Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken | The City College of New York (original) (raw)
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Papers by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken
De Gruyter eBooks, May 21, 2024
Journal of Haitian studies, Mar 1, 2023
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2023
Journal of Material Culture, Nov 30, 2023
New West Indian Guide, 2016
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-No... more This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (cc-by-nc 3.0) License.
Routledge eBooks, Aug 12, 2021
Journal of Haitian studies, 2020
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Journal of Haitian studies, 2017
Shame & Guilt 46 The Museum Visits a Therapist Mirjam Linschooten (Visual Artist) & Sameer Farooq... more Shame & Guilt 46 The Museum Visits a Therapist Mirjam Linschooten (Visual Artist) & Sameer Farooq (Visual Artist) Shame & Guilt 55 How to Hold an Image Jue Yang (Writer & Filmmaker) Love & Compassion Inward Outward is an ongoing, iterative endeavour. The driving force behind the symposium series is the wish, and need, to critically engage with audiovisual archives of coloniality. This desire stems from the working practices of the organising team, with members who are employed (often) by institutions that have such collections under their 'care'. The first edition of Inward Outward, held in January 2020, was fuelled by a determination to engage with bodies of 'decolonial' knowledge and addressed the creation, acquisition, management and use of these archives within and beyond the walls of established institutions.
Social Anthropology, 2014
The Americas, 2018
of the narrative (83, 91, 102, 124). In this regard, the text keeps in step with the gender-consc... more of the narrative (83, 91, 102, 124). In this regard, the text keeps in step with the gender-conscious trend of modern Caribbean historiography. Alas, two fundamental claims of the text are problematic. The author asserts that his exploration of the major theme, surviving slavery, is disconnected from "the enslaved people's efforts to rebel, resist and wrest some measure of autonomy from their enslavers" (4). Yet he repeatedly underscores that they were frequently compelled to disobey and run away to lodge complaints because their masters "did everything possible to keep enslaved people from making complaints" (57). Indeed, the letter of the Berbice law legalized their actions, but in practice enslaved persons intentionally defied their masters in lodging complaints. The perspective, therefore, that complaints were separate from resistance is not sustained in the discourse. The final conclusion of the text is also a difficult pill. In reference to the lives of enslaved persons in Berbice, the author declares, "It was, in the end, a world at once utterly foreign and disconcertingly similar to our own" (194). The comparative similarity the author draws between the lives of servile laborers and our current milieu is unacceptable and disconcerting. Despite these two weaknesses, the sources of this study are solid. The thematic, geographical and chronological parameters are clearly established, the stylistic structure is consistent, and the text makes a unique and very interesting contribution to Caribbean historiography.
Largely ignored by scholars, Marie Chauvet’s Les Rapaces [The Raptors], written while in exile in... more Largely ignored by scholars, Marie Chauvet’s Les Rapaces [The Raptors], written while in exile in New York (1968-1973, published posthumously in 1989) combines genres – theater, fable, and romanesque prose – and in so doing presents the reader with protagonists from varying social categories: beggars, the urban poor, peasants, the new Duvalierist bourgeoisie, and of course the more long-standing bourgeoisie, from which Chauvet herself emerged. Léon-François Hoffmann identifies Chauvet’s hesitation to depict protagonists who emerge from social classes that are not her own, and explains that when she would, as in Fonds-des-Nègres (1960), she would do so by placing her typical character, a woman of middle or high social standing, to serve as a “spokesperson” [truchement] between the reader and the social class that she was depicting. The Raptors, differently from her previous prose, makes an unprecedented effort to explore how protagonists representative of social classes other than Chauvet’s might experience the oppressions of a despotic regime. Quite subtly the novella privileges the narrative voice of a child, as well as the non-human voice of a cat, both which in addition to the external narrator, attempt to depict the various ways in which many different ‘social types’ – including the perpetrators – experience suffering. Danticat writes, “But is all suffering equal, Marie Chauvet wonders, when the people who suffer are not considered equal?” At the heart of Danticat’s question is of course the notion of ‘human rights,’ whereby all humans, not just some humans should be protected from suffering. And, lurking in Danticat’s interrogation is the fact that Chauvet understood very well that not all groups of humans are considered equal. The proposition of this article is then to consider how The Raptors reflects the evolution of Chauvet’s thinking from an attention to the notion of ‘resistance,’ to a meditation on the relationship between ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘human rights.’
New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 2022
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0 license.
Journal of Africana Religions, 2022
New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 2019
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC 4.0 License.
