Volume 2, Dossier 3 (Fall 2008) • Contents
Thinking Haiti, Thinking Jean Casimir
Walter MIGNOLO, WKO Convenor
Introduction to the Dossier
Laurent DUBOIS
Articles
La culture opprimée, 25 ans après
Jean CASIMIR
Conquered or enslaved populations modify their cultures or elaborate new ones by contesting the conquistadors’ worldview. The colonialists block the development of these thought systems whose historical roots predate their irruption or contradict and ignore the endeavors of the enslaved populations. The aggressed populations cannot fully supplant the logic and dynamics of their genocide and ethnocide; so, the war against their thought systems last indefinitely.
Dr. Casimir can be reached at j.casimir@hainet.net.
Théorie et définition de la culture opprimée
Capitalism takes root in colonies and underdeveloped countries by dominating non European peoples through policies bordering on genocide and, at best, ethnocide. These peoples oppose such aggressions with survival strategies, intertwined in a contesting culture, specific to each one of them. Their private and community lives operate as the cradle for this oppressed culture that the political authorities persecute systematically and confine within local spheres of action. Even though isolated and unable to develop themselves or to negotiate their relations with the dominant culture and society, oppressed cultures remain the cornerstone of social change in the former colonies.
Cultura y creacion
Jean CASIMIR
In order to confront the cultural war initiated by the conquest, a new type of social science, which chooses to speak amongst the destitute people of the continent and promote their participation in the national dialog, needs to zero into the logic of their practices, map out the universe they control, and identify the alternative solutions they use. This new social science then modifies the themes to be studied, articulates the current methodology and the addressee of scientific reflections, and identifies the rhetoric and the level of explanation to be found satisfactory.
Le planteur avait une esclave, Ma grand-mère était une captive :
Peuplement et latinité en HaïtiJean CASIMIR
The enslaved had to integrate into the Latin world of Saint-Domingue while the awareness of their captivity was renewed through exchanges with their peers. Their Latinity, linked to the process of modern colonial and national state building, was inseparable from this legacy of enslavement. Their endogenous culture, an aspect of their isolation even today, emerged and perpetuated itself by opposing such inheritance, paradoxically revamped by an increasing immersion into the Saxon universe, which followed the 1915 US Occupation.
Une île dans un océan trop étroit
Jean CASIMIR
Creolization, understood as acculturation or ladinización, was secondary in the assembling of the Haitian culture. A truncated presence of Latin culture in the management of public life justified and operated the mechanisms of domination, but these dehumanizing devices were upset by a private and community life where Latinity participated on an equal footing with other ethnic cultures.
Jean CASIMIR
The transformation of Saint-Domingue into Haiti was due to the encounter, on the one hand, of the endemic revolt of the enslaved enacting issues relating to the Rights of the Nations and, on the other hand, the rising of freed persons inspired by the Rights of Man and the Citizen. A modern state cannot solve the first set of problems, and therefore, it needs to eradicate the issue from social awareness. It then has to fabricate a sense of sterility of the oppressed culture where the rights of the nation to preserve its differences are grounded.
L'interminable dialogue de sourds
Jean CASIMIR
Ethnics groups considered by the dominant classes as a homogeneous mass of Blacks merged into one nation during the transformation of Saint-Domingue into a settlement colony: Haiti. The international community by isolating the country forced its endogenous development. However, the elites kept endorsing the civilizing mission of the West, supported and continued by the American Occupation of 1915, and applauded the exclusion of the masses from any decision-making processes.
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