Spirals in the Caribbean: Representing Violence and Connection in Haiti and the Dominican Republic - Hardcover

Maríñez, Sophie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1512826405 ISBN 13: 9781512826401

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024

Synopsis

An in-depth analysis of literary and cultural productions from Haiti and the Dominican Republic and their diasporas

Spirals in the Caribbean responds to key questions elicited by the human rights crisis accelerated in 2013 by the Dominican Constitutional Court’s Ruling 168-13, which denationalized hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent. Spirals details how a paradigm of permanent conflict between the two nations has its roots in reactions to the Haitian Revolution―a conflict between slavers and freedom-seekers―contests over which have been transmitted over generations, repeating with a difference. Anti-Haitian nationalist rhetoric hides this long trajectory. Through the framework of the Spiral, a concept at the core of a Haitian literary aesthetic developed in the 1960s called Spiralism, Sophie Maríñez explores representations of colonial, imperial, and national-era violence. She takes as evidence legislation, private and official letters, oral traditions, collective memories, Afro-indigenous spiritual and musical practices, and works of fiction, plays, and poetry produced across the island and its diasporas from 1791 to 2002.

With its emphases on folk tales, responses to the 1937 genocide, the Constitution of the Dominican Republic, Afro-indigenous collective memories, and lesser-known literary works on the genocide of indigenous populations in the Caribbean, Spirals in the Caribbean will attract students, scholars, and general readers alike.

About this title

About the Author

Sophie Maríñez is a Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and an affiliated Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Ph.D. Program in French at The Graduate Center.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1512826405
• ISBN 13: 9781512826401
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320