the struggle for cultural citizenship

R E V I V I N G A F R O - C R E O L E D A N C E H E R I TA G E I N C O N T E M P O R A R Y M A R T I N I Q U E !C A M E E M A D D O X D O C T O R A L C A N D I D AT E U N I V. O F F L O R I D A

T H E S T R U G G L E F O R C U LT U R A L C I T I Z E N S H I P

M A R T I N I Q U E ( D O M )

• A département d’outre mèr, or an overseas department of France in the Caribbean

• French citizenship, administration, bureaucracy, economic development, and education

• Voting rights and parliamentary representation

Map of Caribbean

M A R T I N I Q U E ( D O M )

• A département d’outre mèr, or an overseas department of France in the Caribbean

• French citizenship, administration, bureaucracy, economic development, and education

• Voting rights and parliamentary representation

Map of Martinique

2 0 0 9 G E N E R A L S T R I K E I N M A R T I N I Q U E

K O L E K T I F 5 F E V R Y É

M A R T I N I C A N B È L È

E X I S T I N G S C H O L A R S H I P

• Bèlè revival as a “new social movement”

• Bèlè revival as a strategy for defending the island’s cultural heritage against exploitative touristic representations

• Bèlè revival as a space for creating a renewed sense of belonging

(Gerstin 2000; Cyrille 2002; Pulvar 2009)

M E T H O D O L O G Y

• 21 months of ethnographic field research, 2009 - 2014

• Open-ended interviews, semi-structured interviews, life history interviews, archival research & video elicitation

• Dance as participant-observation (Sklar 1991; Daniel 1995, 2005; Reed 1998; Buckland 1999)

C U LT U R A L C I T I Z E N S H I P

• “The right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community without compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic processes” (Rosaldo 1994:57).

!

• “those enactments and practices that forge a sense of community and belonging lead to renewed experiences of identity, and provide a social space for the formation of collective practice and its concomitant forms of power” (Flores 1997:125).

– C Y R I L L E B I S S E T T E , 1 8 4 9

“What are you doing, my friends? You behave like cannibals, like savages! The more I try to raise you up, the more you lower yourselves. You make me ashamed. Am I not a negro like you? Then do as I do, imitate the Whites! They alone will civilize you…What use is the drum? Don’t you see what the Whites use for their dances? Like them, use the violin. Then my daughters and I will come to your dances.”

C O M P E T I N G P E R S P E C T I V E S I N T H E B È L È M O V E M E N T

• POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF BÈLÈ

• RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL FUNCTIONS OF BÈLÈ

• TRANSGRESSIVE GENDER AND SEXUALITY PERFORMANCE

• BÈLÈ PEDAGOGY AND THE NATIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM