Elizabeth McAlister

Elizabeth McAlister

Panel on Vocality, Transformation and Ritual Mounting in Haitian Vodou

Creolophone Women’s Fugitive Speech: Bizango hums and vocal transformations

Abstract

This presentation analyzes Caribbean Creolophone women’s speech, para-linguistic sounds, and songs as an underappreciated form of women’s self-fashioning and transformation. Afro-Creole women’s speech developed as a tradition within conditions of fugitivity (Derby 2014; Moten 2008). Fugitive speech here refers to speech and vocalized sounds, meant to be understood only by those in a position to know its meanings, under repressive conditions. Haitian women use vocal expressions to constitute themselves into collectivities that sustain and support them. The talk considers meta-linguistic sounds, and then the links between humming and magic that reveal themselves in the ethos of fugitivity and silence in the Bizango–magico-juridical secret societies–in Haiti. The paper considers the silences, sufferings, and punishments that men have visited on Creolophone women and the links between silence, para-linguistic sounds, suffering, and transformation.

Bio

Elizabeth McAlister is Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on Afro-Caribbean religions, music, and race theory, with a focus on Haiti. She is author of Rara! Vodou, Power and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora, and, Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas as well as articles for Journal of Africana Religions, Small Axe, Novo Religio, Anthropological Quarterly, Black Music Research Journal, Newsweek, CNN, LA Times, and Foreign Policy. Her current research focuses on the rise of neo-Pentecostalism in Hati.