The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti

Abstract

The Spirits and Law: and Power in Haiti, by Kate Ramsey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. ISBN-13: 978-0226703794-4. 425 pp. $45.00 hardcover.The relationship between religion and law has been a source of growing interest and continuous debate among scholars, professionals, and general public. Arguably, religion has played a significant role in establishment of postcolonial and in formation of Haitian cultural identity; its impact on public life and Haitian politics is of paramount importance. In same line of thought, Haitian laws have substantially influenced religious life and of Haitian people. This fascinating and intelligent study, The Spirits and Law, focuses on intersection of these two dynamic aspects in Haiti's cultural and intellectual tradition and history. The book seeks to show precisely how these important factors have defined and transformed Haiti's civil society and legal system. Kate Ramsey investigates role Haitian Penal Code played in production of false representations of and ways that these misrepresentations further influenced Haitian elites to criminalize popular ritual in Haiti.Both Haitians and foreigners have often wrongly depicted Haiti's popular religion, Vodou, as source of Haiti's troubles-from political disturbances to natural disasters. The Spirits and Law is an inquiry into institutional and social histories of legal prohibition of certain popular ritual (i.e., spells, superstitious practices) in Haiti. It studies the long history of Euro-American denigration of African and African diasporic spiritual and healing practices (1) and the extent to which different Haitian governments relied upon penal prohibition of le vaudoux to repudiate foreign charges that 'civilization' was regressing in independent Haiti (2). Ramsey pays particular attention to power of French-dominated Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in after its 1860 Concordat. This focus makes perfect sense since Church has been one of most active forces and institutions in fostering religious violence and in suppressing these popular religious performances and beliefs in country. This ambitious book is divided into four chapters followed by an epilogue; its detailed conclusion delineates genealogy of word Vodou and cultural understanding of term Iwa (spirit/spirits).Chapter one examines official criminalization of African-based rituals and magico-religious in colonial Saint-Domingue four decades prior (roughly 1685) to period surrounding Haitian Revolution. It also discusses scholarship surrounding role played in overthrowing slavery and French colonialism. Additionally, Ramsey examines post-colonial Haitian state's legal policies toward popular religious practice and organization during administration of Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe. The importance of this chapter is that it traces legislative history of those laws, connection within their larger social, cultural, and political contexts, their evolution within cultural milieu in which they emerged, and finally their effects on Haitian experience.Chapter two moves conversation forward by studying exactly the legal categorization and prohibition of as a form of sortilege (spell) in 1835 and 1864 Haitian penal codes (14). Ramsey argues that legal discourse or juridical sense of concept of civilization in modernity-conveying idea of a progressive historical process and equally end result of that process-had shaped considerably judicial repression of or vaudoux, a constituted term in period that encompassed the whole of Haitian sorcery (56). Furthermore, sh articulates that the disparity between how this word was constructed through penal and ecclesiastical laws and how it was popularly understood thus became. …

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