Paper short abstract:

The Caribbean has seen a radical expansion of massive deaths due to crime, disease and natural disasters. How does one bring order to the imbalances of life through mourning and other rites is a very critical question to pose. How does one deal with extraordinary disturbances and suffering that cause profound personal and collective trauma is another important question to probe. In Haiti, after the January 12, 2010 earthquake which killed 300,000 people, rendered ten percent of the population disabled, displaced three million, and left a million homeless and an entire population traumatized, religion provided some counterbalance to this moment of indescribable physical destruction, utmost devastation, and sheer despondency among those who continue to mourn their dead and care for the living. Haiti is now sacred ground. Using primarily a framework grounded in Vodou metaphysics, this paper probes cosmological connections between the dead and the living and attempts to understand and process communal suffering and loss by asking how death is understood and conceptualized, and how ways of dying and mourning impact the living. This exploration has implications for understanding not only how a community deals with transitions from one existence to a next and concepts of the hereafter, but also it throws into relief how a society values life and how it deals with trauma of great magnitude.

Paper long abstract:

The Caribbean has seen a radical expansion of massive deaths due to crime, disease and natural disasters. How does one bring order to the imbalances of life through mourning and other rites is a very critical question to pose. How does one deal with extraordinary disturbances and suffering that cause profound personal and collective trauma is another important question to probe. In Haiti, after the January 12, 2010 earthquake which killed 300,000 people, rendered ten percent of the population disabled, displaced three million, and left a million homeless and an entire population traumatized, religion provided some counterbalance to this moment of indescribable physical destruction, utmost devastation, and sheer despondency among those who continue to mourn their dead and care for the living.

Haiti is now sacred ground. Using primarily a framework grounded in Vodou metaphysics, this paper probes cosmological connections between the dead and the living and attempts to understand and process communal suffering and loss by asking how death is understood and conceptualized, and how ways of dying and mourning impact the living. This exploration has implications for understanding not only how a community deals with transitions from one existence to a next and concepts of the hereafter, but also it throws into relief how a society values life and how it deals with trauma of great magnitude.