Imagined Voodoo: Terror, Sex, and Racism in American Popular Culture The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. McGee, Adam Michael. 2014. Imagined Voodoo: Terror, Sex, Citation and Racism in American Popular Culture. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Accessed April 17, 2018 5:01:54 PM EDT Citable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12274118 This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASH Terms of Use repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA (Article begins on next page) Imagined Voodoo: Terror, Sex, and Racism in American Popular Culture A dissertation presented by Adam Michael McGee to The Department of African and African American Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of African American Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2014 © 2014 Adam Michael McGee All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Jacob K. Olupona Adam Michael McGee Imagined Voodoo: Terror, Sex, and Racism in American Popular Culture Abstract I analyze the historical and cultural processes by which American racism is reproduced, approaching the issue through the lens of “imagined voodoo” (as distinct from Haitian Vodou). I posit that the American Marine occupation of Haiti (1915-34) was crucial in shaping the American racial imaginary. In film, television, and literature, imagined voodoo continues to serve as an outlet for white racist anxieties. Because it is usually found in low-brow entertainment (like horror) and rarely mentions race explicitly, voodoo is able to evade critique, disseminating racism within a culture that is now largely—albeit superficially—intolerant of overt racism. I establish a methodology that engages seriously with black studies; cultural studies; historiography; gender and sexuality studies; postcolonial studies; religious studies; film studies; psychoanalysis; and literary criticism. Adopting a program of intellectual activism, I argue that the tools of Haitian Studies can be used to critique American culture, thus destabilizing the hierarchical relationship between metropole and postcolony. Imagined voodoo plays a role in what Frantz Fanon calls “sociogeny,” the process by which cultural actors create blackness and read it onto “blackened” bodies. I contextualize imagined voodoo within the literary tradition of the Gothic, arguing that voodoo, as a Gothic mode, assumes racial and sexual norms that are coeval with colonialism. I argue that both the Gothic genre and imagined voodoo construct black sexuality as inherently queered. iii In Chapter Two, I examine how imagined voodoo serves as an agent of “black revenge,” my term for white fears that blacks long to enact violence against whites. In Chapter Three, I dissect portrayals of black bodies as hypersexual and perversely sexed, organized as an exegesis of Fanon’s argument that Negrophobia is fundamentally a sexual phobia. I include an analysis of voodoo in pornography. Chapter Four is organized around the question, “Are zombies (still) black?” I interrogate the appeal of zombies for philosophers (such as Deleuze and Guattari), the American working class, the news media, and white supremacists. Chapter Five explores how black writers and filmmakers use stereotypical voodoo imagery in ways that subvert racist content, converting them into images of black power—often with ties to Afrofuturism. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vii Author’s Note .................................................................................................................... xii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Imagining Voodoo, Imagining Blackness: On how and why to study imagined voodoo ...................................................................... 20 Chapter Two: The Fiction of Black Revenge ................................................................... 69 Chapter Three: Hot Voodoo: Voodoo and Hypersexuality ............................................ 105 Part I: Imagined voodoo, the sexually perverse, and sociogeny ......................... 105 Part II: Voodoo’s gendered stereotypes .............................................................. 139 Part III: Voodoo and pornography ...................................................................... 163 Part IV: The erotic life of zombies ..................................................................... 174 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 184 Chapter Four: The Revenants: On the meanings of zombies ......................................... 186 Part I: Thinking Through Zombies ..................................................................... 186 Part II: Four key sources for the American zombie ............................................ 203 Part III: Zombie Apocalypse(s) and a Case for Anachronism ............................ 231 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 250 Chapter Five: Flipping the Script: On black reimaginings of voodoo ............................ 252 Conclusion: Further Considerations ............................................................................... 329 Appendix A: The Haitian concept of the zonbi .............................................................. 339 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 346 v LIST OF FIGURES 1.1: Vèvè for Danbala in Muriel’s, New Orleans .......................................................................... 38 1.2: Vèvè for Ezili Freda in Muriel’s, New Orleans ..................................................................... 39 1.3: Voodoo window display, American Apparel, New York City .............................................. 40 1.4: Voodoo-themed mural, Marie Laveau’s Bar, New Orleans .................................................. 43 3.1: “. blood-maddened, sex-maddened,” illustration from The Magic Island ....................... 126 3.2: “. they were staring fixedly,” illustration from The Magic Island ................................... 127 4.1: “. strange tales are told of Voodoo,” illustration from The Magic Island ....................... 207 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Though neither of us knew it at the time, this dissertation began when Jacob Olupona agreed to supervise an independent study on popular representations of Haitian Vodou. This is among the many reasons I have to be grateful to Jacob. As an advisor, he has always expressed calm confidence in my capacity to succeed. Kimberley Patton is the greatest advocate one could have. I would not have been published half so much had it not been for her, and she often fought hard for my teaching appointments. She read every draft of this dissertation, and gave detailed feedback that was simultaneously encouraging and honest. Vincent Brown provoked me to be rigorous in answering questions of intellectual history. Vince was the first person to introduce me to Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic, and I appreciate that we share a conviction that the right questions are often more interesting than answers. I must profusely thank Carol Duncan for agreeing to be on my committee, despite the fact that Harvard doesn’t give her a single cent for all of her hard work. It was in Carol’s class that I first started to think about the intersection between blackness and popular culture. Had it not been for that, this project would never have happened. I also have to thank Jacob, Kimberley, Vince, and Carol for putting their trust in me when, following my father’s death, I realized that I needed to switch to a completely different dissertation topic. In that vulnerable interval, I think that one wrong word would have set me back years. Instead, their confidence is what allowed me to get this far. vii My editor, Jennifer Doody, did fantastic work turning my drafts into coherent, lucid prose. I expect she had no idea what she was taking on when she offered to edit my dissertation, and I am enormously grateful for her many hours of attention. I cannot recommend her services highly enough. In a special issues of Studies in Religious/Sciences Religieuses that they guest edited, Terry Rey and Karen Richman published the journal article that was the beginning of this project. I am profoundly thankful for their support and feedback, as well as the feedback of the anonymous reviewers. Likewise, Alessandra Benedicty and Kaiama Glover invited me to contribute to a panel presentation at the Haitian Studies Association’s annual conference, which became the core of the section on Zora Neale Hurston. I am grateful for their support, and for the invaluable feedback I received on that presentation from Gina Ulysse. In addition, Patrick Bellegarde-Smith and Claudine Michel have been tireless supporters of my scholarship. My students at Tufts University Experimental College