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“Keep alive the powers of Africa”: Katherine Dunham, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Deren, and the circum-Caribbean culture of Vodoun

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 5; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14788810802445099

1740-4649

Dorothea Fischer-Hornung,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

Abstract As the site of the first black republic and the center of the African diasporic culture of Vodoun, the island of Haiti undoubtedly plays a central role in the African American imaginary in multifaceted ways. Katherine Dunham, Zora Neale CitationHurston, and Maya Deren, each in turn, attempted to decipher the meaning of Vodoun and Hoodoo for the community of practitioners, for non-practitioners, as well as for themselves in the context of their lives as scholars and artists. Dunham's The Dance's of Haiti (1947) and Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1953) can be counted among founding texts on the anthropology and aesthetics of Vodoun. Zora Neale CitationHurston's work on the anthropology of the Caribbean led her to look closer to home and to explore Vodoun in Haiti and Hoodoo in Louisiana. Her Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938), as well as her publications in the Journal of American Anthropology, are among the first explorations in African American diasporic culture of Hoodoo, locating Louisiana's culture in the larger context of the Caribbean. CitationHurston declared New Orleans "the hoodoo capital of America" and determined that in Louisiana there are "great names in rites that vie with those of Haiti in deeds that keep alive the powers of Africa." This essay explores why African diasporic culture in the larger Caribbean was so powerfully attractive to Dunham and CitationHurston, both African Americans, and Deren, a Russian immigrant to the United States, as scholars and artists. Keywords: Maya DerenKatherine DunhamZora Neale HurstonVodounNew OrleansHaitiCaribbeanfilmaestheticsanthropology Notes 1. CitationDash, Haiti and the United States, 1–2. Dash's statement echoes Chinua Achebe's analysis of Africa as a "metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering Europeans enters at his peril." See "An Image of Africa". 2. Hurston, "Hoodoo in America," 317–417. 3. For a more detailed exploration of this relation see CitationFischer-Hornung, "'Facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.'" 4. CitationBrown, Davis, and Lee, The Negro Caravan. At this point in her career, her work was not based on fieldwork. As Dunham points out in the film In the Mirror of Maya CitationDeren, CitationDeren never credited Dunham, whose work she certainly knew. 5. Deren, The Divine Horseman: The Living Gods of Haiti and film: The Divine Horseman, edited and released by Cherel and Teiji Ito. 6. Benitez-Rojo, The Repeating Island, 21. 7. Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 32. 8. Wing in Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 217, note 1. Interestingly, Dunham points out that langage is also the word used for the language used during Vodoun ceremonies: "The songs were for the mort part in 'langage,' a mixture of pure African languages and dialects of the surviving tribal groupings represented in Haiti. The three major courses of slave origin in Africa terminating in Haiti were Dahomey, the Congo, and Nigeria. There were others, but most of the 'langage' contains words traceable to these three areas." Dunham, Island Possessed, 105. 9. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, 164. It is worth noting that Thompson recognizes the influence of Deren and Hurstonin his"Acknowledgements." 10. Blier, African Vodun, 204. 11. Blier, African Vodun, 235. 12. Dolby-Stahl, "Literary Objective: Hurston's use of personal narrative in Mules and Men," 47. 13. Domina, "'Protection in M Mouf,'" 199. 14. Boas, "Forward [sic]" to Hurston, Mules and Men. 15. CitationGordon, "The Politics of Ethnographic Authority." 16. See CitationMarcus, Ethnography through Thick and Thin and CitationClifford, The Predicament of Culture. 17. See CitationParezo, Hidden Scholars. 18. See CitationFischer-Hornung, "An Island Occupied." 19. Hurston, Tell My Horse, 347. 20. Loc. cit. 21. Dash, Haiti and the United States, 58. 