Boule achiv la Burn the Archive: How Haitian Artists Use Affect to Challenge Narrative Violence

Abstract

This senior thesis uses digital ethnography and object studies to explore the socialities inaugurated and facilitated by Haitian contemporary art and artists which challenge the limits imposed by “The Art World.” The introduction outlines narratives of disaster that occupy Haiti in the global imaginary and establishes a framework for thinking about Haitian art. The first chapter examines perceptions of Haitian art as fragile and ephemeral, but insists upon its contemporaneity by offering digital and physical gathering spaces centering Haitian art. The second chapter discusses the communicative labor performed by Haitian artists whose depictions of Haiti creates or affirms affective ties by evoking nostalgia and History. The third and final chapter explores the narration of violence. It begins with an exploration of how Haitian artists challenge narrative authority by depicting Historical instances of violence done onto Haiti. It then presents the iconicity of revolutionary violence and its ubiquity in Haitian art as another effort to draft counternarratives to redeem Haitian History from the narrative violence that haunts it. The chapter ends by pursuing the ways the visual narration of violence can be generative for Haitian contemporary artists (re)imaging the temporality of the Haitian everyday and futurity beyond violence.