Caribbean Jewish Crossings, 2019
De Gruyter eBooks, May 21, 2024
Journal of Haitian studies, Mar 1, 2023
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2023
Journal of Material Culture, Nov 30, 2023
New West Indian Guide, 2016
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-No... more This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (cc-by-nc 3.0) License.
Routledge eBooks, Aug 12, 2021
Journal of Haitian studies, 2020
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Journal of Haitian studies, 2017
Shame & Guilt 46 The Museum Visits a Therapist Mirjam Linschooten (Visual Artist) & Sameer Farooq... more Shame & Guilt 46 The Museum Visits a Therapist Mirjam Linschooten (Visual Artist) & Sameer Farooq (Visual Artist) Shame & Guilt 55 How to Hold an Image Jue Yang (Writer & Filmmaker) Love & Compassion Inward Outward is an ongoing, iterative endeavour. The driving force behind the symposium series is the wish, and need, to critically engage with audiovisual archives of coloniality. This desire stems from the working practices of the organising team, with members who are employed (often) by institutions that have such collections under their 'care'. The first edition of Inward Outward, held in January 2020, was fuelled by a determination to engage with bodies of 'decolonial' knowledge and addressed the creation, acquisition, management and use of these archives within and beyond the walls of established institutions.
Social Anthropology, 2014
The Americas, 2018
of the narrative (83, 91, 102, 124). In this regard, the text keeps in step with the gender-consc... more of the narrative (83, 91, 102, 124). In this regard, the text keeps in step with the gender-conscious trend of modern Caribbean historiography. Alas, two fundamental claims of the text are problematic. The author asserts that his exploration of the major theme, surviving slavery, is disconnected from "the enslaved people's efforts to rebel, resist and wrest some measure of autonomy from their enslavers" (4). Yet he repeatedly underscores that they were frequently compelled to disobey and run away to lodge complaints because their masters "did everything possible to keep enslaved people from making complaints" (57). Indeed, the letter of the Berbice law legalized their actions, but in practice enslaved persons intentionally defied their masters in lodging complaints. The perspective, therefore, that complaints were separate from resistance is not sustained in the discourse. The final conclusion of the text is also a difficult pill. In reference to the lives of enslaved persons in Berbice, the author declares, "It was, in the end, a world at once utterly foreign and disconcertingly similar to our own" (194). The comparative similarity the author draws between the lives of servile laborers and our current milieu is unacceptable and disconcerting. Despite these two weaknesses, the sources of this study are solid. The thematic, geographical and chronological parameters are clearly established, the stylistic structure is consistent, and the text makes a unique and very interesting contribution to Caribbean historiography.
Largely ignored by scholars, Marie Chauvet’s Les Rapaces [The Raptors], written while in exile in... more Largely ignored by scholars, Marie Chauvet’s Les Rapaces [The Raptors], written while in exile in New York (1968-1973, published posthumously in 1989) combines genres – theater, fable, and romanesque prose – and in so doing presents the reader with protagonists from varying social categories: beggars, the urban poor, peasants, the new Duvalierist bourgeoisie, and of course the more long-standing bourgeoisie, from which Chauvet herself emerged. Léon-François Hoffmann identifies Chauvet’s hesitation to depict protagonists who emerge from social classes that are not her own, and explains that when she would, as in Fonds-des-Nègres (1960), she would do so by placing her typical character, a woman of middle or high social standing, to serve as a “spokesperson” [truchement] between the reader and the social class that she was depicting. The Raptors, differently from her previous prose, makes an unprecedented effort to explore how protagonists representative of social classes other than Chauvet’s might experience the oppressions of a despotic regime. Quite subtly the novella privileges the narrative voice of a child, as well as the non-human voice of a cat, both which in addition to the external narrator, attempt to depict the various ways in which many different ‘social types’ – including the perpetrators – experience suffering. Danticat writes, “But is all suffering equal, Marie Chauvet wonders, when the people who suffer are not considered equal?” At the heart of Danticat’s question is of course the notion of ‘human rights,’ whereby all humans, not just some humans should be protected from suffering. And, lurking in Danticat’s interrogation is the fact that Chauvet understood very well that not all groups of humans are considered equal. The proposition of this article is then to consider how The Raptors reflects the evolution of Chauvet’s thinking from an attention to the notion of ‘resistance,’ to a meditation on the relationship between ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘human rights.’
New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 2022
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0 license.
Journal of Africana Religions, 2022
New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 2019
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC 4.0 License.
Caribbean Jewish Crossings, 2019