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The first full length study in English of a prolific Brazilian
writer engaged with the discourses of women's rights, education,
slavery, literary Indianism, political ideology and
nation-building. Nisia Floresta Brasileira Augusta (1810-85)
published prolifically in Brazil and Europe on the position of
women and other subjects central to Brazilian national identity
after independence. As such she is a hugely significant figure in
the development of women's writing and feminist discourse in
Brazil, yet this book is the first full length study of her work to
be published in English. Through a close analysis of the writer's
engagement with the discourses of women's rights, education,
slavery, literary Indianism, political ideology and
nation-building, this study challenges some of the more monolithic
constructions of the writer that still prevail in Brazilian
literary historiography. Beginning with a fresh analysis of
Floresta's writing on women, this book identifies the influences
and motivations that determined her stance and reassesses the
writer's position in Brazil's feminist canon. A consideration of
her participation in further social and political discourses
exposes the hagiographic and reductive nature of her definition as
an abolitionist and republican. It also reveals the problematic
intersections of gender, race and class in her work. In particular,
this study highlights the important part that patriotism plays in
shaping the writer's approach to these issues, indicating how the
patriotic rhetoric she consistently employs lends additional power
and influence to her work, but simultaneously curtails and distorts
the positions she adopts and the appeals she makes. Charlotte
Hammond Matthews is a Lecturer in Portuguese at the University of
Edinburgh.
Entangled Otherness explores the dynamics of cross-dressing and
gender performance in contemporary francophone Caribbean cultures
through a range of visual and textual media. Original in its
comparative focus on the islands of Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe
and their diasporic communities in France, this study reveals how
opaque strategies of crossing, mimicry and masquerade have enabled
resistance to the racialised, gendered and patriarchal
classifications of bodies that characterized Enlightenment thought
during the French transatlantic slave trade. It engages with
archival texts of pre-revolutionary Haiti to offer a historical
understanding of current constructions of Caribbean gender most
influenced by French colonial legacies. The author argues that
cross-dressing, as a form of 'self-fabrication', complicates
inherently entangled colonial binaries of identity and resists
France's paternalistic gaze. The book's multidisciplinary approach
to gender analysis weaves a dialogue between cross-cultural voices
garnered from textual and historical analysis, ethnographic
interviews and theoretical insight to foreground the continued need
to decolonize Eurocentric readings of gender identity in the
francophone and creolophone islands, and the Caribbean region more
generally. Works of art, film, photography, carnival, performance,
and dress, including depictions of fluid identities in the
binary-resistant Afro-Creole religion of Vodou, are examined using
contemporary performance, gender and social theory from within the
region. Entangled Otherness thus makes a unique and timely
contribution to the growing body of knowledge and debate in the
areas of gender, sexuality and the body in Caribbean Studies.
Entangled Otherness explores the dynamics of cross-dressing and
gender performance in contemporary francophone Caribbean cultures
through a range of visual and textual media. Original in its
comparative focus on the islands of Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe
and their diasporic communities in France, this study reveals how
opaque strategies of crossing, mimicry and masquerade have enabled
resistance to the racialised, gendered and patriarchal
classifications of bodies that characterized Enlightenment thought
during the French transatlantic slave trade. It engages with
archival texts of pre-revolutionary Haiti to offer a historical
understanding of current constructions of Caribbean gender most
influenced by French colonial legacies. The author argues that
cross-dressing, as a form of 'self-fabrication', complicates
inherently entangled colonial binaries of identity and resists
France's paternalistic gaze. The book's multidisciplinary approach
to gender analysis weaves a dialogue between cross-cultural voices
garnered from textual and historical analysis, ethnographic
interviews and theoretical insight to foreground the continued need
to decolonize Eurocentric readings of gender identity in the
francophone and creolophone islands, and the Caribbean region more
generally. Works of art, film, photography, carnival, performance,
and dress, including depictions of fluid identities in the
binary-resistant Afro-Creole religion of Vodou, are examined using
contemporary performance, gender and social theory from within the
region. Entangled Otherness thus makes a unique and timely
contribution to the growing body of knowledge and debate in the
areas of gender, sexuality and the body in Caribbean Studies.
One glaring lacuna in studies of Haitian Vodou is the scarcity of
works exploring the connection between the religion and its main
roots, traditional Yoruba religion. Discussions of Vodou very often
seem to present the religion in vacuo, as a sui generis phenomenon
that arose in Saint-Domingue and evolved in Haiti, with no
antecedents. What is sorely needed then is more comparative studies
of Haitian Vodou that would examine its connections to traditional
Yoruba religion and thus illuminate certain aspects of its
mythology, belief system, practices, and rituals. This book seeks
to bridge these gaps. Vodou in the Haitian Experience studies
comparatively the connections and relationships between Vodou and
African traditional religions such as Yoruba religion and Egyptian
religion. Such studies might enhance our understanding of the
religion, and the connections between Africa and its Diaspora
through shared religious patterns and practices. The general reader
should be mindful of the transnational and transcultural
perspectives of Vodou, as well as the cultural, socio-economic, and
political context which gave birth to different visions and ideas
of Vodou. The chapters in this collection tell a story about the
dynamics of the Vodou faith and the rich ways Vodou has molded the
Haitian narrative and psyche. The contributors of this book examine
this constructed narrative from a multicultural voice that engages
critically the discipline of ethnomusicology, drama, performance,
art, anthropology, ethnography, economics, literature, intellectual
history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, and theology.
Vodou is also studied from multiple theoretical approaches
including queer, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism,
postcolonial criticism, postmodernism, and psychoanalysis.
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