So Spoke the Uncle (Excerpt of Jean Price-Mars’ book (1927))
We have nourished for a long time the ambition of restoring the value of Haitian folk-lore in the eyes of the people. This entire book is an endeavor to integrate the popular Haitian thought into the discipline of traditional ethnography.
Through a disconcerting paradox, these people who have had, if not the finest, at least the most binding, the most moving history of the world - that of the transplantation of a human race to a foreign soil under the worst biological conditions - these people feel an embarrassment barely concealed, indeed shame, in hearing of their distant past. It is those who during four centuries were the architects of black slavery because they had force and science at their service that magnified the enterprise by spreading the idea that Negroes were the scum of society, without history, without morality, without religion, who had to be infused by any manner whatsoever with new moral values, to be humanized anew. And when under the protection of the crises of transmutation given birth in the French Revolution, the slave community of Saint Domingue rebelled whilst reclaiming the status which no one thus far had recognized, the success of its demands became all at once a difficulty and a surprise for it - the difficulty, unacknowledged moreover, of the choice of a social order and the surprise of adaptation by a heterogeneous mass to the stable life of free work. Evidently the simplest choice for the revolutionaries badly in need of national cohesion was to copy the only model that they comprehended. Thus, for better or for worse, they inserted the new grouping into the dislocated framework of the dispersed white society and this was how the Negro community of Haiti donned the old frock of western civilization shortly after 1804. From that moment with a constancy that no defeat, no sar-casm, no perturbation has been able to weaken, she tried her utmost to realize what she believed to be her superior destiny in shaping her thought and sentiments, by drawing closer to her former mother country, by copying her, and with identifying with her. What an absurd and grandiose task! A difficult task, if ever there was one!
But it is this curious approach that the metaphysics of (Jules] de Gaultier calls collective bovaryism, meaning the faculty of a society of seeing itself as other than it is. Is this not a strangely productive attitude if this society finds within itself the incentive to a creative activity that elevates it beyond itself because then does not the faculty of conceiving itself as other than it is become a stimulus, a powerful motor which urges it to overthrow obstacles in its aggressive upward path. Is this not a singularly dangerous course if this society, dulled by impedimenta, blunders in the ruts of dull and slavish imitations, because then it does not appear to bring any tribute to the complex play of human progress and will serve sooner or later as the surest pretext for nations impatient for territorial expansion, ambitious for hegemony, to erase the society from the map of the world. Despite spurts of recovery and flashes of clairvoyance, it is by the use of the inferior approach to the dilemma that Haiti sought a place among peoples. The chances were that her experiment would be considered as devoid of interest and originality. But, by an implacable logic, as we gradually forced ourselves to believe we were "colored" Frenchmen, we forgot we were simply Haitians, that is, men born of determined historic conditions, having collected in their minds, just as all other human groups, a psychological complex which gives to the Haitian society its specific physiognomy. Since then all that is authentically indigenous - language, customs, sentiments, beliefs - have become suspect, tarnished by bad taste in the eyes of elites smitten with nostalgia for the lost mother country [France). With very strong reason the word Negro, formerly a generic term, acquired a pejorative meaning. As for the term "African," it has always been, it is the most humiliating affrontal that can be addressed to a Haitian. Strictly speak-ing, the most distinguished man of this country would much prefer that one find him to bear some resemblance to an Eskimo, a Samoyed, or a Tunguse rather than remind him of his Guinean or Sudanese ancestry. It is imperative to see with what arrogance some of the most representative figures of our milieu evoke the efficacy of some bastard relation-ship. All the turpitudes of colonial promiscuities, the anonymous shame of chance encounters, the brief pairings of two paroxysms have become titles of esteem and glory. What can be the future, what can be the worth of a society where such aberrations of judgment, such errors of orientation are transformed into constitutional sentiments? A hard problem for those who reflect and who have the task of meditating on the social conditions of our milieu! In any case it will appear to the reader how temerarious was our venture of studying the value of Haitian folk-lore openly with the Haitian public. Our audacity will seem even clearer when we confess that we conceived of the plan for this book originally in the form of popular lectures. In fact, we offered the lure of two conferences on the part of the subject that we thought would most appeal to the public love for the new and the different. For others we judged it more advisable to retain the form of a monograph. Then, we modified the original plan and we reunited all the essays in this book. We confess without hesitation that the whole mass of folk-lore, the modalities of popular beliefs, their origins, their evolution, their actual practices, the scientific explanations which flow from this system have been the problems that have most sharply activated our research. That is why they have been given a more important place in this volume. Are the solutions to which we have subscribed definitive? We are far from claiming this. The scientific world is eternally worried that the conclusions of the study of biological phenomena based upon the most recent methods and acquisitions of science will be considered as other than tentative. At least we are striving to utilize the most learned works possible in aiding us to comprehend the essential modalities of our subject. We hope that others will plough the same furrow and spread even more seeds ...
But, one may ask, what purpose is served in going to so much trouble over minute problems which interest only a small minority of mankind living on a very small part of the earth's surface?
Perhaps this is reasonable.
We will take the liberty, however, of doubting that either the exiguity of our territory, or the small numbers of our people, problems which concern the behavior of one group of men, are sufficient grounds to warrant the indifference of the rest of humanity. Besides, our presence on a point of the American archipelago which we have "humanized," the breach that we have made in the process of historic events in order to secure our place among men, our fashion of utilizing the laws of imitation in order to make ourselves model borrowers, the pathological deviation which we have inflicted through collective bovaryism by conceiving of ourselves as other than what we are, the tragic uncertainty that such a step stamps on our evolution at the moment when imperialism of every order disguises its lusts under the appearance of philanthropy, all of this gives a certain configuration to the life of the Haitian society and, before darkness falls, it is not futile to collect the facts of our social life, to assess the gestures, the attitudes of our people, however humble they may be, to compare them to those of other peoples, to examine their origins, and to situate them in the general life of man on the planet. They are the evidence, the deposition of which cannot be negligible in judging the value of a part of the human species.
Such is, in last analysis, the essence of our venture and whatever may be its reception, we wish that it be understood that we are aware of its inadequacy and its precariousness.
Petionville, December 15, 1927.
