Voodoo Intellectuals and Female Piracy in the Caribbean

• In Event: Reflections from Afro-Diasporic Feminisms Part II: Black Feminist Visual Arts languages in Latin America

Abstract

“We’re old friends, aren’t we, Rene? I’m no used to holding back anything from you. So! Theses devils of yours, me, I don’t believe in them. I’m an atheist, don’t forget that. And an atheist accepts neither the idea of god nor the devil.”
“This is not time for blasphemy,” Andre whimpers. ”We’re already in debt to the loas since Rene touched the syrup, so don’t force God to turn from us as well.”
(Madness) Love, Anger and Madness by Marie Chauvet

Arguing that the “Voodoo Baskets” are a vehicle for a nationalist identity and in the context of this panel, an identity that is integrative.
Similarly, the Pantheon is an exploration of that construct adapting to a new world proposition rooted in a process of absorption not expansion. As such, they allow for expressions of personal identities as well as historical constructs. Such a proposition is rooted in a female expression of “Creolité.”
The gesture of the artist is metaphorically that of a pirate.
Both the Voodoo Baskets and the Haiti-American Pantheon present Vodou as the ultimate expression of the new world, the essential postmodern gesture, the gesture, whether it is accepted or not that constructed the identity of both parts of the island.

I’m that flight that you get on, international first class seat…riding comfortable
“Cause I know what the girl them need New York to Haiti
I got Lipstick stamps on my passport…
(“Talk Dirty,” Jason Derulo)

Author

• Vladimir Cybil Charlier