Voice, Gaze, and Community in Marie Vieux-Chauvet's Dance on the Volcano

Abstract

Abstract:This essay critically reads Dance on the Volcano, the second book by the postcolonial Haitian writer Marie Vieux-Chauvet, which is set a decade before the Haitian Revolution and was published in 1957, during François Duvalier's rise to presidency. Scholarship on Chauvet has demonstrated that voice, body, and gaze are essential in the characterization of the novel's main character, Minette, as both an opera singer and a political figure. My essay builds on this work by shedding light on the making of communities, an aspect of the novel that has not been integrated in critical discussions. My analysis focuses on forms of collective embodiment as depicted through the aural and visual registers of the mulatta. Chauvet's depiction of Minette's vocal and visual capabilities problematizes the performance of racialized bodies while rendering visible Chauvet's political imagination of a Black and anticolonial struggle emerging from gestures of solidarity and alliances with enslaved people, affranchis, and Black women.