Entries tagged with “Michel-Rolph Trouillot


The Caribbean Region: An Open Frontier in Anthropological Theory
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 19-42 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dear, sweet Simone,

I don’t know that it makes sense, but I feel a small happiness at the thought that I was on Earth breathing at the same time that you were on Earth breathing. The small pleasures make for a deeper and more secure happiness, n’est-ce pas? I find that I miss my recently deceased friend the most during the small pleasures. Often times characters in movies speak of missing a deceased loved one during big life events like graduations or weddings or promotions, but those are the types of experiences that have the support of shared culture. The thing I miss is that my friend would have recognized the significance of little changes and little moments in my life. It’s strange how the little changes in life, the little ups and downs, are the most pervasive, but at the same time it’s harder to share the little joys and sorrows of them; we all have them, but it takes a familiarity to share in them. I found that at about the six-month mark, my grief was smaller in many ways, but more impactful. By then it was more clear that the whole world wasn’t upside down, only mine. By then others are less likely to treat you as if you’re in grief–no polite silences when you enter the room, no light brushes to the shoulder, no speaking to you in hushed tones. By then, others in your circle of acquaintances may have experienced a similar loss… which in a way makes you feel less alone, but at the same time makes your loss seem more real because others are experiencing that same loss. I think less now about the reality of my friend’s death and more about how I miss him.

I do believe that I was to say a bit more on Trouillot’s review. Staying on the subject of family structure from Monday, Trouillot writes that when R.T. Smith coined the word “matrifocality,” he did not mean female-headed, but rather he meant to underline the role of women as mothers. That word was definitely used as a cattle prod for misogyny in my little corner of Mississippi. Trouillot notes that Smith might despair at this misuse of the “notion of matrifocality.” I remember hearing as a child that the female-headed household was a major problem for black families and for black men. I believe this had a profoundly negative effect on how black men viewed black women and women generally. I saw it with my father and others. My grandmother had been married, but her husband died. And although my father maintained a respectful and admiring attitude towards his mother, I think anger at the notion that he couldn’t be quite right having grown up in a female-headed household was transferred to women generally. The same goes for non-black men who grew up in similar households.

Also, the notion that female-headed households was a problem was explicitly used to encourage submissiveness among women in more “traditional” nuclear family households. Subservience to the man in the household was necessary for the healthy development of the children present. While I think this had some measure of success in black communities, it may have impacted non-black communities even more given that there was a higher expectation of conformity to this ideal in those communities. I had a culturally diverse mix of friends growing up and I know the issue of matrifocality was discussed in various types of households.

Going back to Smith’s notion of matrifocality as a term that underlines the role of women as mothers, I see how this might be a point of focus for black families in the Americas. What must it have been like for a young black woman who had been recently freed from slavery to give birth? Certainly the specter of children born with price tags on their toes didn’t disappear overnight. Something to ponder at a later date. Also, I don’t know what the current thinking on matrifocality in black families in the Americas is among social scientists and the like.

I started on a new, paying project this week, so I didn’t get as much reading in as I had hoped. The days since Monday have been a blur. I need more of your voice in my head. Perhaps I should set a weekly minimum number of pages to read?

Your ever gracious pupil,
Moi-même

The Caribbean Region:An Open Frontier in Anthropological Theory
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 19-42 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)


Letters to My Tutor

My dear lady,

I’ve been thinking this week that I haven’t been Americana enough, haven’t maintained the upbeat-enthusiastic-everything-is-possible attitude.  I’m not sure I ever was a good representative of that mindset, though I’ve been chastised for it in the past by friends who were ever more fatalistic.  I’ve been away from reading this week, and with every missing page, my sadness grew and grew; and with thoughts of all the pages in all the books, my sadness grew and grew.  But I worked at making money, so that gives me the right to live a little longer, to be a proper person.  If one does not make money, then one should pay the world a kindness and just die… that’s how it seems.  I will read more tonight and work for money tomorrow and work for pleasure the next day.  I did go for volunteering tonight; that was a pleasure, but once again I find myself in a rush to write to you.

I felt an instant recognition in reading about anthropology in the Caribbean.  I could not stop thinking of home and childhood.  When Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote of Caribbean culture being born out of genocide and colonialism and slavery, I felt that he was describing my world growing up in the Mississippi Delta.  There’s such a shared history and circumstance.  But as time is limited, I will write of one specific thing for now, and perhaps more later in the week?

Trouillot wrote that some officials “saw Afro-Caribbean families as ‘deviant’ simply because they did not fit the nuclear folk-model of Western consciousness.  Just as in the United States, these bureaucrats’ views were echoed by social scientists who wanted to explain–or explain away–such ‘abnormalities’ as ‘missing fathers.'”  I grew up with this discussion swirling, this label of my family life as being deviant.  I’ve written many times of how I greatly prefer the family structure I knew as a kid to the “nuclear folk-model.”  I had this enormous, enveloping extended family experience.  I knew the intimacy that comes with mundane interaction with respect to  great-grandparents on both sides of my family.  I shared a household with a great-grandparent.  Did I ever share a household with my father?  No.  Were my mother and father ever married?  No.  However, speaking with people who grew up in the nuclear unit, I’ve come to believe that I shared something more with my father than what many experience after spending their entire childhood in a home with mom-dad-sibling.   Since I had intimate access to the same people who shaped my father growing up, I think I “know” him in a deeper and more significant way than those in many non-“deviant” families.  I may not know his favorite cereal or the way his takes his coffee, but I know the types of information that would allow me to decide whether I could be friends with him;  times when I’ve spoken to him about his views on women or “race” or religion, I had a near instant understanding of milieu from which those views were born.  I understood him.  Many had “present” fathers who were a lot more “missing” than mine.

This is not to say that I would not have preferred the physical presence of my father along with the other that I did have.  I just grew up in a culture where the value of knowing and being around your “people,” your extended family, was greater than the value of knowing or being around any one or two particular family members.  This “way” may have been born in part as a result of slavery where knowing and being around particular family members may not have been an option due to sales concerns;  it could also be part of an older tradition.  I think there is a wonderfulness to it that was often overlooked by “bureaucrats” and “social scientists.”

OK, now, I will post this while it is still officially Monday in my land.  I will read more of your letters and your work this week.  I must also finish some of the books that have been stacked on my desk for longer.  I read a couple of your letters just this night.  When you chastised Nelson (Algren) for not being a good French student, I felt the sting as well.

Devoted as ever,
S.