Andikape mobility: Haitian subjectivity at the juncture of disability,gender,and insecurity

Abstract

This article begins the study of the under-explored yet fundamental role of andikape (disability) mobility—the expression of subjectivity and the exercise of rights by the disabled—in Haitian history and society. It considers how recent tragic events in the Soud (Deaf) community fostered increased, collaborative mobilization of the moun andikape (the disabled) and related organizations to advocate for greater social inclusion, the securing of rights, and the expression of subjectivity. The article highlights the need to peel back the layers of systemic social insecurity that menace andikape mobility, as it also conducts intersectional analysis (disability, gender), focusing on the dispossessing states of insecurity that andikape women regularly experience.

Keywords

congenital disability Deaf Haiti human rights social inclusion violence women

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Association des Sourds de Lévèque, Haïti (ASLH) (n.d.). Available at: https://www.facebook.com/SourdsLeveque/ (accessed 14 December 2017).

Bellegarde-Smith

(2006) Broken mirrors: mythos, memories, and national history. In: Bellegarde-Smith

Michel

(eds) Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, and Reality. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 19–31.

Benedicty-Kokken

(2015) Spirit Possession in French, Haitian, and Vodou Thought: An Intellectual History. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.

Berberi

Flaugh

(2016) Introduction: disability in French and Francophone worlds. Disability in French and Francophone Worlds, Special Issue of Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 10(2): 129–137.

BSEIPH (2013) Haïti—Social: Les personnes handicapées ont participé au Carnaval. BSEIPH. Available at: http://www.seiph.gouv.ht/haiti-social-les-personnes-handicapees-ont-participe-au-carnaval/ (accessed 24 June 2016).

BSEIPH (2016) Une loi pour protéger les invalides de la guerre de l’indépendance. BSEIPH. Available at: http://www.seiph.gouv.ht/une-loi-pour-proteger-les-invalides-de-la-guerre-de-lindependance/ (accessed 22 June 2016).

Brueggeman

(2009) Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. New York: New York University Press.

Bureau du Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Intégration des Personnes Handicapées (BSEIPH) (n.d.). Available at: http://www.seiph.gouv.ht/ (accessed 26 March 2016).

Calvot

Rizk

Herlemont-Zoritchak

(2012) Nouveau regard sur le handicap: une belle manière de réinventer l’avenir. In: Rainhorn

J-D

(ed.) Haiti, Réinventer l’avenir. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme; Port-au-Prince: Editions de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti, pp. 237–250.

10.

Caple James

(2010) Democratic Insecurities: Violence, Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

11.

Casares

(2016) A community of deaf people in rural Haiti. Reuters, 2 September. Available at: https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/a-community-of-deaf-people-in-rural-haiti (accessed 15 December 2017).

12.

Césaire

(2016) Assassinat des trois sourdes-muettes: le secteur des personnes handicapées exige justice et réparations. Le Nouvelliste, 30 March. Available at: http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/157182/Assassinat-des-trois-sourdes-muettes%20%20%20Lesecteur-des-personnes-handicapees-exige-justice-et-reparations (accessed 6 June 2016).

13.

Chandler

(2012) Vote de la loi sur l’intégration des personnes handicapées. BSEIPH, 29 March. Available at: http://www.seiph.gouv.ht/vote-de-la-loi-sur-l%E2%80%99integration-des-personnes-handicapees/ (accessed 15 March 2016).

14.

Chapman

Durban-Albrecht

LaMothe

(2017) Nou mache ansanm (We walk together): queer Haitian performance and affiliation. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 27(2): 143–159.

15.

Chen

(2011) Figures of flight and entrapment in Edwidge Danticat’s “Krik? Krak!” Rocky Mountain Review 65: 36–55.

16.

Colbert

(2017) Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

17.

Dagneaux

(2012) Le corps du Sourd entre handicap, minorité culturelle et langage. University of Liège, séminaire des doctorants. Available at: http://www.ed1.ulg.ac.be/sd/textes/20121123-Dagneaux.pdf (accessed 28 December 2017).

18.

Désir

(2016) Haïti: Des centaines de personnes défilent pour exiger justice en faveur de 3 femmes sourdes-muettes assassinées. AlterPresse, 2 April. Available at: http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article19939#.V2HTWGQrK2w (accessed 6 June 2016).

19.

Desmangles

(1992) The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

20.

Dubois

(2004) Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

21.

Duval-Carrié

(2014) Little crippled Haiti. Radio Haiti. Available at: http://radiohaitilives.com/little-crippled-haiti-edouard-duval-carrie/ (accessed 20 April 2018).

22.

Faedi Duramy

(2014) Gender and Violence in Haiti: Women’s Path from Victims to Agents. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

23.

Flaugh

(2010) Of colonized mind and matter: the dis/abilities of Negritude in Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Disabling Postcolonialism, Special Issue of Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4(3): 291–309.

24.

Flaugh

(2012) Operation Freak: Narrative, Identity, and the Spectrum of Bodily Abilities. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

25.

Flaugh

(2013) Crossings and complexities of gender in Guadeloupe and Martinique: reflections on French Caribbean Expressions. L’esprit Créateur 53(1): 45–59.

26.

Frick

(1990) The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution From Below. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.

27.

