Antihaitianismo: an embodied discourse

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that contemporary manifestations of social, political and economic discrimination – antihaitianismo – in the Dominican Republic towards their Haitian neighbours have become embodied responses which are reproduced through everyday actions. Using ethnographic fieldwork and phenomenology, I explore a variety of contexts in which antihaitianismo has become part of a Dominican existential background that is provoked to surface in situations of heightened tension, stress or discomfort. I also show how this embodied discourse has affected and affects a race-centred, essentialist form of governance. This article is supplemented by a short film which can be found at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlIH4fpwUlU