Valerie Kaussen | University of Missouri Columbia (original) (raw)
Papers by Valerie Kaussen
Research in African Literatures, 2004
... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accrou... more ... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accroupie devant sa case [. . ... might correspond with rather than oppose postcolonial notions of Caribbean creolization, marking a productive detour on the path to the ... La Revue Indigène 3 (1927). Rpt. ...
... Similarly, Maurice Casseus's poem" Colored" (1933), 11 imagines th... more ... Similarly, Maurice Casseus's poem" Colored" (1933), 11 imagines the African heritage as a solidified biological bur-den: the" heavy milk of atavism" and the" slow drip of ancestral blood." Images of history ... 74 4$ VALERIE KAUSSEN slavery the mark of the authentically Haitian. ...
The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, Jan 28, 2016
Nacla Report On The Americas, Nov 1, 2011
... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugura... more ... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugurated the first issue indeed stated that the message the paper has to offer tent camp residents is one of taking care of yourself. It is a fitting way to usher in an ... 10. Hinda Seif, Wise Up! ...
Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Nov 1, 2009
This article analyzes the topic of dictatorship, political violence, and popular struggle in two ... more This article analyzes the topic of dictatorship, political violence, and popular struggle in two recent works that treat the rise and fall of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Alex Dupuy’s The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti and Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment. In discussing these works, I interrogate the extent to which traditional categories of liberal political analysis, democracy, national sovereignty, consensus, popular struggle, rule of law, as well as their putative opposites, dictatorship and terror—must be seen as situated categories, at best only relevant to the conditions of the United States and Europe, and, at worst, part of ideologies that justify the continued global economic and political dominance of the West. Taking Dupuy and Hallward's books as two case studies, I show the ways that these authors' disagreements over Aristide's relationship to violence and popular struggle are inseparable from the methods and categories that each applies to his subject.
New West Indian Guide, 2015
Choice Reviews Online, Aug 1, 2008
Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-gl... more Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-globalization_politics. Positing a materialist and historicized account of Haitian literary modernity, it traces the themes of slavery, labor migration, diaspora, and revolution in works by Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Author Valerie Kaussen argues that the sociocultural effects of U.S. imperialism have renewed and expanded the relevance of the universal political ideals that informed Haiti's eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization. Finally, Migrant Revolutions defines Haitian literary modernity as located at the forefront of the struggles against transnational empire and global colonialism.
Francosphères (Print), Aug 1, 2015
Shortly following the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake, humanitarian communications specialists hai... more Shortly following the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake, humanitarian communications specialists hailed a ‘new culture’ in disaster relief, one enabled by advances in new communications technology. The latter, they argued, were poised drastically to transform practices of rescue and aid. In this article, I argue that this ‘new culture’ should be seen as a mass phenomenon as it extended well beyond the professional humanitarian community to include average internet-users of the Global North. US users not only accessed a wealth of digitized (most often visual) material from the quake zone, but they were also encouraged to participate in the relief effort by downloading fund-raising kits, making digital donations, or merely following and ‘liking’ their favourite aid organizations. I argue that post-quake digital advocacy and action functioned as affective or immaterial labour, the unpaid work of communicating messages, ideologies, and knowledges, and of producing bio-power. As such, I suggest that, following th...
Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-gl... more Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-globalization_politics. Positing a materialist and historicized account of Haitian literary modernity, it traces the themes of slavery, labor migration, diaspora, and revolution in works by Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Author Valerie Kaussen argues that the sociocultural effects of U.S. imperialism have renewed and expanded the relevance of the universal political ideals that informed Haiti's eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization. Finally, Migrant Revolutions defines Haitian literary modernity as located at the forefront of the struggles against transnational empire and global colonialism.
In 1915 the U.S. military invaded Haiti citing as its excuse a particularly bloody coup d’etat. F... more In 1915 the U.S. military invaded Haiti citing as its excuse a particularly bloody coup d’etat. For several weeks prior to the invasion, U.S. navy boats anchored off Haiti’s coast awaited the right moment to disembark their marines and gain a foothold in the unstable nation lying too close for comfort to U.S. shores. As most historians note, the goal of the occupation was to rid the island of European influence—especially German and French—and to set up the minimum required infrastructure to assure a safe location for U.S. investment. The U.S. marines took over all customs receipts, rewrote the constitution after a rigged plebiscite to allow for foreign ownership of land and industries, and established martial law, using very undemocratic techniques in the effort to force Haiti along the road to stable “modern” nationhood.
The Haiti Exception, 2016
This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communi... more This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communication in a post-disaster moment. I begin by reflecting on my personal experience as a foreign academic and would-be aid volunteer/activist in Port-au-Prince in the year following the January 2010 earthquake. The chapter begins with my involvement in a housing rights activist coalition that staged "manifestations culturelles" to mobilize internally displaced persons and inform them of their basic rights to housing under the Haitian constitution. The chapter compares this model of information dissemination, organized in various tent cities as part of the educational and activist aims of the housing rights coalition, to similar cultural and educational programs produced by international aid organizations and performed in some of the same tent camps. Contrary to the Coalition's emphasis on education and the promotion of civic knowledge among Haitians, and especially the Haitian poor, as critical to altering the dire conditions in Haiti's tent cities, international organizations' counseled tent-camp residents to remain docile, patient, and to trust that international authorities are there to help. In the case of the international organizations, tent camp residents were often treated to PSA films that counseled skepticism (regarding information not originating in a "trusted source," i.e., the "authorities," or the international organizations themselves), and the power of volunteerism, personal responsibility and entrepreneurialism to address the problems faced day-to-day in the camps: a lack of tarps and tents; inadequate and unclean water; joblessness, etc. Further, such, PSA films tended to target Haiti's youth and younger generations, those who possess class aspirations, by including youthful characters (like "Ti-Joel"), a rational child who energetically disseminates through word of mouth "life-saving" information about cholera prevention. He heroically communications this information to backwards, impoverished and illiterate older subjects, who are engaged in traditional and "dangerous" activities, like the informal economic (and highly "unsanitary") exchanges of street food and the practice of vodou. In addition, older generations of Haitian middle-class men, despite their class position, are represented in other PSA films, as equally dangerous as their working class counterparts: their refusal to engage in new forms of communication (rational debate; waiting for "good information" from authorities before making a decision) and their belief in fact not-so-"outlandish" conspiracy theories and rumors (which aren't very outlandish at all), their regular attempts to show parallels between the present and the past in Haitian history, and finally their mistrust of "white" authorities, must be swiftly disciplined and defused. Family members and friends take on this "work" by telling these "difficult old men," that they should "shut up," since their irrationality and irritability disrupt the groups' otherwise smooth processing of information "input" and their determining of the proper "output" for the situation. This chapter ultimately shows, then, how humanitarian organizations working in Haiti in 2010 and following relied as much on media technologies, like radio and cell phones, as they did on Haitian "teledjol" or word of mouth. As such, Haitians themselves were marshaled into the systems of governmentality of the post-Earthquake period that accompanied other more overt forms of crowd control; they thus provided immaterial (and thus un-remunerated) forms of labor necessary to maintaining social control and dominance over the increasingly restless population of 1.5 million displaced people.
NACLA Report on the Americas, 2011
... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugura... more ... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugurated the first issue indeed stated that the message the paper has to offer tent camp residents is one of taking care of yourself. It is a fitting way to usher in an ... 10. Hinda Seif, Wise Up! ...
The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, 2000
Research in African Literatures, 2004
... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accrou... more ... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accroupie devant sa case [. . ... might correspond with rather than oppose postcolonial notions of Caribbean creolization, marking a productive detour on the path to the ... La Revue Indigène 3 (1927). Rpt. ...
Monthly Review, 2011
This article argues, in reference to Giorgio Agamben's discussion of 'the camp&am... more This article argues, in reference to Giorgio Agamben's discussion of 'the camp' as the most representative political space of our time, that IDP camps in post-earthquake Haiti were “states of exception” that risked becoming permanent fixtures of Haiti's social and material landscapes. Based on author interviews and numerous visits to IDP camps in and around Port-au-Prince throughout 2010 and 2011, I argue that Haiti's IDP camps functioned as extra-legal entities, with their residents stripped de facto of their rights and status as citizens. Further, the article explores the humanitarian community's "camp management" system as a neoliberal mode of governance, in which public services are a privilege rather than a right and contracted are out to quasi-private entities.
The Haiti Exception: Anthropology and the Predicament of Narrative, ed. Benedicty-Kokken, Glover, Schuller, Byron, 2016
This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communication ... more This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communication in a post-disaster moment. I begin by reflecting on my personal experience as a foreign academic and would-be aid volunteer/activist in Port-au-Prince in the year following the January 2010 earthquake. The chapter begins with my involvement in a housing rights activist coalition that staged "manifestations culturelles" to mobilize internally displaced persons and inform them of their basic rights to housing under the Haitian constitution. The chapter compares this model of information dissemination, organized in various tent cities as part of the educational and activist aims of the housing rights coalition, to similar cultural and educational programs produced by international aid organizations and performed in some of the same tent camps. Contrary to the Coalition's emphasis on education and the promotion of civic knowledge among Haitians, and especially the Haitian poor, as critical to altering the dire conditions in Haiti's tent cities, international organizations' counseled tent-camp residents to remain docile, patient, and to trust that international authorities are there to help. In the case of the international organizations, tent camp residents were often treated to PSA films that counseled skepticism (regarding information not originating in a "trusted source," i.e., the "authorities," or the international organizations themselves), and the power of volunteerism, personal responsibility and entrepreneurialism to address the problems faced day-to-day in the camps: a lack of tarps and tents; inadequate and unclean water; joblessness, etc. Further, such, PSA films tended to target Haiti's youth and younger generations, those who possess class aspirations, by including youthful characters (like "Ti-Joel"), a rational child who energetically disseminates through word of mouth "life-saving" information about cholera prevention. He heroically communications this information to backwards, impoverished and illiterate older subjects, who are engaged in traditional and "dangerous" activities, like the informal economic (and highly "unsanitary") exchanges of street food and the practice of vodou. In addition, older generations of Haitian middle-class men, despite their class position, are represented in other PSA films, as equally dangerous as their working class counterparts: their refusal to engage in new forms of communication (rational debate; waiting for "good information" from authorities before making a decision) and their belief in fact not-so-"outlandish" conspiracy theories and rumors (which aren't very outlandish at all), their regular attempts to show parallels between the present and the past in Haitian history, and finally their mistrust of "white" authorities, must be swiftly disciplined and defused. Family members and friends take on this "work" by telling these "difficult old men," that they should "shut up," since their irrationality and irritability disrupt the groups' otherwise smooth processing of information "input" and their determining of the proper "output" for the situation. This chapter ultimately shows, then, how humanitarian organizations working in Haiti in 2010 and following relied as much on media technologies, like radio and cell phones, as they did on Haitian "teledjol" or word of mouth. As such, Haitians themselves were marshaled into the systems of governmentality of the post-Earthquake period that accompanied other more overt forms of crowd control; they thus provided immaterial (and thus un-remunerated) forms of labor necessary to maintaining social control and dominance over the increasingly restless population of 1.5 million displaced people.
Social and Economic Studies, 2015
This article examines as 'virtual disaster tourism' the US-internet public's mass consumption of ... more This article examines as 'virtual disaster tourism' the US-internet public's mass consumption of digitized images of, and their virtual participation in, the humanitarian response to the destruction wrought by the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake. Combining John Urry's concept of "the tourist gaze" with Mimi Sheller's theory of "uneven disaster mobilities," the article argues that the concept of virtual disaster tourism shows how mobility inequality is performed in the relationship between virtual tourists and the objects of their gaze; immobilized, they become spectacles in the touristic search for authentic connection with 'the other.' Ultimately, I argue that new media technologies (largely inaccessible to the Haitian majority, especially following a disaster), while sometimes perpetuating longstanding stereotypes of Haitian 'otherness,' are more noteworthy for revealing emergent fantasies in which the authentic 'other' becomes disaster itself, as well as the immobile and contained Haitian as "victim."