Gardou

(2010) Introduction: le handicap dans le grand livre des cultures. In: Gardou

(eds) Le handicap au risque des cultures: Variations anthropologiques. Toulouse: Erès, pp. 9–24.

28.

Glover

(2017) “Flesh like one’s own”: benign denials of legitimate complaint. Public Culture 29(282): 235–260.

29.

Goffman

(1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.

30.

Gorman

(2010) Empire of rights: the convergence of neoliberal governance, “states of exception,” and the disability rights movement. In: Kolářová

(ed.) Crippling Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism(s). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (forthcoming). Available at: http://womenscentre.sa.utoronto.ca/files/2012/08/Gorman-2010-1.pdf (consulted 1 April 2016).

31.

Haiti Libre (2012) Haiti—social: the right of persons with disabilities to the [sic] social inclusion, enshrined in the law of March 13. Available at: http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-5278-haiti-social-the-right-of-persons-with-disabilities-to-the-social-inclusion-enshrined-in-the-law-of-march-13-2012.html (accessed 15 March 2016).

32.

Haiti Libre (2016) Haïti—FLASH: 3 femmes handicapées assassinées. Haiti Libre. Available at: http://www.haitilibre.com/article-16982-haiti-flash-3-femmes-handicapees-assassinees.html (accessed 6 June 2016).

33.

Hewett

(2006) At the crossroads: disability and trauma in The Farming of Bones. MELUS 31(3): 123–145.

34.

Institut Montfort pour enfants sourds (n.d.) Filles de la Sagesse. Available at: http://www.fdlsagesse.org/cms/article-463-FR-haiti-institut-montfort-benediction-du-nouveau-batiment.html (accessed 1 June 2017).

35.

Jean-Charles

(2014) Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

36.

Leach

(2016) Murder of three deaf women in Haiti must be a starting point for change. The Guardian, 18 July. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/jul/18/three-deaf-women-murdered-haiti-change-disabled-people (accessed 15 December 2017).

37.

Le Code noir (2010). Available at: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Code_noir/1685 (accessed 23 June 2016).

38.

Louis

(2015) Gérald Oriol Junior au-delà de tout handicap. Le Nouvelliste, 2 February. Available at: http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/153181/Gerald-Oriol-Junior-au-dela-de-tout-handicap (accessed 23 June 2017).

39.

McFadden

(2016) Slaying of 3 deaf women in Haiti highlights vulnerability. Associated Press, 25 April. Available at: https://apnews.com/5c6a12a592dc426fa56ba89da0f23e54/slaying-3-deaf-women-haiti-highlights-vulnerability (accessed 15 December 2017).

40.

McRuer

(2010) Reflections on disability in Haiti. Disabling Postcolonialism, Special Issue of Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4(3): 327–332.

41.

Merceus

(2014) People with disabilities take their destiny in hand at Lavalois. Trans. Viard

Stefan

. Le Nouvelliste, 21 November. Available at: http://lenouvelliste.com/public/index.php/article/138367/people-with-disabilities-take-their-destiny-in-hand-at-lilavois (accessed 19 December 2017).

42.

Métraux

(1958) Le vaudou haïtien. Paris: Gallimard.

43.

Migraine-George

(2014) From Masisi to activists: same-sex relations and the Haitian polity. Journal of Haitian Studies 20(1): 8–33.

44.

Mission of Hope Haiti (n.d.) Vision, mission, and resolutions. Mission of Hope Haiti. Available at: https://mohhaiti.org/vision_mission_resolution (18 December 2017).

45.

N’Zengou-Tayo

M-J

(2000) Rewriting folklore: traditional beliefs and popular culture in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak! Macomère: Journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars 3: 123–140.

46.

Olmos

Paravisini-Gebert

(2003) Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo. New York: New York University Press.

47.

Phillips

(2011) Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

48.

Quayson

(2007) Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press.

49.

Ramsey

(2011) The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

50.

Schuller

(2015) “Pa manyen fanm nan konsa”: intersectionality, structural violence, and vulnerability before and after Haiti’s earthquake. Feminist Studies 41(1): 184–210.

51.

Se pa posib Bokse pou soti (2016) Pote Kole 284, SHAA with Michael A Péan. YouTube, 1 April. Mission des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH) (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtpgKvOzmhI (accessed 3 April 2016).

52.

Shakespeare

(2016) The social model of disability. In: Davis

(ed.) The Disability Studies Reader (5th edn). New York: Routledge, pp. 195–203.

53.

Société Haïtienne d’Aide aux Aveugles (SHAA) (n.d.). Available at: http://www.seiph.gouv.ht/societe-haitienne-d%E2%80%99aide-aux-aveugles-shaa/ (accessed 18 October 2017).

54.

Stiker

H-J

(1982) Corps infirmes et sociétés: Essais d’anthropologie historique (3rd edn). Paris: Aubier Montaigne Dunod.

55.

The Black Code (2012). Translated by John Garrigus (2012). Available at: http://www2.latech.edu/~bmagee/louisiana_anthology/texts/louis_xiv/louis_xiv–code_noir_english.html (accessed 23 June 2016).

56.

Tinsley

(2018) Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

57.

Trouillot

M-R

(1990) State against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review.

58.

Ulysse

(2015) Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

59.

Union des Femmes à Mobilité Réduite d’Haïti (UFMORH) (n.d.) Available at: https://www.facebook.com/Ufmorh/ (accessed 18 December 2017).