Abstract
The purpose of this work is threefold. First, using a structurationist approach, phenomenological structuralism, to understanding the constitution of society and practical consciousness, I argue that Haiti's current educational model is a colonial one, an ideological apparatus established by a French-speaking minority (comprador bourgeoisie), the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks, i.e., Affranchis, in order so that they can participate in the global (neoliberal) capitalist world-system as descendants of their former colonial administrators while the African majority are interpellated and subjectified as laborers for sports and the entertainment industries, tourism, and export agriculture and manufacturing jobs provided by the Affranchis, America, France, and Canada. Thus, in Haiti the attempt for a long time has been on following the black American bourgeois model of integration into the capitalist world-system by integrating the masses into the social class language game of their former colonial slavemasters (the French) at the expense of constituting their own social class language game based on the Kreyol language and Vodou metaphysics of the majority of the African inhabitants of the country.
Highlights
Like the Africans of North America who were enslaved by the British, the Africans of Haiti were enslaved by the French on plantations to reproduce the colonial mercantilist system of global capitalism
Applying Mocombe’s philosophy of language as presented in his theory of phenomenological structuralism to the Haitian case, the logic here is that Haitians, the minority Affranchis, are interpellated in one of the two aforementioned social structures and either recursively reorganize and reproduce as an “other” the ideas and ideals of the Republican state, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, as their practical consciousness or those of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of the mass majority
Mocombe [1] calls the “Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism,” by which they went about recursivelyorganizing and reproducing the material resource framework via the lakou system (Lakouism). The former two, free blacks and gens de couleur (Affranchis), were interpellated, embourgeoised, and differentiated by the language, communicative discourse, mode of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of the West and shared the same European practical consciousness, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, as the whites. The latter social class language game stood against the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the majority of the Africans who were interpellated and ounganified/manboified by the language, communicative discourse, mode of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo [1,2,3,7,9]
Summary
Like the Africans of North America who were enslaved by the British, the Africans of Haiti were enslaved by the French on plantations to reproduce the colonial mercantilist system of global capitalism. Contrary to the position of Haitian intellectuals such as Jacques Roumain and Jean-Price Mars, who advised the Haitian intelligentsia class to look to the provinces and the peasant classes to constitute Haitian culture, identity, and nation-state, are problematic in that they are ethnocentric and racist They both overlook the initial African practical consciousness of the majority of the Africans on the island for either the practical consciousness or discourse and discursive practices of the mulatto, Arab, and petit-bourgeois black elites, Affranchis, looking (because of their interpellation and embourgeoisement) to Europe, Canada, and America for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution, or for their (Affranchis) logic of postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial theories to undermine that African presence in favor of notions of hybridity, créolité, négritude, syncretism, intersectionality, double consciousness, etc
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