Research in African Literatures, 2004
... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accrou... more ... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accroupie devant sa case [. . ... might correspond with rather than oppose postcolonial notions of Caribbean creolization, marking a productive detour on the path to the ... La Revue Indigène 3 (1927). Rpt. ...
... Similarly, Maurice Casseus's poem" Colored" (1933), 11 imagines th... more ... Similarly, Maurice Casseus's poem" Colored" (1933), 11 imagines the African heritage as a solidified biological bur-den: the" heavy milk of atavism" and the" slow drip of ancestral blood." Images of history ... 74 4$ VALERIE KAUSSEN slavery the mark of the authentically Haitian. ...
The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, Jan 28, 2016
Nacla Report On The Americas, Nov 1, 2011
... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugura... more ... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugurated the first issue indeed stated that the message the paper has to offer tent camp residents is one of taking care of yourself. It is a fitting way to usher in an ... 10. Hinda Seif, Wise Up! ...
Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Nov 1, 2009
This article analyzes the topic of dictatorship, political violence, and popular struggle in two ... more This article analyzes the topic of dictatorship, political violence, and popular struggle in two recent works that treat the rise and fall of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide: Alex Dupuy’s The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti and Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment. In discussing these works, I interrogate the extent to which traditional categories of liberal political analysis, democracy, national sovereignty, consensus, popular struggle, rule of law, as well as their putative opposites, dictatorship and terror—must be seen as situated categories, at best only relevant to the conditions of the United States and Europe, and, at worst, part of ideologies that justify the continued global economic and political dominance of the West. Taking Dupuy and Hallward's books as two case studies, I show the ways that these authors' disagreements over Aristide's relationship to violence and popular struggle are inseparable from the methods and categories that each applies to his subject.
New West Indian Guide, 2015
Choice Reviews Online, Aug 1, 2008
Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-gl... more Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-globalization_politics. Positing a materialist and historicized account of Haitian literary modernity, it traces the themes of slavery, labor migration, diaspora, and revolution in works by Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Author Valerie Kaussen argues that the sociocultural effects of U.S. imperialism have renewed and expanded the relevance of the universal political ideals that informed Haiti's eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization. Finally, Migrant Revolutions defines Haitian literary modernity as located at the forefront of the struggles against transnational empire and global colonialism.
Francosphères (Print), Aug 1, 2015
Shortly following the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake, humanitarian communications specialists hai... more Shortly following the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake, humanitarian communications specialists hailed a ‘new culture’ in disaster relief, one enabled by advances in new communications technology. The latter, they argued, were poised drastically to transform practices of rescue and aid. In this article, I argue that this ‘new culture’ should be seen as a mass phenomenon as it extended well beyond the professional humanitarian community to include average internet-users of the Global North. US users not only accessed a wealth of digitized (most often visual) material from the quake zone, but they were also encouraged to participate in the relief effort by downloading fund-raising kits, making digital donations, or merely following and ‘liking’ their favourite aid organizations. I argue that post-quake digital advocacy and action functioned as affective or immaterial labour, the unpaid work of communicating messages, ideologies, and knowledges, and of producing bio-power. As such, I suggest that, following th...
Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-gl... more Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-globalization_politics. Positing a materialist and historicized account of Haitian literary modernity, it traces the themes of slavery, labor migration, diaspora, and revolution in works by Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Author Valerie Kaussen argues that the sociocultural effects of U.S. imperialism have renewed and expanded the relevance of the universal political ideals that informed Haiti's eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization. Finally, Migrant Revolutions defines Haitian literary modernity as located at the forefront of the struggles against transnational empire and global colonialism.
In 1915 the U.S. military invaded Haiti citing as its excuse a particularly bloody coup d’etat. F... more In 1915 the U.S. military invaded Haiti citing as its excuse a particularly bloody coup d’etat. For several weeks prior to the invasion, U.S. navy boats anchored off Haiti’s coast awaited the right moment to disembark their marines and gain a foothold in the unstable nation lying too close for comfort to U.S. shores. As most historians note, the goal of the occupation was to rid the island of European influence—especially German and French—and to set up the minimum required infrastructure to assure a safe location for U.S. investment. The U.S. marines took over all customs receipts, rewrote the constitution after a rigged plebiscite to allow for foreign ownership of land and industries, and established martial law, using very undemocratic techniques in the effort to force Haiti along the road to stable “modern” nationhood.
