publication

“Dedouble” is Haitian Kreyòl vernacular that evokes teleportation and metamorphosis. The body labors to unbind itself from time, place, socio-cultural conventions and heteropatriarchal prescriptions. This essay explores feminist and queer registers of dedouble by examining how Haitian documentary photographer Josué Azor images the opaque lifeworlds of male-women and men who self-present and self-double as hyper sexual and feminine. LaMothe translates this self-presentation as lougawou, inspired by Haitian queers’ appropriation of the supernatural creature into their worldview. In popular lore, the lougawou is gendered female, sheds her skin at night, sprouts wings, and preys on children. Narratives of the lagouwou disclose longstanding cultural and historical panic about these Women's ability to transcend oppressive ideologies and social scripts. Ethnographies, textual, and visual analyses converge to home in on the private lives of self-proclaimed lougawou. The essay situates how crafts a memory project that responds to contemporary anti-homosexuality activities in Haiti, and challenges Haitian legacies, and re-assembles them to create intricate and empowering narratives of queer lives. He depicts dedouble and performances of lougawou through photographs that tell stories of same-sex loving male bodies who embody the fraught ways they maneuver through everyday adversities, societal prejudices, and aggressions to their well-being.