Reimagining Haiti: Decolonial Visions
Reimagining Haiti: Decolonial Visions
Sociology; College of Social Sciences Hub
Date: Monday 29 April 2024
Time: 11:30 - 13:00
Venue: Online (Zoom link to be emailed to registered attendees)
Category: Public lectures, Academic events, Student events, Staff workshops and seminars
Speaker: Dr Rachel Douglas, University of Glasgow
Website: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reimagining-haiti-decolonial-visions-tickets-775460622597
Rewriting or rasanblaj (gathering/re-assembling in Haitian Kreyòl) is a fundamental process at the heart of Haitian-style culture and rebuilding. The book on which this talk is based reorients Haitian studies around rasanblaj, testing its value as a methodological tool for interpreting Haitian culture and other cultures of the Global South.
Rewriting in postcolonial contexts is often viewed as ‘writing back’ to metropolitan literary classics; here we turn instead to Haitians’ self-rewriting. This focus can change our understanding by centring on Haiti’s own worldview, and develops a decolonial lens of rasanblaj.
The talk builds on a deconstructionist postcolonial approach that counteracts incomplete accounts of colonial literature, history and archives. It reveals Haitian culture’s core dynamics by involving communal oral storytelling, artistic practices and transformative visions of the Haitian Revolution’s contemporary relevance. The talk contributes to the creation of new narratives about Haiti and reconstruction by gathering voices of rasanblaj from writers, filmmakers, visual artists, activists and scholars.