The Haiti Exception, 2016
This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communi... more This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communication in a post-disaster moment. I begin by reflecting on my personal experience as a foreign academic and would-be aid volunteer/activist in Port-au-Prince in the year following the January 2010 earthquake. The chapter begins with my involvement in a housing rights activist coalition that staged "manifestations culturelles" to mobilize internally displaced persons and inform them of their basic rights to housing under the Haitian constitution. The chapter compares this model of information dissemination, organized in various tent cities as part of the educational and activist aims of the housing rights coalition, to similar cultural and educational programs produced by international aid organizations and performed in some of the same tent camps. Contrary to the Coalition's emphasis on education and the promotion of civic knowledge among Haitians, and especially the Haitian poor, as critical to altering the dire conditions in Haiti's tent cities, international organizations' counseled tent-camp residents to remain docile, patient, and to trust that international authorities are there to help. In the case of the international organizations, tent camp residents were often treated to PSA films that counseled skepticism (regarding information not originating in a "trusted source," i.e., the "authorities," or the international organizations themselves), and the power of volunteerism, personal responsibility and entrepreneurialism to address the problems faced day-to-day in the camps: a lack of tarps and tents; inadequate and unclean water; joblessness, etc. Further, such, PSA films tended to target Haiti's youth and younger generations, those who possess class aspirations, by including youthful characters (like "Ti-Joel"), a rational child who energetically disseminates through word of mouth "life-saving" information about cholera prevention. He heroically communications this information to backwards, impoverished and illiterate older subjects, who are engaged in traditional and "dangerous" activities, like the informal economic (and highly "unsanitary") exchanges of street food and the practice of vodou. In addition, older generations of Haitian middle-class men, despite their class position, are represented in other PSA films, as equally dangerous as their working class counterparts: their refusal to engage in new forms of communication (rational debate; waiting for "good information" from authorities before making a decision) and their belief in fact not-so-"outlandish" conspiracy theories and rumors (which aren't very outlandish at all), their regular attempts to show parallels between the present and the past in Haitian history, and finally their mistrust of "white" authorities, must be swiftly disciplined and defused. Family members and friends take on this "work" by telling these "difficult old men," that they should "shut up," since their irrationality and irritability disrupt the groups' otherwise smooth processing of information "input" and their determining of the proper "output" for the situation. This chapter ultimately shows, then, how humanitarian organizations working in Haiti in 2010 and following relied as much on media technologies, like radio and cell phones, as they did on Haitian "teledjol" or word of mouth. As such, Haitians themselves were marshaled into the systems of governmentality of the post-Earthquake period that accompanied other more overt forms of crowd control; they thus provided immaterial (and thus un-remunerated) forms of labor necessary to maintaining social control and dominance over the increasingly restless population of 1.5 million displaced people.
NACLA Report on the Americas, 2011
... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugura... more ... and even self-help, as one sympathetic observer describes it.3 The edito-rial that inaugurated the first issue indeed stated that the message the paper has to offer tent camp residents is one of taking care of yourself. It is a fitting way to usher in an ... 10. Hinda Seif, Wise Up! ...
The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, 2000
Research in African Literatures, 2004
... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accrou... more ... And Délira, herself seems to resemble the dry earth: "[L]a vieille Délira est accroupie devant sa case [. . ... might correspond with rather than oppose postcolonial notions of Caribbean creolization, marking a productive detour on the path to the ... La Revue Indigène 3 (1927). Rpt. ...
Monthly Review, 2011
This article argues, in reference to Giorgio Agamben's discussion of 'the camp&am... more This article argues, in reference to Giorgio Agamben's discussion of 'the camp' as the most representative political space of our time, that IDP camps in post-earthquake Haiti were “states of exception” that risked becoming permanent fixtures of Haiti's social and material landscapes. Based on author interviews and numerous visits to IDP camps in and around Port-au-Prince throughout 2010 and 2011, I argue that Haiti's IDP camps functioned as extra-legal entities, with their residents stripped de facto of their rights and status as citizens. Further, the article explores the humanitarian community's "camp management" system as a neoliberal mode of governance, in which public services are a privilege rather than a right and contracted are out to quasi-private entities.
