The Haiti exception : anthropology and the predicament of narrative / edited by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken, Kaiama L. Glover, Mark Schuller and Jhon Picard Byron.

9781781382998
1781382999
9781781384527 (electronic book)

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2016.

English

1 online resource (231 pages)

F1921 .H35 2016

970.980

This collection of essays considers the ways and extent of Haiti's 'exceptionalisation' - its perception in multiple arenas as definitively unique with respect not only to the countries of the North Atlantic, but also to the rest of the Americas. Painted at once as repulsive and attractive, abject and resilient, singular and exemplary, Haiti has long been framed discursively by an extraordinary epistemological ambivalence. The nation has served at once as cautionary tale, model for humanitarian aid and development projects, and point of origin for general theorizing of the so-called Third World. What to make of this dialectic of exemplarity and alterity? How to pull apart this multivalent narrative so as to examine its constituent parts? The contributors to The Haiti Exception take up these and other such questions from a variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives, among which Africana Studies, anthrohistory, art history, Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, education, ethnology, Jewish Studies, literary studies, performance studies, and urban studies. As they revise and interrogate their respective praxes, they accept the challenge of thinking about the particular stakes of and motivations for their own commitment to Haiti. Engaging in the decidedly risky anthropological practice of reflexivity, the scholars, activists and other social actors gathered here consider their own often fraught role in constructing Haiti in and as narrative.

This collection of essays considers the ways and extent of Haiti's 'exceptionalisation' - its perception in multiple arenas as definitively unique with respect not only to the countries of the North Atlantic, but also to the rest of the Americas. Painted at once as repulsive and attractive, abject and resilient, singular and exemplary, Haiti has long been framed discursively by an extraordinary epistemological ambivalence. The nation has served at once as cautionary tale, model for humanitarian aid and development projects, and point of origin for general theorizing of the so-called Third World. What to make of this dialectic of exemplarity and alterity? How to pull apart this multivalent narrative so as to examine its constituent parts? The contributors to The Haiti Exception take up these and other such questions from a variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives, among which Africana Studies, anthrohistory, art history, Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, education, ethnology, Jewish Studies, literary studies, performance studies, and urban studies. As they revise and interrogate their respective praxes, they accept the challenge of thinking about the particular stakes of and motivations for their own commitment to Haiti. Engaging in the decidedly risky anthropological practice of reflexivity, the scholars, activists and other social actors gathered here consider their own often fraught role in constructing Haiti in and as narrative.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Description based on print version record.

Francophone postcolonial studies ; new ser., v. 7.

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