27796: LeGrace Benson Opinion (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Legrace Benson <lgbenson@cbs.ucsb.edu>

The arrest of a woman carrying a human skull in her luggage has shocked
North American sensibilities and given new life to zonbi tales.



If she has a good lawyer, that person will call attention to the importation
last year of human skulls, leg, and arm bones, along with other items, which
several artists of Port-au-Prince had refashioned in to works exhibited at a
museum in Florida. The exhibition was well-received, and although surely
many visitors to the show were startled, perhaps even affronted, no hue and
cry like the one  now in newspapers, blogs and this list rose up. Certain of
the works are now in private collections.  It appears that no one believed
the exhibition of  assemblage sculptures would stand as proof of human
sacrifices or zonbifications.



Cadavers or parts of cadavers are simply evidence of death, not of
zonbification. Likewise, bones of the deceased are hardly sufficient
evidence for human sacrifice until forensic anthropology shows marks
unambiguously associated with sacrifices, such as have been documented from
the Near East, England, Switzerland, South America and other localities. So
far as I know, all of these occurred before the Modern Era.  Earlier
statements on this list bear repeating: there has been no unambiguous
evidentiary material brought forth to substantiate ritual human sacrifice in
Vodou ceremonies in Haiti.  What has appeared in public are simply charges,
all of them demeaning to the religion and to Haiti.



John Cussans, a British scholar, in a talk presented in London, spoke of a
?Voodoo construct.?  He choose the spelling deliberately, to reflect the
Hollywood mentality concerning Haiti, Vodou and Zombies[sic]. He saw this
construct and the ?Voodoo Terror? associated with it as  reflecting western
cultural anxieties, including anxieties of contagion. (Cussans includes SIDA
(AIDS) among the latter.)

Charges brought against the woman should be seen partly in this light, and
in the light of the exhibition nor of the several art and ethnography
collections in Haiti and elsewhere showing a ritual use of human bones.



I hope Myrlen Sevère has a good lawyer with access to some ethnographers and
anthropologists.




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