Expanding the Circle of Culture: An Africana Studies Examination of Haitian and Gullah-Geechee Social Contracts
Event Type
Presentation
Location
EHFA 137
Start Date
6-3-2020 1:45 PM
End Date
6-3-2020 3:15 PM
Description
This paper will draw upon Africana Studies historiographic methodology to examine the shared sociocultural and political heritages of the 19th century colony of Saint Domingue and the North American Lowcountry. Employing an African-centered intersectional reading of African American and Haitian primary sources, expressive cultural texts and secondary sources, this paper will examine several shared factors in Gullah-Geechee and Haitian cultures: demographic basis of the enslaved African population, African cultural continuities, and kindred spiritual practices as they factor into the development of diasporic social contracts. The author employs a method influenced by Sterling Stuckey's seminal text, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America, Michael Gomez's Exchanging Our Countrymarks, Carolyn Fick's The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below, and Julius S. Scott III's The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution in their examination of the cultural factors in the development of Black social contracts. Directly countering sociologist Orlando Patterson's Social Death thesis, the presenter interprets these patterns as generative responses to specific historical contexts—the American Decade of Crisis and Reconstruction Era and the Age of Revolutions—in which they developed and reached maturation. The progressive implications of each region's 'Black social contract' are considered as both national cultures array their native resources to address contemporary environmental, economic, and sociopolitical challenges.
Recommended Citation
Livingston, Samuel T., "Expanding the Circle of Culture: An Africana Studies Examination of Haitian and Gullah-Geechee Social Contracts" (2020). International Gullah Geechee and African Diaspora Conference. 5.
https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/iggad/2020/fullconference/5
Expanding the Circle of Culture: An Africana Studies Examination of Haitian and Gullah-Geechee Social Contracts
EHFA 137
This paper will draw upon Africana Studies historiographic methodology to examine the shared sociocultural and political heritages of the 19th century colony of Saint Domingue and the North American Lowcountry. Employing an African-centered intersectional reading of African American and Haitian primary sources, expressive cultural texts and secondary sources, this paper will examine several shared factors in Gullah-Geechee and Haitian cultures: demographic basis of the enslaved African population, African cultural continuities, and kindred spiritual practices as they factor into the development of diasporic social contracts. The author employs a method influenced by Sterling Stuckey's seminal text, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America, Michael Gomez's Exchanging Our Countrymarks, Carolyn Fick's The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below, and Julius S. Scott III's The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution in their examination of the cultural factors in the development of Black social contracts. Directly countering sociologist Orlando Patterson's Social Death thesis, the presenter interprets these patterns as generative responses to specific historical contexts—the American Decade of Crisis and Reconstruction Era and the Age of Revolutions—in which they developed and reached maturation. The progressive implications of each region's 'Black social contract' are considered as both national cultures array their native resources to address contemporary environmental, economic, and sociopolitical challenges.
Comments
Theme: Diasporic Movement; Moderator: Shari Orisich, Coastal Carolina University