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The Sacred Music and Dance of Haitian Vodou from Temple to Stage and the Ethics of Representation

"What is true and at the same time quite remarkable about the Vodou," wrote Moreau de Saint-Mery (1958 [1797]: 68, my translation), "is the kind of force that induces those present to dance to insensibility. ... Without doubt in order to calm the fears that this mysterious cult inspires in the colony, [the blacks] pretend to dance it in public, to the sound of the drums and the clapping of hands. ... But I guarantee that it is all the more a calculated move to escape the vigilance of the authorities and even more to ensure the success of the secret meetings." Moreau's eyewitness tableaux describe both Vodou and its first public representations in the Americas. The struggle that was about to explode in revolution and the situation of the sacred in that struggle are implicit in such phrases as "calm the fears," "vigilance of the authorities," and "secret meetings." Knowing that Vodou troubled the tranquility of those in power, the faithful raised representational smoke screens in public arenas. Since Moreau's time, outsiders have also represented Vodou in literature, theater, film, and scholarship, for the most part denying Vodouists the opportunity and the capacity to contest those representations. What are the moral and political meanings and consequences of this denial? How must we