22485: Corbett replies to Kathy Grey on the spelling the religion of Haiti

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From Bob Corbett

Kathy, I'm staying out of the rape discussion for now, but I am one who
disagrees vigorously with you claim that:


"The name of the religion of which I am a clergy person is Vodou, in both
Creole and English."

I won't recreate the work I've done on the spelling it is already on my
web page, but I'll copy that below.

Despite the wishes of the current defenders of an authoritarian notion of
politically correct speech, dictionaries of English and long usage strong
defend the spelling of "Voodoo."

This is what I wrote quite a few years ago. I stand by the argument.

============

At:

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/voodoo/spelling.htm

---------------------

The Spelling Voodoo
Bob Corbett
1998

The name of the Haitian religion has many spellings. I have chosen to use
"Voodoo." Many other spellings have been used in the literature over the
years including Vodun, Vodou, Vodoun, Vaudou, Vaudoux.

Each of these is an attempt to spell the word in a way which represents
how it is pronounced in Haiti. Actually the word is seldom even used by
Haitians. They do not refer to the religion by the name Voodoo, but speak
of people "following the loa," or "serving the loa."

In recent years some scholars have despaired of getting Americans over
their ridiculous and negative images of Voodoo created by sensationalist
tales, Hollywood movies and popular culture. One tactic has been to avoid
the spelling Voodoo in order to call attention to the fact of something
different because of the unusual spelling.

Normally I think this is a decent tactic, and I find myself much enamored
of philosophers like the German existentialists who use this tactic in
their philosophizing. But, I have chosen NOT to use an alternative
spelling, but to stick with Voodoo, the most common spelling in English,
simply to recognize that spelling as dominant. Yet I do hope to correct
the false, racist and anti-Haitian images connected with this word.

I capitalize the word throughout. The names of other
religions--Christianity, Judaism, Islam, are always capitalized. Voodoo
should be treated in the same fashion as other religions.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>From James Leyburn. THE HAITIAN PEOPLE 1941.

p. 113, "Since there is small likelihood of eradicating the inexact
connotation of "Voodoo," many recent anthropologists have adopted such
spellings as Vodun, Vodou, Vodoun, Vaudou, and Vodun (accent over u) all
rendition of local pronunciation of the same term. 'Vodun' (pronounced
Vo-doon) has been chosen for use in this work, in the hope that readers
will bear in mind that the folk religion is not mere idle superstition."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See p. xxv and xxvi of intro to Price-Mars SO SPOKE THE UNCLE 1973 English
edition.

Translator Magdaline W. Shannon gives the following argument and list of
various spellings:

"After much deliberation and thought, I chose to translate 'le Vaudou' as
Voodoo, though this English word seems to be objectionable to Professor
Simpson and most probably is to all of his colleagues who have completed
extensive research in this field. While I respect their concern I am
taking the liberty of differing with them, and in the following paragraphs
I offer my explanation for doing so.

"In his preface to LIFE IN A HAITIAN VALLEY (1937), anthropologist
Melville J. Herskovits expressed the hope that the use of the term Vodun
(meaning 'gods' in ancient Dahomey) to describe the religious beliefs of
the Haitian peasants would replace the word Voodoo used by popular
American writers in the first part of the twentieth century. Although the
English author, Sir Spenser St. John had employed 'Vaudoux' in his work in
1880, he emphasized the sensational aspects of these Haitain beliefs and
distorted the facts just as did the later American writers such as
Seabrook, Wirkus, Craige, and Taft. The American sociologist James G.
Leyburn followed the example of Herskovits in THE HAITIAN PEOPLE (1941),
while other anthropologists used various spellings as Vodu, Vodou, Vaudou,
Vodoun, and Vodun.

"Dr. Price-Mars uses 'Vaudou,' I believe, because he wishes to distinguish
the Haitian variant from similar African beliefs and practices. He quotes
from Moreau de St. Mery, one of the most reliable early sources (1797),
who states that Vaudoux as it exists in Saint Domingue is not just a dance
but is a religious cult. Other Haitian writers however do employ other
terms, while French authors seem to prefer Vaudou. The English translation
of the term as in Alfred Metreaux's LE VAUDOU HAITIEN (1959) is VOODOO IN
HAITI; Roger Bastide's AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS IN THE NEW WORLD, translated
from the French (1971), uses the spelling Voodoo. The social psychiatrist
Dr. Louis Mars, son of Price-Mars, has an English translation (1977), of
his study on 'possession' entitled THE CRISIS OF POSSESSION IN VOODOO.
American historians, such as George Tyson, Jr., TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE
(1973), and Thomas O.Ott, THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION (1973), use Voodoo as
does the British political scientist David Nicholls in his articles and in
FROM DESSALINES TO DUVALIER (1979). Similarly the Haitian-American scholar
Michel Laguerre choose Voodoo and unlike the assessment of the Belgian
priest J. Verschueren in 1948 seems to have had no compunction in
assigning Voodoo to an important role in the Haitian social and political
state in his recent works. The English translation of Janheinz Jahn's
MUNTU (1961) from the German language refers to Haitian Voodoo. Finally,
the Library of Congress in its National Union Catalog employs Voodoo to
identify the subject in reference to foreign words.
"Thus, one of the most compelling reasons for selecting Voodoo for the
French word Vaudou in this translation of AINSI PARLA L'ONCLE, the classic
study so long unrecognized in the English-speaking world, is that it is
the word that Americans seem to have adopted for better or for worse
despite efforts to eradicate its pejorative meaning by using the original
variants of the term."

From: Leslie G. Desmangles. THE FACES OF THE GODS. 1992.

P. XI-XII

There is much academic disagreement among scholars about the name of
Haiti's folk religion, and about the orthography of the word vodou. The
common term voodoo, a distortion of the Dahomean (or Beninois) word vodu
(meaning "god" or "spirit"), has been used by many scholars (Deren,
Laguerre). But unfortunately, in popular literature and films the term
voodoo has been misconstrued as sorcery, witchcraft, and in some cases
cannibalistic practices, all of which are false and have kindled many
foreigners' prejudices not only about Vodou, but about Haitian culture in
general. Other scholars have used the term vodun or vodoun (Leyburn,
Mintz, Davis, Courlander) in order to dispel popular misconceptions about
the religion. Although I have used vodun in the past, *I adopt Vodou for
this book because it is phonetically more correct, and because it
corresponds to the nomenclature used by the Haitians themselves for their
religion. Until 1986, Haitian Creole had no official orthography, Hence,
both Haitian and foreign writers were left to their own devices in
developing their systems of phonetic transcriptions. Many (Price-Mars and
Paul, among others) have been influenced heavily by French orthography,
using the francophone form vaudou in their writings. But the current
method of phonetic transcription developed by Yves Dejean-the method most
widely accepted by Haitians and used in elmem*my s*oo*ds in Haiti since
1986-suggests that the correct spelling of the term is the one I have
adopted. Likewise, because Haitian Creole possesses no complete
dictionary, there is no official orthography for all the words in its
vocabulary. Hence, the phonetic transcriptions of unwritten (or
unrecorded) Creole words used throughout this book approximate the
orthographic method suggested by Dejean.
See page 265 of Lawless' Bibliography for an account of modern scholars
and how they spell Voodoo.

See p. 113 of Leyburn for good argument about the spelling of the word.

See p. xxv and xxvi of intro to Price-Mars SO SPOKE THE UNCLE.

See p. 49 Sir Spenser St. John. He uses Vaudoux.

See: Lawless. Haiti's Bad Press. p. xii. He uses Voodoo. Also see p. 73

Some discussion we've had on my Haiti e-mail list:
10 Sep 1997


Leslie Desmangles leslie.desmangles@mail.cc.trincoll.edu

One other person not mentioned has used the word Vodou: Karen
McCarthy-Brown in "Mama Lola".

LESLIE DESMANGLES.

11 Sep 1997


Carrol F. Coates ccoates@binghamton.edu

To add to the list, I have used "Vodou" consistently in the last several
years in both translation and in the editing of the JOURNAL OF HAITIAN
STUDIES. I have managed to get this accepted by the University Press of
Virginia (for translation of Haitian novels) in spite of the fact that
"voodoo" is in the 3rd edition of the MERIAM WEBSTER'S UNABRIDGED
DICTIONARY.

Carrol F. Coates
Romance Langs/Lits--SUNY
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000

====================================================



Randall Morris Mysteries@aol.com

Given what Pierre-Pierre asks us to do I could change what I said a bit
and just say possibly that the reporter accurately reported the tragic
ruminations of people in shock and trying to come to terms with what
happened. There should have been more context in the article though. Not
everyone reading it would know these things about Vodou.

=======================================================



Patrick Bellegarde-Smith pbs@csd.uwm.edu

The New York Times resisted "Negro" for negro, and it took a long time to
come up to speed on that one. Similarly with gay and lesbian, "Ms." But
the New York Times writes Judaism, Shinto, Islam, Christianity,
Hinduism....Why the discussion about Vodun? (My spelling in my books and
articles, and that of Dr. Guerin Montilus).

========================


Date: 11 Sep 1997

From: Janet Higbie

As the copy editor who handled the Times article in question, I'd like to
weigh in on the questions raised by the references to Vodou in Larry
Rohter's coverage of the ferry disaster this week.

I'm going to part company somewhat with my esteemed colleague Garry
Pierre-Pierre. I don't agree that this discussion is nitpicking or that it
should be stopped. One posting seemed to me unfair, but people have the
right to question and criticize The Times and other newspapers -- we all
learn from that. I edit a good many, in fact most, of the Haiti articles
that go into The Times, and I can't begin to say how much this message
list had helped me in that work, directly and indirectly.