22. See Rowe, "Opening the Gate to the Other America." 23. See CitationCronin, "Introduction: Going to the Far Horizon." 24. See CitationMikell, "When Horses Talk," 218–30. 25. Dutton, "The Problem of Invisibility," 133. 26. Mikell, "When Horses Talk," 229. 27. Dunham relates her experience during her own Caribbean research utilizing a similar mix of genres in her memoir, An Island Possessed (1969), three decades after her own research was completed and well after Hurston's Mules and Men and Tell my Horse. 28. Hurston, "Hoodoo in America," 396. 29. Hurston, Mules and Men, 208. 30. See CitationRamsey, "Melville CitationHerskovits, Katherine Dunham, and the Politics of African Diasporic Dance Anthropology." 31. Dunham, Island Possessed, 228. 32. Hurston, Tell My Horse, 295. 33. Hurston, Tell My Horse, 457. 34. Hurston, Tell My Horse, 469. 35. "Miss Hurston herself, unfortunately, did not go beyond the mass hysteria to verify her information, nor in any way attempt to make a scientific explanation of the case." CitationPrice-Mars, "The Story of Zombi in Haiti," 39. 36. Hurston, "Dance Songs and Tales from the Bahamas," 295. 37. Hurston, "Hoodoo in America," 318. 38. Dutton, "The Problem of Invisibility," 137. 39. CitationPavlic, "'Papa Legba,'" 81. 40. Hurston, "Hoodoo in America," 358. 41. See illustration by Miguel Covarrubias in Hurston, Mules and Men, 190. 42. This and the following quotes from correspondence between Melville Herskovits and Zora Neale Hurston are filed in the Melville J. Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University Archives. 43. The implication that authentic field research is based on spontaneous expressions of culture (such as a dance) with no encouragement (monetary or otherwise) by the ethnographer is interesting in and of itself. Hurston's positioning of herself as more experienced at the expense of Dunham throws more light, perhaps, on Hurston than it does on Dunham. 44. Hurston, "Thirty Days among Maroons," 20, sec VII. 45. Dunham, "Las Danzas de Haiti." 46. Levi-Strauss, "Introduction" to Dances of Haiti, xvi. 47. Levi-Strauss, "Introduction" to Dances of Haiti, xxiv. 48. The term "primitive" is used by Dunham throughout her research in the sense of "authentic." 49. Dunham, Dances of Haiti, xiv. 50. Dunham, "The Negro Dance," 991. 51. Dunham, "The Negro Dance," 992. 52. Rita Christiani, dancer and performer in a number of Deren's films, as well as being a close friend, comments on the "psychic nature" of the bond between them based on the fact that both of them had come to the United States at a very young age, Christiani from Trinidad, Deren from Russia. Christiani describes the confusion, the feeling of helplessness, and the terror of a child who is suddenly ripped from her roots and moved to a new place where everything, especially the language, is totally different. In the Mirror of Maya Deren, minute 33. 53. See Graham, Blood Memory. 54. For a detailed discussion of the concept of "Blood Memory" and its significance for modernist dance, see CitationManning, Modern Dance, Negro Dance, 179–222. 55. After the break-up of her parents' marriage, she attended boarding school in Geneva from 1930 to 1933; see CitationClark, Hodsen, and Neiman, The Legend of Maya Deren, 29–96. 56. After the break-up of her parents' marriage, she attended boarding school in Geneva from 1930 to 1933; see CitationClark, Hodsen, and Neiman, The Legend of Maya Deren, 230. Certainly, her intense political activism on the Left also contributed to her alienation in the conservative atmosphere of the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. 57. After the break-up of her parents' marriage, she attended boarding school in Geneva from 1930 to 1933; see CitationClark, Hodsen, and Neiman, The Legend of Maya Deren, 230. Certainly, her intense political activism on the Left also contributed to her alienation in the conservative atmosphere of the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, 473. 58. See Fischer, "'The Eye for Magic.'" 59. In the Mirror of Maya Deren, minute 65. 60. In the Mirror of Maya Deren, minute 69. 61. Clark, Hodsen, and Neiman, The Legend of Maya Deren, 201. 62. CitationMambo. 63. For a more detailed analysis of this scene, see CitationFischer-Hornung "The Body Possessed." 64. CitationRoach, "Bodies of Doctrine," 160.