2026-09-23T03:39:23Zhttps://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/oai/requestoai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/672212026-05-15T19:51:43Zcom_1813_35col_1813_47
Guzman, Elena Herminia
Munasinghe, Viranjini P.
LaBennett, Oneka
Bassi Arevalo, Ernesto E.
2019-10-15T15:28:16Z
2021-06-05T06:00:16Z
2019-05-30
ProQuest Submission ID: 11427
ProQuest Publication ID: 13882778
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/67221
https://doi.org/10.7298/9237-rr66
11050202
Within the last 20 years over 70 border walls have been built around the world in the name of sovereignty and global security. Not only are border walls being built but the sovereign power these walls assume are expanding beyond their coordinates. As technological innovations rapidly develop, borders are hindering the movement of people across borders. Despite these technological innovations people continue to create strategies and tactics that reimagine and negotiate the borders of nations. This particular work is an ethnography of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This dissertation is based on 16 months of ethnographic research in Anse-à-Pitres, Haiti and Pedernales, Dominican Republic. My overall argument is that performance acts as a vehicle by which people subvert, solidify, and reimagine the borders of their nations. I explore how performances such as national celebrations of identity and the religious Lenten festivals of Rara on the border provide an avenue by which people perform the nations ideological and political borders. In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, these performances demonstrate the deep historical ties between the two countries that illuminate sites of collaboration within structures of anti-Haitianism and xenophobia. These entangled performances highlight the space between mobility and immobility in which people are able and unable to move across the border yet still have the ability to shape and mold those borders.
en_US
Cultural anthropology
African Diaspora
Borders
Haiti
Ethnic studies
Caribbean studies
Dominican Republic
Performance
Entangled Borders: Performance on the edge of nations in Haiti and the Dominican Republic
dissertation or thesis
application/pdf
Anthropology
Cornell University
Doctor of Philosophy
Ph.D., Anthropology
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/59810
Publication
Cornell Theses and Dissertations
Guzman, Elena Herminia
5893a6ea-7af3-41d7-abc6-04bcd26ab5df
open.access
open.access
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<Title>Entangled Borders: Performance on the edge of nations in Haiti and the Dominican Republic</Title>
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<Keyword>Cultural anthropology</Keyword>
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<Abstract>Within the last 20 years over 70 border walls have been built around the world in the name of sovereignty and global security. Not only are border walls being built but the sovereign power these walls assume are expanding beyond their coordinates. As technological innovations rapidly develop, borders are hindering the movement of people across borders. Despite these technological innovations people continue to create strategies and tactics that reimagine and negotiate the borders of nations. This particular work is an ethnography of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This dissertation is based on 16 months of ethnographic research in Anse-à-Pitres, Haiti and Pedernales, Dominican Republic. My overall argument is that performance acts as a vehicle by which people subvert, solidify, and reimagine the borders of their nations. I explore how performances such as national celebrations of identity and the religious Lenten festivals of Rara on the border provide an avenue by which people perform the nations ideological and political borders. In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, these performances demonstrate the deep historical ties between the two countries that illuminate sites of collaboration within structures of anti-Haitianism and xenophobia. These entangled performances highlight the space between mobility and immobility in which people are able and unable to move across the border yet still have the ability to shape and mold those borders.</Abstract>
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