is only so diverse with its set of canons, conventions, and resistances to difference. While much has changed since my days of graduate school, it must be said that the stories of public intellectuals I heard (in nonspecialized courses) generally excluded or marginalized the works of black pioneers in the United States16 who confronted racialized structural barriers that not only severely impeded their work but also determined their professional relationship to the discipline.17 The extensive breadth of their impact is unknown in the mainstream. For example, Zora Neale Hurston and Katherine Dunham both took their training out of the university system, turning to folklore and the arts to make significant contributions across disciplinary boundaries, which to this day continue to highlight expressive dimensions of black experiences. Dunham, using the pseudonym of Kaye Dunn, was actually a public writer who published articles in Esquire and Mademoiselle magazines predating Margaret Mead’s Redbook days. Allison Davis had a tremendous impact outside anthropology, as his studies of intelligence were instrumental in influencing compensatory education programs such as Head Start.18 The pan-Africanist St. Clair Drake, another influential pioneer, introduced, along with sociologist Horace Cayton, the notion of a “black metropolis” to a wide audience,19 before he even finished his doctoral degree.
Back then, black academics and artists deployed their knowledge of anthropology despite conflicted views of it as an esoteric endeavor, as St. Clair Drake put it, with little “relevance” to problems of “racial advancement” in the United States.20 They found it useful in attempts to expose and consider various aspects of black diasporic life in the broader struggle against colonialism and racism. Barred from mainstream mass media, their public interventions were documented mainly in black outlets. They managed to achieve this while differentially positioned vis-à-vis white counterparts who at times actively opposed their presence and activities not only within the discipline, but also inside and outside of universities. Indeed, what was permissible for some was heavily policed by others, including some of these well-known foremothers and forefathers.
In that vein, it must be noted that academia and the media are more congruent than dissonant when it comes to the structural factors influencing the underrepresentation of minorities. It is from this context that I emerged and learned how to maneuver as a black Haitian woman, an anthropologist, bent on issuing a counter-narrative in the public sphere in the post-quake period.
Neither Informant nor Sidekick
I began to write back, in a sense, when it was evident that Haiti was being represented in damaging and restricting ways. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the treatment of Vodou, which was repeatedly portrayed devoid of cultural meaning, and thus reinscribing the “mystical” characteristics ascribed to Haiti and barring it from narratives of modernity. Attempts to demystify this myth had their own challenges. In interviews with white colleagues (usually friends), I was often cast as the “native informant” by the interviewer, while they were seen as “experts.” Together, we not only resisted this impulse but also had to remain vigilant of the aftermath.
The morning after, I would check websites to assure that the text of this new interview actually contained the correct spelling of Vodou instead of “voodoo,” which is used in media style sheets. (The latter spelling reinforces the stereotype and is the popularly recognized term guaranteed to get more hits on search engines.) There were instances in which “allies”21 and advocates in the mainstream and other media would represent Haiti in the most deprecating ways, at worst rendering Haitians invisible and at best, one-dimensional. While awareness of and attempts to address this were excruciatingly exhausting, these misrepresentations were also ripe for critical sociocultural analysis. Enter the native as sidekick.
This is not at all surprising; as I previously stated, the face of public anthropology is predominantly white and male in certain contexts. Although writer Edwidge Danticat and rapper Wyclef Jean were the most prominent Haitians in the media, with his high international profile it was Harvard medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer (founder of Partners in Health) who was practically synonymous with Haiti, along with Sean Penn and Bill Clinton.22
Where, if, and how “natives” fit in this visual (economic) order,23 especially in the areas of humanitarian work and post-disaster reconstruction, given their domination by a white-savior-industrial complex, remained unanswered “burning questions,” as Michel-Rolph Trouillot would have dubbed them a decade earlier.
Such moments and insights only reinforced Trouillot’s assertions in Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World (2003) about the status of the native voice in the production of anthropological knowledge. Ethnography was his site of inquiry, while I was surveying the media—in some cases, “leftist” or “alternative” branches of this world. Yet the social hierarchies and other issues were variations on a theme. Like the ethnographer, the journalist serves as mediator; in neither case can the native be a full interlocutor. Moreover, this only reconfirmed the need to address a problem I had been mulling over: “Who is studying you, studying us?”24
I stopped writing about Haiti months later, uncomfortable with speaking on behalf of Haitians, especially given that I had not been there since the quake. Although I had a specific viewpoint to offer on how Haiti and Haitians were being portrayed, I pondered its significance. I made my first trip back the last week of March and stayed through Easter weekend, spending a little time in Port-au-Prince so I could volunteer with a clinic in Petit-Goâve.
I returned feeling desperate. At the same time, I understood that not having hope is not an option for the ones left behind, for those trapped inland, because “nou se mo vivan” (we are the walking dead), as a friend said quite bluntly. Once again, thoughts of social responsibility re-emerged. My public writing entangled with my artistic work in unexpected ways. Invitations to colleges and universities meant audience members gained access to a social scientist, artist, and public commentator simultaneously.
This placed me in a position I have yet to fully decipher. I have at least recognized that with performance, I offer people a visceral point of entry from which critical conversation could develop. This overshadowed audience interest in my artistry, however, as discussions often remained content-driven. Still, the tripartite connection informed my works in multifaceted ways, making me aware of the limits of each, as well as how they complemented each other, and prompted me to reexamine their overall effectiveness in their own rights.
With that in mind and given my initial impulse—responding to a call—I had to negotiate my position within different forms of media. One thing remained indisputable: online publication provides access and extends one’s reach in ways print does not.25 Print, which entails a different process, still has merit, and it is a form of documentation that is more accessible for some, plus it meets a different professional criterion with regard to scholarship, although these writings were not in refereed journals. In any case, I found myself drawn to do more creative projects for my already unconventional career. This was work I was not only determined to do, but could not be kept from. So could it, would it, have any professional value? That remains to be seen, considering recent debates about how to evaluate nontraditional scholarship and university commitments to civic engagement.26
The Making of a Chronicle
The idea to compile these writings into a book came from Claudine Michel, a professor of black studies and education at the University of California–Santa Barbara, and the editor of the Journal of Haitian Studies. In our conversations, she mentioned she was too busy to keep up with my pace, so she had begun to put my pieces into a folder. Then, she insisted I too assemble them as a collection, given the immediacy, frequency, and scope of my purview. She said that as a native daughter anthropologist-performer situated on the margins, I offered a multifaceted insider/outsider perspective on this developing moment in Haitian history, a post-quake chronicle.
