Dominican Literature Research Articles

Haitian and Dominican Counterpoint

Haitian and Dominican Counterpoint

Modernity disavowed: Haiti and the cultures of slavery in the age of revolution

Modernity Disavowed is a path-breaking study of the cultural, political, and philosophical significance of the Haitian revolution (1791-1804). Revealing how the radical antislavery politics of this seminal event have been suppressed and ignored in historical and cultural records over the past two hundred years, Sibylle Fischer contends that revolutionary antislavery and its subsequent disavowal are central to the formation and understanding of Western modernity. She develops a powerful argument that the denial of revolutionary antislavery eventually became a crucial ingredient in a range of hegemonic thought, including Creole nationalism in the Caribbean and G. W. F. Hegel's master-slave dialectic. Fischer draws on history, philosophy, literary theory, and political science to examine a range of material including Haitian political and legal documents and nineteenth-century Cuban and Dominican literature and art. She demonstrates that at time when racial taxonomies were beginning to mutate into scientific racism and racist biology, the Haitian revolutionaries recognized the question of race as political. Yet, as the cultural records of neighbouring Cuba and the Dominican Republic show, the story of the Haitian Revolution has been told as one outside politics and beyond human language, as a tale of barbarism and unspeakable violence. From the time of the revolution onwards, the story has been confined to the margins of history: to rumours, oral histories, and confidential letters. Fischer shows that without accounting for revolutionary antislavery and its subsequent disavowal, Western modernity--including its hierarchy of values, depoliticization of social goals having to do with racial differences, and privileging of claims of national sovereignty--cannot be fully understood.

Ethnobotanical literature survey of medicinal plants in the Dominican Republic used for women's health conditions

This ethnobotanical literature survey is part of an on-going study in New York City investigating Dominican and Chinese healing systems and the herbal treatments used for the following women's conditions: uterine fibroids (benign tumors of uterine smooth muscle); menorrhagia (excessive uterine bleeding); endometriosis (growth of endometrial tissue outside of the uterus); and hot flashes (sudden brief sensations of heat commonly experienced during menopause). The objectives of this survey were: (1) to search literature on medicinal plants used in the Dominican Republic and identify those used for the above listed conditions and their symptoms; (2) to compare the use between herbal treatments reported in the literature with those prescribed by Dominican healers in New York City; and (3) to evaluate the extent to which healers may have changed their use of plants in order to adapt to availability in the New York City environment. A total of 87 plant species were reported in the Dominican literature for these conditions and symptoms. Nineteen species overlapped from the literature survey and the fieldwork with Dominican healers in New York City, representing 29% ( n=65) of the plants prescribed by healers in New York City. This study offers a model to investigate changes in plant use as people migrate to urban centers where they are surrounded by diverse cultures, healing systems, and new environments.

Black images in Dominican literature

On December 5, 1942, on his first voyage to America, Christopher Columbus arrived on the shores of Hispaniola. The island, so named by the Admiral himself, was populated by Taino Indians, who were soon enslaved and put to work in search for gold (see Moya Pons 1978). The hard work of mining; the general abuse of their labor; the murders perpetrated by the Spaniards; the massive suicides committed by the Taino themselves as an act of rejection of colonial domination; as well as the impact of European diseases, soon decimated the indigenous population. The efforts of the Dominican friars to defend the natives, and the legal measures enacted by the Spanish Crown in 1512 and 1513 to regulate the encomiendas , were of no avail. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the Taino were virtualy exterminated. In the early colonization process, some elements of Taino culture were absorbed by both Spaniards and African slaves. Most of these were in the realm of language and religion, others had to do with agrarian methods and techniques (see Cassa 1974, Vega 1981, Moya Pons 1983), and they still form part of the local culture. In the Dominican ethnic configuration of today, on the other hand, the indigenous component is of little significance. The first black slaves were brought to Santo Domingo in the early sixteenth century. At first they were imported in small numbers, but with insufficient Indian manpower in the mines, demand for African slaves increased rapidly. When the gold deposits were exhausted, cane sugar became the main agricultural product and the primary source of wealth. The black slaves' strength, their enormous tolerance for both exhausting labor on

A selective bibliography of Dominican literature

A selective bibliography of Dominican literature