Timothy Lomeli

This article uses historical vignettes to explore how racializing and pathologizing create border regimes through the framing of Haitian bodies as undesirable citizens in countries of the Western hemisphere. In particular, some members of U.S. institutions and of the United Nations, depict Haitians as virulent bodies in order to build systems of inclusion and exclusion based on race and ethnicity. Tracking acute epidemics and pandemics affecting Haitians, we argue that biological crises allow the U.S. to redefine citizenship regimes, (im)mobilities, and create new hierarchies of humanity. We first discuss the medical and racial tensions that framed the relations between the US and Haiti during the age of revolutions. We then examine the blatant anti-Haitian discourse that stemmed from the US response to the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s; and finally, we examine the global mismanagement of the cholera epidemic that started in Haiti in 2011. Through these historical snapshots, we argue that a narrative pattern of medical stigmatization of Haitians partially shape US bordering practices. The pathologization of Haitians is central in the perpetuation of the myth of the “immigrant crisis” and of the concomitant deadly border practices dehumanizing immigrants from the Global South.

This article examines the 2005 film adaptation of Dany Laferrière’s 1997 collection La Chair du maître, entitled Vers le sud, directed by Laurent Cantet. In La Chair du maître, Laferrière writes short stories that demonstrate how sexuality can be a form of dominance and simultaneously a method of liberation in Haiti. In Cantet’s film, we follow Legba, a sex worker in Haiti, and his relationship with two white women, an already decisive alteration from the short stories that inspired it. By comparing the film adaptation to the short stories that inspired it, I argue that Cantet’s film drastically alters the source material and undermines the original intent of Laferrière’s work. Cantet’s film is insensitive to Laferrière’s original intent because Cantet privileges the white characters over the Haitian characters and removes any nuance from the agency of Legba, and the responsibility the women have in his death. This conclusion is supported by Laferrière’s republication of the collection as a novel, using the film’s title, Vers le sud (2006). Instead of focusing on Legba, Laferrière re-establishes Fanfan, an entirely separate character, as the protagonist and he thus reclaims the title and the original intent of the stories.

Gender identity expression continues to be the subject of public discourse. In the past few decades, scholars and members of the general public have questioned the idea of a stable and binary gender identity, which has caused debates in both the anglophone and francophone worlds. Redcar, also known as Christine and the Queens, as well as Chris, is a particularly interesting public figure concerning gender identity and expression because his relationship has evolved throughout his career. The artist has been remarkably open about his relationship with gender throughout the last decade, which has been in the public eye. Redcar is also someone who has found himself between the anglophone and francophone worlds – he expresses a cultural identity that is neither altogether French nor anglophone, but hybrid.

As a musician whose journey with gender has been more or less public, it raises the question: How does Redcar use his music, videos, and persona to navigate and express his evolving relationship with gender? Through the use of gender and queer theories, this article demonstrates how Redcar has used these elements to examine and redefine his own gender. This essay will look specifically at the construction of his celebrity persona, followed by a lyrical analysis of the song “iT” from his first album Chaleur humaine (2014) and a scenic analysis from the music video for “5 dols/5 dollars” from his second album Chris (2018) to demonstrate how Redcar’s public experience of gender exploration works to deconstruct the idea of a static gender and instead demonstrates how gender is always in a process of renegotiation.

In 2021, Kenichi Watanabe & Michaël Ferrier published the screenplays for their three nuclear documentaries with Gallimard as Notre ami l’atome (2021). Ferrier said these screenplays were not simple publications but expansions of the material they had collected in their three films, which includes expanded interviews and photographs of the disasters. In this article, I use adaptation theory to examine Watanabe & Ferrier’s film Le monde après Fukushima (2013) along with the screenplay that appeared in the 2021 publication to understand the limits and possibilities each medium affords. For instance, these documentaries were partially funded by state institutions with a vested interest in the film, its reception, and its depiction of the events, whereas literature is arguably freer to express opinions because it is not tied to certain forms of state funding. This article thus uses Jan-Noël Thon’s concept of transmedial adaptation to demonstrate how both media (film and text) are complementary. Rather than simply publish the screenplay, Watanabe & Ferrier use the publication as an opportunity to share expanded commentary and photography. When the film and text are read together, they become an even more explicit critique of the nations that perpetuate the use of nuclear energy despite their demonstrated dangers.

Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s vision for African cinema was born out of the lack of proper representation for Africans in Western cinema. Thus, his films explore narratives of Africans on the big screen, those whose roles, as Vieyra himself writes in Le cinéma au Sénégal (1983), had previously been relegated to that of “Y a bon Banania,” or that of the educated and reformed savage (52). One of his films that showcases the plurality and hybridity of Africans is Une nation est née (1961). The film, created on the backdrop of the Senegalese Independence Day celebration, is a journey through the forgotten history of the peoples of the newly formed nation, from precolonial times to the fight for independence. This film relies on the novel L’Aventure Ambiguë, by Cheikh Hamidou Kane, to structure and tell its story, but it also goes beyond Kane’s work to envision the future of Senegal, in order to create a new history of Senegal and work to construct a national identity.