In large part because of the concerns expressed by this group, I look very
carefully at any references to Vodou in stories that cross my monitor,
looking for inferences that are condescending, sensational or racially or
culturally biased. I did not see any of that in this piece. True, I
couldn't spend a lot of time reflecting -- I had approximately 15 minutes
to read the story, check for factual errors, fix spelling, add a gazillion
accents, subtract garble from the Haitian telephone system, cut the story
to fit the various editions and write a headline. The Vodou reference was
secondary -- most of the piece dealt with the sinking itself, the recovery
efforts and the larger issues that have been discussed here -- Haiti's
lack of transportation infrastructure, official corruption and
overwhelming poverty. But the reference to competing ferry operators
invoking the loas against a new, upstart competitor in rural Haiti seemed
plausible and valid to me, particularly from a diligent and experienced
reporter who had ridden those ferries and written about these issues
before. I did make a couple changes -- including describing Vodou as
"Haiti's traditional religion," to make clear that it's not about fetishes
and working spells. In retrospect, that might have blurred the line
between religion and cultural practice made by many on this list but hey,
some of the fine points get lost at high speed.

On the spelling and capitalization question -- personally, I couldn't
agree more. I'm delighted to see it raised, as so often I'm accused of
"political correctness'' when I raise this kind of thing myself. However,
The Times, like other newspapers, has an established style governing word
usage, spelling, punctuation and other matters. The aim is consistency and
clarity; I can't go off on my own and do things any old way. And the Times
stylebook establishes "voodoo."

That stylebook is undergoing a revision and last year, when staff members
were asked to make suggestions for changes, I, with electronic input from
the two other Times employees on this message list, proposed that the V be
capitalized as for other religions. We also suggested the spelling Vodou,
as I recall, saying that the double o's had a primitive, "exotic'' feel
reminiscent of 1920's tabloids and bad adventure novels. I never got a
response and as far as I know, the style didn't change. But if there's no
objection I'd like to give it another try and submit some of the postings
from this recent Corbettland discussion, especially by Desmangles, to the
Times editors in charge of setting style, to give them a fuller
understanding.

Janet Higbie


The difference between the English ad Creole spelling.
I must disagree with Carrol Coates with whom I am normally not only in
agreement, but to whom I often go for information and help. However, we're
back on the issue of the ENGLISH spelling of the name of the religion of
Haiti, and on this point we disagree.

Carrol raises two arguments:

the name of a religion is a proper name and as such it should be
capitalized.

The preferred spelling IN ENGLISH in Vodou because that is
the official HAITIAN spelling.

The arguments I am addressing are the spelling of the Haitian religion in
English, not in Haitian Creole. I think Carrol and I are in no
disagreement about the spelling in Haitian Creole.

The first argument is certainly true and one of my own campaigns has been
to get people to recognize this fact. I spell the religion's name Voodoo.
Since voodoo if often written by people who know English grammar well one
can assume they are not making a simple grammatical mistake. Rather,
spelling the religion as voodoo strongly suggests that they do not see it
as a religion. There is a sense of the word in English which does not
refer to the religion, but to a practice of magic.

In the same sense that we write "black magic," "witchcraft" and other such
words often properly with small letters they do not refer to a religion,
but a folk practice. I've noticed (with great approval) some of the
experts of Haitian Voodoo on this list writing voodoo with a small "v"
when talking not about the religion, but about certain practices which are
often referred to by folks loosely as related to the religion when these
commentators don't see these practices as related to the religion at all.

Thus on the issue of using a capital "V" (no matter what letters then
follow), I would argue that when one is referring to the religion of Haiti
a capital "V" is demanded by the standard rules of English grammar and to
fail to do so when referring to the religion is either mistaken grammar,
or a stand that the practice is not a religion -- which I would then argue
is a completely mistaken assumption.

I think Carrol and I would be in agreement on this issue.

But, are there practices in Haiti (or elsewhere) which are referred to as
voodoo practices which are not part of the religion and thus should not
carry the capital first letter signifying the name of the religion? I
believe there are.

The only example I can think of right at the moment isn't a very good one,
but we do have the common adjective "catholic" to mean the same thing as
universal as in the phrase, "she has catholic tastes in literature." The
parallels are not exactly alike there since one doesn't confuse "catholic
tastes" with things to do with the Catholic religion, whereas the
Voodoo/voodoo usage does carry that confusion.

Our major difference however, is on what follows the "V" when speaking or
writing English about the religion of Haiti. I use and prefer Voodoo,
Carrol uses and prefers Vodou.

