Fictions of Sex, Fear and Loathing in the Caribbean: Revisiting the Haitian/Dominican Borderland

Authors

  • Conrad Michael James Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2013.012

Keywords:

Haiti, Dominican Republic, Border, Sex, Fear, Gagá

Abstract


Haitian-Dominican border narratives invariably draw attention to debates concerning the Dominican Republic’s (historical) hysterical drives to maintain an untainted “Raza dominicana” and simultaneously point to the threat posed to this ideal by their othered ethnic neighbours, the Haitians. What is less prevalent is an exploration of the sexual history of the border. Equally sparse are critical explorations of the fictional narratives of this border which privilege sex and the erotic as principal investigative prisms. Yet the literary architecture of the border is unsustainable without its sexual elements. This essay revisits key moments in the narrative construction of the border and investigates a few border texts that participate in the discussion on race and nationhood in the Dominican Republic. The aim here is straightforward; I intend to highlight the tenacious presence of sex and fear in narratives which record, interrogate, denounce or celebrate the border. The putative “problem” of the border, the essay reveals, is as much a problem of gender as it is of race. Accordingly, the fear of black masculinity on one hand and the celebration of new world erotics on the other become key components in unravelling the meanings of border identity.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Anzaldúa, Gloria (1987) Borderlands/La Frontera. Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco.

Balaguer, Joaquín (1947) La Realidad Dominicana: Semblanza de un País y de un Régimen. Imprenta Ferrari Hermanos, Buenos Aires.

Balaguer, Joaquín (1983) La isla al revés: Haití y el destino dominicano. Corripio, Santo Domingo. PMid:6834913

Brown, Karen McCarthy (1998) "The Moral Force Field of Haitian Vodou". In In Face of the Facts: Moral Inquiry in American Scholarship, edited by Fox, Richard and Westbrook, Robert. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 181–200.

Cabral, Manuel del (1942) "Pulula" in Trópico negro. Pórtico Azul, Buenos Aires, pp. 46–48.

Cabral, Manuel del (1973) El presidente negro. Editora Corripio, Santo Domingo.

Cabral, Manuel del (1998) Compadre Mon. Editora de Colores, Santo Domingo.

Chomsky, Aviva (2007) They Take Our Jobs and Twenty Other Myths about Immigration. Beacon Street Press, Boston.

Crassweller, Robert (1966) D. Trujillo: the Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator. The Macmillan Company, New York.

Danticat, Edwige (1998) The Farming of Bones. Soho Press, New York.

De Maeseneer, Rita (1997) "'El Corte' en El Masacre se pasa a pie del escritor dominicano Freddy Prestol Castillo". In La memoria histórica en las letras hispánicas contemporáneas, edited by Collard, Patrick. Droz, Geneva, pp. 159–178.

Den Tandt, Catherine (2003) "El Masacre se pasa a pie: Haitian and Dominican Border Talk". In Marginal Migration: The Circulation of Cultures within the Caribbean, edited by Puri, Shalini, Macmillan, Oxford, pp. 165–189.

Deren, Maya (1983) Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. McPherson, New York.

Duke, Dawn (2009) "From 'Yelidá' to Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitianas: Gendering Resistance to Whiteness in the Dominican Republic". In Historicizing Twentieth-Century Whiteness in Literature and Performance, edited by Jennings, La Vinia Delois. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, pp. 61–92.

Ferguson, James (2006) "The Haitian Minority in the Dominican Republic". In Intra-Caribbean Migration and the Conflict Nexus, edited by Cowie, Lance et al. Human Rights Internet, Ottawa, pp. 308–341.

Fernández-Olmos, Margarite (1997) "Trans-Caribbean Identity and the Fictional World of Mayra Montero". In Sacred Possessions: Voodoo, Santería, Obeah and the Caribbean, edited by Fernandez-Olmos, Margarite and Paravisini Gerber, Lisa. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, pp. 267–282.

Fischer, Sibylle (2004) Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Duke University Press, Durham.

Gil, Lydia (1997) "El Masacre se pasa a pie by Freddy Prestol Castillo ¿Denuncia o defensa de la actitud dominicana ante 'El corte'?". In Afro-Hispanic Review, 16/1: 38–44.

Hernández Franco, Tomás (1976) [1942] Yelidá. In Poesía afroantiallana y negrista, edited by Morales, Jorge Luis. Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, 1976, pp. 207–214.

Howard, David (2001) Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic. Signal Books, Oxford.

Landies, Maurea (2009) The Band Carries Medicine: Music, Healing and Community in Haitian/Dominican Rara/Gaga, unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University.

Lifshey, Adam (2008) "Indeterminacy and the Subversive in Representations of the Trujillato", Hispanic Review, 4: 435–457. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hir.0.0020

Martínez, Samuel (2003) "Not a Cockfight: Rethinking Haitian-Dominican Relations." Latin American Perspectives 30(3): 80–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0094582X03030003006

Mateo, Andrés (1996) Al filo de la domicanidad. Libreria La Trinitaria, Santo Domingo.

Matibag, Eugenio (2003) Haitian-Dominican Counterpoint: Nation, Race and State on Hispaniola. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781403973801 PMid:21432098 PMCid:PMC2723386

Moya Pons, Frank (1995) The Dominican Republic: A National History. Hispaniola Books Corporation, New Rochelle.

Montero, Mayra (1992) Del rojo de su sombra. Tusquets, Barcelona

Montero, Mayra (2002) The Red of His Shadow. First Ecco, New York.

Prestol Castillo, Freddy (1973) El Masacre se pasa a pie. Taller, Santo Domingo.

Rodríguez, Néstor (2005) La isla y su envés. Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Coyacán, México D.F.

Rodríguez, Néstor (2010) Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature. Caribbean Studies Press, Miami.

Roorda, Eric (1998) The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbour Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930–1945. Duke University Press, Durham.

Sommer, Doris (1983) One Master for Another: Populism as Patriarchal Rhetoric in Dominican Novels. University Press of America, Lanham.

Torres-Saillant, Silvio (2003) "La Condición Rayana: La Promesa Ciudadana en el Lugar del 'Quicio". In La frontera: prioridad en la agenda nacional del siglo XXI. Secretaria de Estado de las Fuerzas Armadas, Santo Domingo, pp. 220–228.

Torres-Saillant, Silvio (2006). "Blackness and Meaning in Studying Hispaniola: A Review Essay". Small Axe, 10 (1): 180–188. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/-10-1-180

Turits, R. (2002) "A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic". Hispanic American Historical Review 82(3): 589–635. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00182168-82-3-589

Vargas Llosa, Mario (2000) La fiesta del chivo. Taller, Santo Domingo.

Vicioso, Chiqui (2007) Eva/sion/es House of Nehesi, Philipsburg, St. Martin.

Williams, Claudette (2000), Charcoal and Cinnamon: The Politics of Colour in Spanish Caribbean Literature. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Published

2013-06-30

How to Cite

James, C. M. (2013). Fictions of Sex, Fear and Loathing in the Caribbean: Revisiting the Haitian/Dominican Borderland. Culture &Amp; History Digital Journal, 2(1), e012. https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2013.012

Issue

Section

Dossier