Not available to order
Publication date:
22 August 2013Length of book:
254 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739173626
Margaret Mitchell Armand presents a cutting edge interdisciplinary terrain inside an indigenous exploration of her homeland. Her contribution to the historiography of Haïtian Vodou demonstrates the struggle for its recognition in Haïti’s post-independence phase as well as its continued misunderstanding. Through a methodological, original study of the colonial culture of slavery and its dehumanization, Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou Traditions examines the sociocultural and economic oppression stemming from the local and international derived politics and religious economic oppression.
While concentrating the narratives on stories of indigenous elites educated in the western traditions, Armand moves pass the variables of race to locate the historical conjuncture at the root of the persistent Haïtian national division. Supported by scholarships of indigenous studies and current analysis, she elucidates how a false consciousness can be overcome to reclaim cultural identity and pride, and include a sociocultural, national educational program, and political platform that embraces traditional needs in a global context of mutual respect. While shredding the western adages, and within an indigenous model of understanding, this book purposefully brings forth the struggle of the African people in Haïti.
While concentrating the narratives on stories of indigenous elites educated in the western traditions, Armand moves pass the variables of race to locate the historical conjuncture at the root of the persistent Haïtian national division. Supported by scholarships of indigenous studies and current analysis, she elucidates how a false consciousness can be overcome to reclaim cultural identity and pride, and include a sociocultural, national educational program, and political platform that embraces traditional needs in a global context of mutual respect. While shredding the western adages, and within an indigenous model of understanding, this book purposefully brings forth the struggle of the African people in Haïti.
Healing in the Homeland is a compelling Haitian story of conflict resolution and of decolonization. It is a narrative of the epistemological, ontological, pedagogical and psychological basis upon which to recreate and redeem a nation 209 years in the making. The tasks of creating a sovereign nation and people with a sovereign imagination and agency, made possible by the most radical modernizing revolution of the modern age, are not easy, entangled as they are in Western colonial dysfunctional culture and African marginality. Dr. Margaret Mitchell Armand, a dispute resolution specialist, has done well to weave a story of redemption guided by a conceptual/theoretical lens that is not only Haiti’s but for all peoples who were mired in colonial dystopia.