Spiritualism, Vodou and the mimetic literatures of Haiti and Louisiana

293 Pages·2016·1.01 MB·English

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LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School
2006
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Jean-Marc Allard Duplantier
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
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Duplantier, Jean-Marc Allard, ""Nos frères d'outre-golfe": Spiritualism, Vodou and the mimetic literatures of
Haiti and Louisiana" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3586.
https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3586
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"NOS FRÈRES D'OUTRE-GOLFE": SPIRITUALISM, VODOU AND THE
MIMETIC LITERATURES OF HAITI AND LOUISIANA

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirement for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

in

The Department of French Studies

by
Jean-Marc Allard Duplantier
B.A. The Colorado College, 1996
M.A. Louisiana State University, 2002
December 2006
©Copyright 2006
Jean-Marc Allard Duplantier
All Rights Reserved

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For Sarah

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Acknowledgements

At the beginning of a study about the persistence of the dead, I must first acknowledge
my own dead whose voices still dance in my head: Sarah and B.J. Bordelon, Francis Fletcher,
A.J. Duplantier, Brother Bill Parsons, Pamela, Latulipe, and Sidonie Lemoine.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Pius Ngandu, Dr. Jack Yeager, Dr.
John Protevi and Dr. Jim Borck. They have shown a genuine interest in my topic and have
helped me see this project through to its completion. The encouragement and suggestions from
Dr. Ross Chambers helped me at very important moments during my research and writing. A
very special thank-you goes to Dr. Nathaniel Wing, my director. His courses in nineteenth-
century literature inspired this project. He is a generous and patient teacher and a kind mentor
and friend.
The Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship
Program and the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Program provided funding for my research in
Haiti. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the Social Science Research Council whose flexibility
and generosity in the face of the coup d'état in Haiti enabled me to continue my research there.
In Haiti, Frère Ernest Even at the library of the Frères de Saint Louis de Gonzague was a
great help. His tireless efforts to preserve Haiti's patrimony make him one of that country's great
cultural heroes. Patrick Tardieu, at the Bibliothèque des Pères du St. Esprit and Madame
Françoise Thybulle of the Haitian Bibliothèque Nationale were also very generous with their
time and enthusiastic about my research. Dr. Georges Michel, who befriended me as a member
of the Creole diaspora, opened many doors for me in Haiti. Finally, Father Rick Frechette and
everyone at Nos Petits Frères et Soeurs provided the friendship and support that allowed me to
complete my research under difficult circumstances.
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In Louisiana, I owe a great deal to the many librarians who went out of their way to help
me in my research, including Greg Osborne, Elaine Smyth, Christina Riquelmy, Mark Martin,
and Florence Jumonville. Special thanks also go to Frédéric Spill, Salwa Nacouzi and Assia
Djebar, whose collaboration on the Résonances Créoles exhibition opened up many avenues of
research for this project. Karen Cossé Bell, Dana Kress, and Barbara Trevigne were generous
with their time and research on Louisiana history and culture.
My interest in Louisiana culture began when, as a child, I performed traditional Louisiana
stories and songs in my parents’ traveling folk-life puppet troupe. I owe a great deal to their
creativity and love.
Finally, without the unflagging support, limitless patience and boundless love of my wife
Sarah I would never have completed this project.
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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................ iv

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. viii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION.............................................................. 1
Narrative Syncretism in the Atlantic World.......................................... 6
The Medium's Hybrid Voice.................................................................. 14
Vodou's "Possessive" Alterity................................................................ 18

CHAPTER TWO: SPIRITUALISM AND THE FANTASTIC......................... 23
"Me voici revenu." Gautier's Spirite and Musset spirite. ..................... 26
"Le Horla" and the Colonial Other ........................................................ 41

CHAPTER THREE: SPECTRES DE HUGO...................................................... 47
"Écartons le trépied"............................................................................... 59
“Je Dis la Table Pour Abréger” ............................................................. 83
"His Soul Is Marching On"..................................................................... 100

CHAPTER FOUR: "FRÈRES DÉJÀ PAR LE SANG":
LOUISIANA SPIRITUALISM AND MIMETIC CULTURE........ 105
Louisiana Spiritualism.............................................................................. 109
Creole Voices.......................................................................................... 113
"Quelques Petites Cailloux"................................................................... 124
Les Cenelles and Creole Romanticism................................................... 135
Creole Louisiana's Haitian Exile(s) ....................................................... 151
Louisiana Voodoo and Haitian Spiritualism........................................... 167
CHAPTER FIVE: CREOLE BOVARISM:
JEAN PRICE-MARS, VODOU AND MIMETIC CULTURE........ 177
Haitian Bovarism ................................................................................... 181
Bovarism and Cultural Hybridity........................................................... 186
"[L]es agrégats de notre moi": Vodou Identity and the Hybrid Self...... 205

CHAPTER SIX: "COUTÉ LA LIBÈRTE":
HAITI'S POSSESSIVE LITERATURE.......................... 212
Boukman's Repossessed "Serment"....................................................... 214
Boisrond Tonnerre's Ghostly Revolutionaries........................................ 218
"Il s'agit de moins ici": Creole Romanticism and the "École de
1836"................................................................................................. 224
Ignace Nau's "Isalina" and Vodou Authority......................................... 237
Bergeaud's Stella and Aggregate Identity............................................. 246
Demesvar Delorme's "Veau d'Or".......................................................... 248

CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION: SPECTRES DE NAPOLÉON............... 257
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WORKS CITED........................................................................................................ 273

VITA.......................................................................................................................... 282
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Abstract
The nineteenth-century Francophone literatures of Haiti and Louisiana are often
dismissed as pale imitations of literary trends in metropolitan France. This study revisits these
literatures and explores how Creole writers used borrowed ideas and imitated styles to assemble
"relational" Creole identities. Two interrelated spiritual practices—the mid-century craze for
“table turning” commonly known as modern Spiritualism, and the syncretistic New World
religion Vodou—structured these writers’ mimetic methods, enabling them to speak as, and
thereby subvert the hegemony of, their cultural forebears.
In France, the mid-century interest in Spiritualism provided French fantastic literature
with a useful system for producing the many "revenants" that populate fantastic fiction. These
tales also reveal Spiritualism's larger role as a model for trans-Atlantic cultural production, and
demonstrate metropolitan anxiety about the exotic colonial Other. In a similar way, Victor Hugo,
confronted by the destabilizing possibility of a polyvocal au-delà, found it necessary to defend
his singular visionary genius from the polluting voices of the spirits.
In Louisiana, Spiritualism gave free-black poets a tool to channel and challenge the
voices of their literary heroes in France. In the mouths of these Creole copyists, the singular
Romantic subjectivity that Hugo sought to defend became splintered and distorted, allowing
them to construct a hybrid identity by adopting calqued literary voices.
In a similar way the Haitian Vodou adept served as a vessel for the diverse deities that
displaced his or her personality. Haiti’s mimetic literature plays on the Vodou ritual practice of
possession as it copies European models. Thus what Jean Price-Mars famously described as
Haiti’s literary Bovarism is better understood as a nascent literary hybridity.
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The Spiritualist séance and the Vodou ceremony enabled adepts to harness the power and
authority of the great figures of Western culture by exploiting the portability of their voices. In
this way, the nineteenth-century literatures of Francophone Haiti and Louisiana are not pale
imitations of Hugo and other French models; they are failed imitations--copies that deviate from
their models in order to open up a space for a provisional, relational Creole identity.

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