993. vii + 160 pp., Carmen Wickramagamage (eds) -Yannick Tarrieu, Moira Ferguson, Jamaica Kincaid: Where the land meets the body: Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994. xiii + 205 pp. -Neil L. Whitehead, Vera Lawrence Hyatt ,Race, discourse, and the origin of the Americas: A new world view. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. xiii + 302 pp., Rex Nettleford (eds) -Neil L. Whitehead, Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of possession in Europe's conquest of the new world, 1492-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. viii + 199 pp. Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 09:34:35AM via free access -Livio Sansone, Michiel Baud ,Etnicidad como estrategia en America Latina y en el Caribe. Arij Ouweneel This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 09:34:35AM via free access BOOK REVIEWS Haiti, History, and the Gods. JOAN DAYAN. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. xxiii + 339 pp. (Cloth US$ 35.00) LESLIE G. DESMANGLES Department of Religion Trinity College Hartford CT 06106, U.S.A. Joan Dayan sets herself the ambitious task of examining the social fabric of Haitian life during the French colonial period, focusing particularly on the social dynamics of the Haitian Revolution from 1791 to 1804, the year of Haiti's independence. She examines the composition of the society, life among the ruling colonists, the responses of the slaves to their brutal cap- tivity, and the heroic character of their leaders who inspired them to resist oppression. The title would lead one to think that this book was an historical account of the birth of a nation, but in fact it is not. It is primarily a literary work that is speculative about Haitian colonial society. Rather than rely- ing on the usual historical sources, Dayan utilizes little-known texts: eye- witness accounts, secret letters, diaries, memoirs, folk stories, and legends. She also makes extensive use of current cultural patterns that she en- countered during her ethnographic research in Haiti, which she sees as originating in the colonial period. She also borrows images from literary fiction (such as Marie Chauvet's untranslated works, Fond des Negres and Lafolie among others) to create in the imagination of her readers the social situation of eighteenth-century Saint Domingue. The book has three parts as the title suggests. And although Dayan relates events in Haiti's colonial life, she notes that she is neither con- Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 09:34:35AM via free access 318 New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Cids vol. 71 no. 3 & 4 (1997) cerned about the historical sequences of events, nor aiming to be con- clusive about these events. She allows the voices of those on whom she relies to tell Haiti's history, to speak freely and without hindrance, for these voices can never be encapsulated in "a chronological grid or clarify- ing summary argument" (p. xi). Moreover, she examines the same events in all three parts of the book, and provides different perspectives on them and their representative figures. She warns her readers that its parts should be read as "superimpositions that reinforce one another," and makes no attempt to provide a unified point of view of these events. "I tell the same story again and again," she notes, "in different ways. Readers might well ask: 'why do we have to step in the same waters twice, three times?' I answer that the communion I intend in this narrative is much like a ritual. The more a detail, a scene, or theme is repeated, the more of its meaning is established" (p. xv). Her reference to a ritual is fitting, for just as a ritual is repeated in infinite ways to bring its participants to another spiritual realm, Dayan transports her readers to colonial Saint Domingue and treats them like observers of an unfolding drama, full of complex paradoxes as seen through the eyes of witnesses, including herself as the narrator. Dayan's interest in Vodou stems from her reading and from her own encounter with it. She suggests that Vodou has played a major historical function in Haitian culture as a repository of religious traditions in Haiti's cultural history, and is not merely an agent that facilitated the retention of African traditions. Haitian culture develops out of a continuous process of dialogue between African, European, North-American, and other cultures on Haitian soil. Hence, like Haitian literature, Vodou is a product of Hai- tians' inventive genius which is part of the people's resistance against oppression, of their reinterpretation of white myths of domination, and of the development of a hybrid culture, a process that Dayan calls creoli- zation. She examines Haiti's literature and history in light of the creative modes of this creolizing process. A significant contribution of this book is its exploration of women's role in Haitian society. Few books provide such a wealth of information on female figures during and after the colonial period. The list is too long to mention here but it includes Marie-Jeanne Lamartiniere, Claire Heureuse, Defile, and others. Dayan has written a captivating book about the country that is not only her place of probable ancestral origin, as she notes, but one to which she has devoted detailed ethnographic study. She understands the coun- try's culture and knows its people well. The book, skillfully written and extremely well documented, has comprehensive and helpful notes, but lacks a bibliography. An appendix provides a useful chronology of the Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 09:34:35AM via free access BOOK REVIEWS 319 events in the relations between Haiti, the United States, and France. I recommend this book as a solid, scholarly work that provides a creative approach to Haiti's history and culture, one that recounts an old story in a refreshing new way. It is clear, logical, and easy to follow. But it also assumes the reader's extensive prior knowledge of Haiti's history. Spirits, Blood, and Drums: The Orisha Religion in Trinidad. JAMES T. HOUK. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. xvi + 238 pp. (Cloth US$49.95, Paper US$18.95) Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora. WALTER F. PITTS, JR. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvi + 199 pp. (Cloth US$ 35.00, Paper US$ 14.95) BARRY CHEVANNES Faculty of Social Sciences University of the West Indies, Mona Kingston 7, Jamaica You a go tired fe see me face, Can't get me out of the race. (Bob Marley,"Bad Card," 1980.) I am reminded of these lines by the continued interest in the problem of African continuities in the so-called New World first tackled in a serious way by Melville Herskovits. Despite the many conceptual and historio- graphical difficulties,1 his pioneering efforts remain of great value among scholars of the African diaspora, not so much because he was the first, but because the issues of cultural configuration and origins are still of central concern, particularly to Caribbean-born scholars (see Yelvington 1994). This conclusion is evident in these two most recent additions to the corpus of studies on African diaspora religion. Houk, who became a drum player and initiate in Orisha, starting from the highly questionable position of exchanging "money, goods, or services for information and assistance" (p. 11), provides the most important update on Orisha since the work of Frances Henry (Mischel 1957, Henry 1983) and Pollack-Eltz (1993) in the late 1960s. Houk's central goal is to show the multiple sources of influence in current Orisha. The African influence is clear enough - Yoruba-derived deities, prayers, functionaries, and rituals - Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 09:34:35AM via free access 320 New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-lndische Cids vol. 71 no. 3 & 4 (1997) and so too is the Christian - Catholic saints and shrines, Spiritual Baptist (Protestant) baptism ritual and prayers.