Haiti Apocalypse Now

Of all the literary and cultural traditions in the Caribbean, none has produced a body of work as rich, diverse, and challenging as that of the French-speaking islands. Informed by the great French traditions of intellectual inquiry and artistic innovation, the francophone Caribbean tradition has seen the emergence of artists, activists, and theorists such as Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas, René Ménil, Suzanne Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé, Raphael Confiant, Maryse Condé, Jean–Price Mars, Jacques Roumain, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, René Depestre, Frankétienne, Émile Ollivier, Marie Chauvet, Dany Laferrière, and Edwidge Danticat, to name only a few. The French–speaking islands and French Guyana have therefore a long, established tradition of prolific and incisive intellectual and artistic output, and have had considerable influence across the whole Caribbean literary and cultural spectrum. Until ten or fifteen years ago, the départements d’outre mer were in large part the main focus of any analysis of Francophone Caribbean culture. Since then, however, the other important French– and Creole-speaking nation, Haiti, has been the subject of unprecedented attention, both from scholars and the general public. Independent since 1804, the «first black republic» in the New World is at once a symbol of anti–colonial resistance and of postcolonial decay and economic, political, and social problems. At once years ahead of and years behind the rest of the Caribbean, Haiti demands critical attention, and in this article, I will summarize some of the major movements in Haitian literary culture, before focusing on the Duvalier period and the ways in which contemporary artists address the memory of that most traumatic period.De las tradiciones literarias y culturales del Caribe, ninguna ha producido un corpus tan rico, diverso y desafiante como el de las islas francófonas. Inspirado por las grandes tradiciones francesas de la búsqueda intelectual y la innovación artística, la tradición del Caribe francófono ha visto el surgimiento de artistas, activistas, y teóricos como Aimé Césaire, Léon-Gontran Damas, René Ménil, Suzanne Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé, Rápale Confiant, Maryse Condé, Jean-Price Mars, Jacques Roumain, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, René Depestre, Frankétienne, Émile Ollivier, Marie Chauvet, Dany Lafèrriere, y Edwidge Danticat por solo nombrar a unos pocos. Las islas francófonas y la Guayana Francesa tienen por tanto una larga y bien establecida tradición de producción intelectual y artística prolífica e incisiva, y han tenido una influencia considerable a través de todo el entorno literario y cultural caribeño. Hasta hace diez o quince años, los départements d’outre mer eran en gran parte el foco principal de cualquier análisis de la cultura francófona caribeña. Desde entonces, sin embargo, la otra nación de habla francófona y créole, Haití, ha sido objeto de una atención sin precedentes, por parte de investigadores así como del público en general. Independiente desde 1804, la «primera república negra» del Nuevo Mundo es un símbolo tanto de resistencia anticolonial como de declive postcolonial, así como de problemas económicos, políticos y sociales. A la vez avanzada y rezagada en el tiempo respecto al resto del Caribe, Haití merece la atención de la crítica. En este artículo haré un recuento de los principales movimientos de la cultura literaria en Haití, para luego centrarme en el período de Duvalier y en las estrategias que los artistas contemporáneos han utilizado para indagar sobre la memoria de ese periodo tan traumático

Writing Disaster : Trauma, Memory, and History in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones

This essay deals with the question of trauma in Haitian writing, and specifically with Edwidge Danticat’s novel The Farming of Bones. Drawing on a wide range of theorists, and undertaking a close reading of the novel, the essay suggests that the Haitian experience of trauma is different in many ways to that of other Caribbean islands. In particular, it is argued that the fragmented experience of Haitian history cannot be easily recuperated into contemporary celebratory theories of Caribbean hybridity and creolization, and must be understood within its own context and on its own terms.Cet article se penche sur la question du traumatisme dans l’écriture haïtienne, en particulier dans le roman d’Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones [La récolte douce des larmes]. En se basant sur de nombreux théoriciens et en lisant le roman de très près, cet article suggère que l’expérience haïtienne du traumatisme diffère en de nombreux points de celle d’autres îles de la Caraïbe. On y soutient, en particulier, que l’expérience fragmentée de l’histoire haïtienne ne peut pas être aisément récupérée par les théories contemporaines célébrant le métissage et la créolisation caraïbes, et qu’elle doit se comprendre dans son propre contexte et selon ses propres termes

