Guernica- picasso

“the Vodou and Kreyol ceremony or congress at Bois Caïman under the leadership of Dutty Boukman, Edaïse, Cecile Fatima, the Vodou manbo priestess, is a rejection of both slave status and European civilization,”

“The purposive-rationality of the latter was not a structurally differentiated identity as found amongst the creole blacks and mulatto elites. Oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo, the leadership or power elites of the Africans, of Bois Caïman offered an alternative structuring structure (form of system and social integration) for organizing the material resource framework and the agential initiatives of social actors, and must not be enframed within the structurally differentiating dialectical, postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial logic of the West and the Affranchis”

“Essentially, when the Haitian Revolution commenced in 1791, there were three distinct groups vying for control of the island, the whites (blancs); free people of color and mulattoes (Affranchis); and the enslaved and escaped (maroon) Africans of the island. ”

“The latter, over 67 percent of the population, were not a structurally differentiated other. They had their own practical consciousness, what Paul C. Mocombe (2016) calls the “Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism,” by which they went about recursively (re)organizing and reproducing the material resource framework via the lakou system (Lakouism)”

“The former two, free blacks and gens de couleur (Affranchis), were interpellated, embourgeoised, and differentiated by the language, communicative discourse, mode of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of the West and shared the same European practical consciousness, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, as the whites. ”

“Beginning in the late 1950s Haitians immigrated to United States differentiated within the racial-class socio-culture of Haiti previously highlighted. The first wave of Haitian immigrants to arrive in United States were predominantly your upper-class mulatto elites and members of the black grandon class escaping the Francois “papa-doc” Duvalier regime. ”

“Hence, Haitian practical consciousness early on evolved, segregated, by emphasizing the embourgeoised praxis of the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois black grandon class of the island seeking to reproduce French culture and ideas among their children.”

“When you are initiated into Vodou, you become a “child” within a family of the living and the dead. The Houngan (oon-gun) and Mambo (mam-bow) lead the ceremony and they become your father and mother, but it is the loa (low-are), the spirits, who actually claim you as their child.”

“In Vodou it is different. An individual is Powerful to the extent that he is protected by the spirits and by his ability to work in partnership with them to achieve what he needs in life”

“this physical evidence gives the follower a purpose beyond the trivial and mundane concerns of daily living, which can be so stultifying to the soul and which involve us all in the battle for the political status quo whether we enter the fight willingly or not.”

“The central principle of Vodou is this: The world we know is no more than an act of faith. We actually live in a field of energy, where we can see or sense whatever we choose.”

“When you first enter the djevo, the Vodou initiation chamber, you are blindfolded and all those in the community who have come to witness your incarceration—many hundreds of people from the village and the congregation—weep for you. Their mournful songs speak of your loss, of your death, and their prayers are for your safe passage back to Gine, the land of the spirits.”

“Human beings are indoctrinated into the faith of their culture: that the world works in one particular way.”

“The most difficult part of initiation is to let go of everything you ‘know.’ This is the fear. Once you see the world as a sea of energy, you will understand.”

Vodou Shaman Ross Heaven

bib:

file:///Users/stephanienevel/Downloads/Jean-Michel%20Basquiat%20A%20Biography%20(Eric%20Fretz)%20(z-lib.org).pdf Identity and Ideology in Haiti Mocombe, Paul C.;