Vodou in Nineteenth-Century Haiti: Important Opportunities for Assemblage

This paper will focus on the development of Haitian Vodou in the post-independence era. Relying on a variety of contemporary sources—travel accounts, newspapers, civil registries—it becomes evident that practitioners could draw on a much wider, and ultimately Atlantic, repertoire of cultural objects, practices, and beliefs from which to galvanize and consolidate the various ways people served the lwa. In some ways, then, this is a challenge to the Mintz and Trouillot thesis of cultural isolation and proposes that the early development of Haitian Vodou outside the confines of colonialism had a much broader socio-cultural marketplace to draw from than previously understood. The paper intends to highlight the fact that the movement of people, ideas, symbols, images, and rituals did not stop following the Haitian revolution and national independence, and that it is therefore important to assess what material, broadly speaking, was available for incorporation and assemblage onto the altars and walls of the republic’s popular temples. Ultimately, the strength of the popular belief systems needs to be re-assessed in light of these opportunities.

The paper will begin with a brief overview of the historiography surrounding nineteenth-century religious practices in Haiti and the conclusions that various scholars have made about the time period. The second part of the paper will discuss the Atlantic nature of the opportunities available to practitioners for incorporation and assemblage. This, in turn, will shed light on the profound strength of the religious systems in operation during the nineteenth century.