Skip Navigation



Journal of the American Academy of Religion Advance Access published online on April 21, 2006
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfj088
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (Rapid PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
74/2/420    most recent
lfj088v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Johnson, P. C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

Secretism and the Apotheosis of Duvalier

Paul Christopher Johnson 1 *

1 Associate Professor, at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, Haven Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Paul Christopher Johnson, E-mail: paulcjoh{at}umich.edu


  Abstract

"Secretism" refers to the active invocation of secrecy as a source of a group’s identity, the promotion of the reputation of special access to restricted knowledge, and the successful performance or staging of such access. This essay examines a case in which a secretist religion became a public force. The case is that of Haiti and the religion of Vodou, as it was merged with political objectives by François Duvalier during his tenure as "president-for-life" from 1957 to 1971. Duvalier represented himself in his discourse as being possessed of the historical spirit of the revolutionary hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and in his style impersonated the Vodou Gede spirit, Baron Samedi. Since his death he has by some reports himself become a spirit, Loa 22 Os. Whereas much previous work has endeavored to explain states’ control of secret religions, this essay considers secretist religion’s capacity for infiltrating procedures and esthetics of the State and its uses in totalitarian rule.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.