Re/assembling the imaginary: Counter-narratives of Haiti’s transnational textile industry

Hammond, Charlotte ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5383-7486 2024. Re/assembling the imaginary: Counter-narratives of Haiti’s transnational textile industry. Textile 22 (3) , pp. 547-560. 10.1080/14759756.2023.2242118 Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Since the 1970s, Haiti’s zòn franch (dislocated sites where garments are assembled and processed for export to the North), have reconstructed bonds of coloniality through structural violence. Despite over two hundred years of Haitian independence from French colonial rule, and over 80 years since the US occupation of Haiti, these “ports,” exempt from tax and duties, are often viewed locally as self-contained non-independent islands that reproduce a colonial logic of transnational wealth extraction. Mixing voices from ethnographic fieldwork and literature, this article examines the creative resistance of Black women garment workers in Northern Haiti. It sees their opposition to a precarious local textiles industry, to substandard labor conditions in the zòn franch and to increased climate vulnerability as a legacy of Black Haitian women’s continuous resistance to plantation slavery. I conceptualize the combination of informal livelihood strategies the women deploy as a form of what Haitian anthropologist and artist Gina Athena Ulysse calls rasanblaj (2015), or the re/assembly or regrouping of ideas, things, people. For Black women workers viewed as disposable by outsiders and a wealthy elite, self-organized textile-based initiatives not only tackle ecological issues such as waste management, but also extend social and educational benefits to the local community.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis
ISSN:	1475-9756
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	9 March 2023
Date of Acceptance:	14 July 2023
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2024 09:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/157608

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