{"id":1221,"date":"2010-02-25T23:33:19","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T22:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=1221"},"modified":"2019-08-05T21:28:08","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T19:28:08","slug":"haiti-and-the-poetry-of-broken-utopias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2010\/02\/25\/haiti-and-the-poetry-of-broken-utopias\/","title":{"rendered":"Haiti and the poetry of broken utopias"},"content":{"rendered":"

And what does it mean when a research project that thought it was about France and about arcane educational questions suddenly finds itself confronted with an event from across the sea? What does it mean when the question of the intellectual production of a single academic department in the Parisian banlieue<\/em> turns out to be in part about how the university becomes a site for the reception and mediation of mass trauma?<\/p>\n

Part of the answer involves this poem I came across today, by Jean Herold Paul<\/a>, a Haitian doctoral student in philosophy at Paris-8 (a department that turns out to have long-standing links with Port-au-Prince). I’ve translated it with his permission for you all.<\/p>\n

The night that we are<\/strong>
\n(in memory of J\u00e9sula and Wilmichel)<\/p>\n

bric-a-brac of apocalypses
\nbric-a-break of our utopias<\/p>\n

and if…
\nand then…
\nbut are we still?<\/p>\n

in the night where we are
\nin the night that we are
\na horrible night
\nwhere only our dead appear dimly
\nwithout name or register
\nwithout farewell or burial<\/p>\n

in the night where we are
\nin the night that we are
\nwhat’s left of us?<\/p>\n

bric-a-brac of apocalypses
\nbric-a-break of our utopias<\/p>\n

in the night where we are
\nin the night that we are
\nit’s still night
\nat least our presence is reflected there
\na simple sensation of being somewhere
\nwithout knowing who we are
\nwhere we are
\nwithout knowing with what or with who we are<\/p>\n

in the night where we are
\nin the night that we are
\nwhen will we be able to mourn
\nfor ourselves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And what does it mean when a research project that thought it was about France and about arcane educational questions suddenly finds itself confronted with an event from across the sea? What does it mean when the question of the intellectual production of a single academic department in the Parisian banlieue turns out to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[488,753,500],"tags":[590,647,650,706],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2831,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions\/2831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}