Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This ethnographic examination of a binary linguistic hierarchy in Haiti shares the critical terrain of Viranjini Munasinghe's unpacking of Caribbean creolization theory. It is a grounded inquiry into a problematic of ontology that inheres in techniques of making non‐white identities deployed by Caribbean privileged people of color at arm's length from a European colonial heritage that underpins their privileged class positions. Borrowing Munasinghe's analytic concept of theory made schizophrenic by ideology, the investigation reveals Haiti's francophone minority ideologically utilizing Haitian Creole as a black‐nationalist symbol in its domination of the monolingual Creole‐speaking majority. The ideological move devalues Creole while elevating French in the reproduction of class inequality. The linguistic schizophrenia undermines the theoretical nation‐building logic of Creole as national language. Failing practical validation of Creole in all spheres of Haitian life, I conclude, claims on the state and civil society by Haiti's vast monolingual Creole‐speaking majority cannot logically be validated.
DOI: 10.1111/jlca.12745
Author: Philippe‐Richard Marius
Institutions: College of Staten Island, City University of New York
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404033982