Interethnic Interaction

"This paper explores the African presence within Edwidge Danticat’s debut novel, 'Breath, Eyes, Memory' (1994).  While for Danticat, a Haitian woman living and working in America, Africa might seem a distant concept, an underlying awareness of African ancestry, tradition, folklore and belief pervades this writer’s work.  Acknowledging the diasporic nature of this novel, I consider the significance and meanings of the literary allusions to Africa contained within the text.

How is Africa present in 'Breath, Eyes, Memory'?  What do representations of Africa reveal about contemporary African/Caribbean, and particularly Haitian attitudes towards the continent as the ancestral and cultural home?  In exploring the concept of Guinea as a spiritual home for black diasporic people, I ask: does Guinea exist within the contemporary diasporic imaginary as a symbolic representation of a lost African past?  In order to address these questions, my analysis will bring together different strands of Caribbean theory. Specifically I propose to consider Stuart Hall’s theoretical formulations towards the significance of Africa as the originary ancestral and cultural home, alongside literary criticism, considering Marie-Jose N’Zengou-Tayo and Patrick Samway’s close readings of 'Breath, Eyes, Memory' in light of Beverley Ormerod’s work on African traditions in the French Caribbean novel."

""The study of death, the afterlife, and related phenomena has long been of interest to anthropologists and religious studies scholars. Although such matters are of central human and cultural concern, Western academic approaches often rely on the juxtaposition between “our” rational and “their” irrational belief systems, and attempt to “explain away” or ignore emic interpretations with a subsequent loss of semantic density. A methodology for studying the afterlife and related phenomena based on cognitive, empathetic engagement involves adopting an emic interpretive lens in order to arrive at a “thick description” that does not shy away from aspects of experience outside the ethnographer's Weltanschauung. A discussion of the implications of adopting a dialogical, participative, open-minded approach to these aspects of human belief and practice are discussed in the context of case studies of spirit possession and reincarnation.

© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com""

"During a research at the maroon community of Sibaúma, southern coast of Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil), for the purpose of drafting a Technical Report of land restitution to the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform – INCRA - between 2006 and 2007, we noticed a singular situation of conflicts and contradictions concerning the affirmation of a collective identity. With the development of mass tourism, the multiple environmental degradation and increasing of real estate speculation, the families of the ‘heirs’ sold their land, integrating themselves  to the dynamics of the regional economy. The process of land restitution and the performance of officials have called the attention of investors, causing an open conflict among the group and forcing the ‘heirs’ to define themselves as “quilombolas” (“marrons”). We whish to present the different discourses that are “activated” in situations of confrontation and factionalism, and analyze the political aspects concerning the definitions of an ethnic identity, a territory and the ways of “sustainability” of the group that is facing contrastive models of development.
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