The Haiti Exception: Anthropology and the Predicament of Narrative, ed. Benedicty-Kokken, Glover, Schuller, Byron, 2016
This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communication ... more This chapter compares Haitian activist and international organizations' models of communication in a post-disaster moment. I begin by reflecting on my personal experience as a foreign academic and would-be aid volunteer/activist in Port-au-Prince in the year following the January 2010 earthquake. The chapter begins with my involvement in a housing rights activist coalition that staged "manifestations culturelles" to mobilize internally displaced persons and inform them of their basic rights to housing under the Haitian constitution. The chapter compares this model of information dissemination, organized in various tent cities as part of the educational and activist aims of the housing rights coalition, to similar cultural and educational programs produced by international aid organizations and performed in some of the same tent camps. Contrary to the Coalition's emphasis on education and the promotion of civic knowledge among Haitians, and especially the Haitian poor, as critical to altering the dire conditions in Haiti's tent cities, international organizations' counseled tent-camp residents to remain docile, patient, and to trust that international authorities are there to help. In the case of the international organizations, tent camp residents were often treated to PSA films that counseled skepticism (regarding information not originating in a "trusted source," i.e., the "authorities," or the international organizations themselves), and the power of volunteerism, personal responsibility and entrepreneurialism to address the problems faced day-to-day in the camps: a lack of tarps and tents; inadequate and unclean water; joblessness, etc. Further, such, PSA films tended to target Haiti's youth and younger generations, those who possess class aspirations, by including youthful characters (like "Ti-Joel"), a rational child who energetically disseminates through word of mouth "life-saving" information about cholera prevention. He heroically communications this information to backwards, impoverished and illiterate older subjects, who are engaged in traditional and "dangerous" activities, like the informal economic (and highly "unsanitary") exchanges of street food and the practice of vodou. In addition, older generations of Haitian middle-class men, despite their class position, are represented in other PSA films, as equally dangerous as their working class counterparts: their refusal to engage in new forms of communication (rational debate; waiting for "good information" from authorities before making a decision) and their belief in fact not-so-"outlandish" conspiracy theories and rumors (which aren't very outlandish at all), their regular attempts to show parallels between the present and the past in Haitian history, and finally their mistrust of "white" authorities, must be swiftly disciplined and defused. Family members and friends take on this "work" by telling these "difficult old men," that they should "shut up," since their irrationality and irritability disrupt the groups' otherwise smooth processing of information "input" and their determining of the proper "output" for the situation. This chapter ultimately shows, then, how humanitarian organizations working in Haiti in 2010 and following relied as much on media technologies, like radio and cell phones, as they did on Haitian "teledjol" or word of mouth. As such, Haitians themselves were marshaled into the systems of governmentality of the post-Earthquake period that accompanied other more overt forms of crowd control; they thus provided immaterial (and thus un-remunerated) forms of labor necessary to maintaining social control and dominance over the increasingly restless population of 1.5 million displaced people.
Social and Economic Studies, 2015
This article examines as 'virtual disaster tourism' the US-internet public's mass consumption of ... more This article examines as 'virtual disaster tourism' the US-internet public's mass consumption of digitized images of, and their virtual participation in, the humanitarian response to the destruction wrought by the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake. Combining John Urry's concept of "the tourist gaze" with Mimi Sheller's theory of "uneven disaster mobilities," the article argues that the concept of virtual disaster tourism shows how mobility inequality is performed in the relationship between virtual tourists and the objects of their gaze; immobilized, they become spectacles in the touristic search for authentic connection with 'the other.' Ultimately, I argue that new media technologies (largely inaccessible to the Haitian majority, especially following a disaster), while sometimes perpetuating longstanding stereotypes of Haitian 'otherness,' are more noteworthy for revealing emergent fantasies in which the authentic 'other' becomes disaster itself, as well as the immobile and contained Haitian as "victim."