14606: Bellegarde-Smith: Article on Vodou Researcher Elizabeth McAlister

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>

>
>                   Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
>
>                               The New York Times
>
>                 January 19, 2003, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
>
>SECTION: Section 14CN; Page 13; Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk
>
>LENGTH: 1216 words
>
>HEADLINE: Religious Rituals
>
>BYLINE: İBy JEFFREY B. COHEN
>
>
>
>ELIZABETH McALISTER tries to keep talk of her own experience with voodoo out
> of discussions of the religion itself, because as a white American,
>her history
> with the religion "is bound to be so atypical," she said.
>
>So as an assistant professor in the Religion Department at Wesleyan
> University, the wife of a Haitian man, the mother of an adopted
>Haitian daughter
> and a follower of the religion herself, Ms. McAlister has to find a balance
> between the personal, the professional and the academic.
>
> "I'm not here to exalt the religion nor am I here to denigrate it," Ms.
> McAlister, 39, said in an interview in her office. "I'm simply here
>to elaborate
> and educate and interpret."
>
>It is the education that is often wanting in a society for which vodou -- the
> Caribbean spelling of voodoo that she prefers -- means a sinister, primitive
> black-magic activity filled with dolls, zombies, snake handling and "a whole
> bunch of other crazy stuff," Ms. McAlister said.
>
>Voodoo is a religion developed by Africans forced to leave their homes behind
> and work as slaves on Haiti's sugar plantations. A broad religion
>with millions
> of faithful and countless forms of worship, voodoo incorporates some African
> belief systems with aspects of Catholicism and is known for its saints, its
> ceremonies, and, unfortunately, its sensationalization, Ms. McAlister said.
>
>"Part of my work is about recognizing there's a religious tradition at work
> here with elaborate religious rituals that can be compared and contrasted to
> other world religions," she said. "However, part of that involves
>care taking to
> some extent. It does involve correcting the public's understanding."
>
>Ms. McAlister was first introduced to Haitian culture in the 1970's by her
> father, George, a civil rights advocate who opened a community center in his
> hometown of Nyack, N.Y., to serve a growing Haitian population.
>
>As a student at Vassar College already interested in things Haitian, Ms.
> McAlister joined a few friends in Haitian percussion lessons. "Soon we were
> playing voodoo ceremonies in New York, I was an anthropology major and I
> recognized this as a fascinating moment of religious migration," she said.
>
>Ms. McAlister earned her doctorate from Yale University in American Studies,
> an interdisciplinary degree that enabled her "to see phenomena in
>multifaceted
> ways," she said.
>
>That is the approach that Ms. McAlister said she and like-minded colleagues
> bring to the study of Haitian culture, particularly Rara, the six-week Lenten
> festival about which she wrote her first book, "Rara! Vodou, Power and
> Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora" (University of California
>Press, 2002).
>
>"Nobody understood that it had such deep levels of meaning, nobody understood
> that it was a religious ritual," she said. "They called it a
>'country carnival,'
> and it was thought there wasn't very much to say about it."
>
>But indeed there is. In her book, Ms. McAlister writes that: "Rara festivals
> are a number of things at once: they are musical bands, carnivalesque crowds,
> religious rituals, armies on maneuvers, mass political demonstrations and
> performances of national pride."
>
>Prof. Leslie G. Desmangles met Ms. McAlister when they appeared together on
> Phil Donahue's television program in the late 1980's. Since then met, the two
> have collaborated several times, and Mr. Desmangles -- a former
>president of the
> international Haitian Studies Association and a professor of
>religion at Trinity
> College -- has kept abreast of her work.
>
>"Hers is really the first serious study that's been made of Rara," said Mr.
> Desmangles, a Haitian native. "Since it's always been associated
>with the lower
> classes, the uneducated, no one really thought it was worth studying."
>
>Ms. McAlister did, and she studied it from the inside out -- learning the
> Creole language, parading the streets and joining the crowd.
>
>"When you're studying culture, one of the things you learn is how to move in
> that culture," Mr. Desmangles said. "She accomplished that -- she
>was young, the
> rest of us are a little different -- but she learned very quickly."
>
>Prof. Gage Averill, who now directs New York University's ethnomusicology
> program, once taught at Wesleyan as well. He first met Ms. McAlister in the
> early 1990's on a project in Haiti, and he agrees that part -- but
>not all -- of
> the academic's job is to re-educate the public.
>
>"Anyone working in Haitian sociology, anthropology, or cultural studies has
> to do some reconstructive surgery, just because the popular notions are so
> strange and so off-kilter," Mr. Averill said. "As of the 1930's,
>this was a very
> popular place for American tall tales."
>
>But scholarship is about more than debunking popular myths, and Ms.
> McAlister's work is as well, Mr. Averill said.
>
>"She has figured out some issues about how Rara is socially constructed, how
> it's put together, who runs the bands, how long they're pledged for, and what
> kind of role they have with the saints," Mr. Averill said.
>
>She also has studied what she calls transnationalism -- the ability of the
> culture and religion to transcend national boundaries.
>
>Take her own home.
>
>She met the girl who would be her daughter before she met the man who would
> be her husband, Ms. McAlister said, recalling how she went to the
>shooting of a
> music video for a family band called Boukman Ekxpeyrans in Haiti in 1993.
>
>"I was dancing during the shoot when my straw hat blew off my head," she
> said. "This little girl picked it up and started dancing it back to
>me, and we
> danced together all afternoon."
>
>That's how she met Lovely, the girl who would become her daughter and who
> would introduce Ms. McAlister to Holly (pronounced O-lee) Nicolas, her future
> husband.
>
>"Because of the way transnationalism works, our household is embedded in this
> network of people that go back and forth," she said, speaking of the Haitian
> emigration that has left family members in Haiti, France, Montreal, Chicago,
> Boston, and, yes, Middletown. "We have a box that came from Boston and is
> waiting to go to Haiti. My own household is in the network of transnational
> flow."
>
>Even though the study of Haitian culture is certainly broader than the study
> of voodoo itself, one can't study one without the other, Mr. Desmangles said.
>
>"The difference between Haitian society and American society is that you can
> describe U.S. culture without really discussing too much about religion," Mr.
> Desmangles said. "In Haiti, religion permeates every aspect of the
>culture. You
> can't avoid it, you can't put it aside, it's going to be there."
>
>What helps distinguish Ms. McAlister from her colleagues, though, seems to be
> her personal involvement in the Rara tradition, both Mr. Desmangles and Mr.
> Averill agreed.
>
>"I think the scholarship has a nice balance," Mr. Averill said. "It is
> informed by her participation, but it's not just an expression of
>it. So she is
> challenged to find a kind of defensible scholarly position."
>
>But Ms. McAlister sees both pitfalls and challenges in her scholarly work.
> "The right could say, 'You're a partial insider, therefore your
>scholarship is
> questionable,' " she said. "The left could say, 'You're a partial outsider,
> therefore your scholarship is questionable.' So I just have to maintain my
> academic integrity."
>
>
>İİİhttp://www.nytimes.com
>
>GRAPHIC: Photo: Elizabeth McAlister, an assistant religion professor
>at Wesleyan
> University, wants to "elaborate and educate and interpret" about
>voodoo. (Thomas
> McDonald for The New York Times)
>
>LOAD-DATE: January 19, 2003