Abstract

This article examines the gendered political geography of postcolonial Haiti. It draws from the author's long-term ethnographic fieldwork with the Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP), a peasants' movement established in 1973, to highlight the experience of rural women on Haiti's high Central Plateau. It mobilizes foundational work in feminist geography to address a lack of attention to the political in analyses of gender and rural life in Haiti. In so doing, it shows how militant women question and challenge patriarchal power in their daily negotiation and transformation of political space. This article proposes that women's practices of economic and sexual autonomy enact a vision of liberation that seeks to resolve the tension between the anticolonial and patriarchal dimensions of political power in Haiti. It first traces a political genealogy of the postcolonial Haitian state, and then shows how women have long been active, if unrecognized, participants in left political struggle. Next, it looks more broadly at how patriarchal power inflects agrarian space through gendered norms of property and personhood. Finally, it proposes the lakou (yard) as a space of transformation in relations between gender, land, and capital, and shows how women have cultivated and defended political space between the state and the yard.

摘要

本文考察了后殖民时期海地的性别政治地理学。它取材于作者与 Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP)（成立于 1973 年的农民运动）的长期民族志田野调查，以突出海地中部高原农村妇女的经历。它动员了女权主义地理学的基础工作，以解决在分析海地性别和农村生活时缺乏对政治的关注。通过这样做，它展示了好战的女性如何在日常谈判和政治空间转型中质疑和挑战父权制权力。本文提出，女性在经济和性自主方面的实践体现了一种解放愿景，旨在解决海地政治权力的反殖民和父权层面之间的紧张关系。它首先追溯了后殖民时期海地国家的政治谱系，然后展示了女性长期以来如何积极参与左翼政治斗争，如果不被承认的话。接下来，它更广泛地研究父权制如何通过财产和人格的性别规范影响农业空间。最后，它提出了lakou（院子）作为性别、土地和资本之间关系的转变空间，展示了女性如何在国家和院子之间培育和捍卫政治空间。