From 'Stone-Age' to 'Real-Time': Exploring Papuan Temporalities, Mobilities and Religiosities

There are probably no other people on earth to whom the image of the ‘stone-age’ is so persistently attached than the inhabitants of the island of New Guinea, which is divided into independent Papua New Guinea and the western part of the island, known today as Papua and West Papua. From ‘Stone-Age’ to ‘Real-Time’ examines the forms of agency, frictions and anxieties the current moment generates in West Papua, where the persistent ‘stone-age’ image meets the practices and ideologies of the ‘real-time’ – a popular expression referring to immediate digital communication. The volume is thus essentially occupied with discourses of time and space and how they inform questions of hierarchy and possibilities for equality. Papuans are increasingly mobile, and seeking to rework inherited ideas, institutions and technologies, while also coming up against palpable limits on what can be imagined or achieved, secured or defended. This volume investigates some of these trajectories for the cultural logics and social or political structures that shape them. The chapters are highly ethnographic, based on in-depth research conducted in diverse spaces within and beyond Papua. These contributions explore topics ranging from hip hop to HIV/ AIDS to historicity, filling much-needed conceptual and ethnographic lacunae in the study of West Papua

Introduction : the performance of Pan-African identities at Black and African cultural festivals

In April 1966 thousands of artists, musicians, performers, and writers from across Africa and its diaspora gathered in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to take part in the First World Festival of Black and African Culture (Premier Festival Mondial des arts nègres). The festival constituted a highly symbolic moment both in the era of decolonization and the push for civil rights for African Americans in the United States. In essence, the festival sought to perform an emerging Pan-African culture, to give concrete cultural expression to the ties that would bind the African “homeland” to black people in the diaspora. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1966 event, the editors of this special issue held a conference at Florida State University that sought to examine the festival and its multiple legacies, with the aim of promoting a better understanding of both the utopianism of the period following World War II and the “festivalization” of Africa that has occurred in recent decades

Desperately Seeking a Communicative Approach: English Pronunciation in a Sample of French and Polish Secondary School Textbooks

The first part of this paper analyses pronunciation exercises in a representative sample of textbooks from each country. Pronunciation exercises were classified based on the degree to which they mobilize communicative abilities, according to the five categories of a Communicative Framework for teaching pronunciation (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010, p45): Description & analysis, Listening discrimination, Controlled practice, Guided practice, Communicative practice. The first category involves little risk-taking by the learner, usually focusses on form and allows little freedom. At the other end of the spectrum, communicative practice involves a focus on meaning and interaction, with the concomitant greater freedom to make mistakes. The exercises were then analysed to see which segmental and/or prosodic features they favoured and to what extent

An inconvenient truth: More rigorous and ecologically valid research is needed to properly understand cognitive bias in forensic decisions

No abstract available

The Elsewhere and the Overseas in Michaël Ferrier’s Mémoires d’outre-mer

Cet article traite du roman Mémoires d'outre-mer de Michaël Ferrier, et explore l'idée de l'outre-mer telle qu'elle est présentée dans le roman. Cette idée est liée à celle de l'ailleurs, qui est un lieu (Madagascar) mais aussi un temps (le milieu du vingtième siècle), et l'article démontre comment le roman évoque cet ailleurs, tout en insistant sur son importance à l'histoire de l'Hexagone. Dans ce sens, le roman fait une intervention importante dans les débats sur l'histoire coloniale et la nécessité de la reconnaître pour arriver enfin à une nouvelle conception de la France dans toute sa multiplicité