Vodou is for me a word in Haitian Creole and in the rare cases when I'm
writing (badly) in Haitian Creole I use the word Vodou. When I write in
English I use the standard English spelling of long-standing. It is not
the word in Haitian Creole I'm quite aware of that. When I write home from
here in (English words) VIENNA, AUSTRIA, I would not think of writing to
my English language friends that I live in Wien, Osterreich. But that's
what everyone here writes. And no one pronounces the name of this city as
we do when we say Vienna. They use Wien (pronounced Vien) were one to say
it in English. The major city of Italy in English is Rome. In Italy it is
Roma.

Behind the position which Carrol articulates is an important objection
which he doesn't raise here, though he has often raised it eloquently in
earlier posts. The image of the Haitian religion Voodoo/Vodou in the
English speaking world and especially in the U.S. is often extremely
wrong-headed, very negative, even such that the religion is regarded as a
laughing stock or as a barbaric practice. This image is part of a much
larger negative image associated with Haiti and Haitians and those of us
who care for Haitian and Haitians, or are Haitians have a care and
interest in changing that image in the English speaking world.

Carrol and I are in no disagreement about that aim. Both of us have
demonstrated that in past posts and published writings.

However, we are in disagreement as to whether a useful and important part
of that re-imaging of the Haitian religion, the Haitian nation and the
Haitian people is best served by trying to change the normal centuries old
word for the Haitian religion in English. Coates thinks so; Corbett
doesn't.

I would like to go on for many pages and hours about my own reasons for
why I vehemently reject the tactic of changing the normal, acceptable and
familiar English spelling. But, those arguments go far beyond Haiti and
are concerned with much larger issues in the philosophy of language and in
the philosophy of human responsibility. These arguments have nothing to do
with Haiti.

I'm certainly willing to discuss these issues IN GREAT DETAIL with any who
are interested, but not on this list which is about Haiti and not about
these larger these other issues. But in just some undefended assertions
(for which I have an huge array of defenses ready at hand), my objections
are centered in several things some being:

such a practice of changing names and spellings to achieve desired
political or moral outcomes is a practice connected with force and
pressure in our society (the notion of political correctness) which is for
me one of the most repellant notions I can imagine.
such a way of approaching the problem often seems to me to leave all the
biases and negative sentiments in place and just gets people to change
language to get people off their backs. Calling American people color
"African Americans" seems to me to do very little in changing racist
attitudes. I'd rather spend my energies on other ways of addressing racism
than trying to cram language usages down people's throats.
And on and on.

In relation to Haitian Voodoo (as I term it), I have tried to wage my own
mini-war against the negative false stereotypes. I pleaded with the
religion department of my university some 15 years ago to allow me to
teach a course on the Haitian religion and they welcomed this. It is one
of the many options in the study of world religions the department offers.
In that course I tell my students that the primary task of this course is
to demonstrate that the religion of Haiti is a religion is the same sense
as any other major religion they know of such as Christianity, Judaism or
Islam and that we will study it as such.

And then we do that in a very serious intellectual investigation. I think
I can say that virtually ALL my students come out of that course not with
some (for me) utterly trivial shift of how they spell the word, but with a
profound respect for the Haitian religion even though they usually find it
to be far from their own faith if they have any. I'm never out to convert
people, only to inform and enlighten them. Perhaps it helps that I am an
atheist and have no use for any religion as a faith. But that doesn't mean
I don't want to understand it as it is rather than as what it is not.

Secondly, I mounted a large web site on Haitian Voodoo to which I keep
adding all the time. In the fall term I will be offering my course in
Haitian Voodoo here in Vienna, Austria (not in Wien, Osterreich), the
first time such a course has ever been offered in this important European
capital and already I've heard from the registrar that the course is
completely filled and students are begging to get in. I'm in a terrible
quandary. I like small discussion oriented classes, but were I to change
this one course to a lecture format I would probably have several hundred
students in a flash. I'm undecided at to whether I go for the higher
quality education I can provide with a discussion format, or go to have
the wider impact on Austrians' minds. Not an easy decision for me.

In any case the teaching of this course will be an impetuous to me to add
significantly to my Voodoo web page, a page that attracts a significant
number of visitors who write me constantly about thing Voodoo (from
serious inquiries about the religion to wanting to know if I sell spells).

There are many other ways to address the problem of Voodoo's negative
image which other people, many on this list I'm sure, use. All of them are
important. The only significant problem I have with the spelling issue is
now closely allied it is the to political correctness movement, which, on
my own view, is so destructive of intellectual freedom and of good sense
that such a tactic is just not acceptable to me. Nor am I convinced that
trying to force upon a language a new spelling for an old word in the
language is of much value.

Any wishing to discuss the larger non-Haitian issues contained in this
discussion please don't hesitate contacting me. It is one of the issues I
am most interested in concerning contemporary moral notions of the use of
pressure and force to seek goals that are otherwise laudable.

Bob Corbett