Island Possessed

Abstract

A Washington Post headline from 1936 states: “Haiti Today: The ‘Black Republic’ is Making Progress.” The word progress conjures the mixed emotions stirred by modernity in the Americas because it refers to the opposition of civilization and savagery in the light of the imperial and colonial practices upon subjects. And yet, as the newspaper article reveals, progress in Haiti in 1936 also referred to the excitement of change, transition, and potential stability after political turmoil. That year marked the end of a 15- year occupation by the United States Marines (1915–1934), qualified as “the most degrading and destructive experience since slavery” (Dayan, “Vodoun” 23), linked here to the modern possibility of getting on with an interrupted nation- building process. Culturally, the end of the Occupation was a time for intense Haitian self-representation in, for example, the Indigenisme literary movement and the resurfacing of Vodou, which had been banned during the Occupation. Haiti in 1936 provided an ideal location for the dance research of then young anthropologist Katherine Dunham, who found ways to read, write, and dance Haiti alternatively in the experiences recorded in her 1969 text Island Possessed.