Abstrakt: |
This article uses Haitian anthropologist Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain's study of burial practices and kinship networks in the rural town of Kenscoff to consider the relationship between rituals for the dead and women's rights activism following the United States occupation (1915-1934). Observing her 1937-1938 field notes and unpublished writings on family cemeteries and ceremonies, alongside her publications in the feminist journal La Voix des Femmes during the interwar period, I argue that in Comhaire-Sylvain's navigation of the tactile and ephemeral space of the dead she articulated the values of a nascent Haitian feminism. Understanding the spaces of death and political organizing as locations to establish and refashion culture and gendered meanings, I consider Comhaire-Sylvain's research practice and production as a site of public mourning and an entry point for understanding elite women's early twentieth-century intellectual thought in Haiti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |