Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora

Includes a 24-track CD

Rara is a vibrant annual street festival in Haiti, when followers of the Afro-Creole religion called Vodou march loudly into public space to take an active role in politics. Working deftly with highly original ethnographic material, Elizabeth McAlister shows how Rara bands harness the power of Vodou spirits and the recently dead to broadcast coded points of view with historical, gendered, and transnational dimensions.

CONTENIDO

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes to the Compact Disc: Rara!
Introducing Rara
1. Work and Play, Pleasure and Performance
2 Vulgarity and the Politics of the Small Man
3 Mystical Work: Spirits on Parade
4 Rara and "the Jew": Premodern Anti-Judaism in Postmodern Haiti
5 Rara as Popular Army: Hierarchy, Militarism, and Warfare
6 Voices under Domination: Rara and the Politics of Insecurity
7 Rara in New York City: Transnational Popular Culture
Appendix: Chronology of Political Events, 1990-1995, Annotated with Transnational Rara Band Activity
Glossary
Notes
Sources
Index