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Abstract
This text mobilizes the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality and coloniality to analyze the figure of the Haitian poto-mitan woman-she who acts as a central pillar-a figure that was constructed during the history of colonialism. Colonial and postslavery relations initiated a process of coformation and coproduction and determined power relations that still traverse Haiti. They connect individual, national, and global dynamics that intertwine, frequently characterizing the potomitan women's workforce as deviant. This article historicizes the poto-mitan woman and unveils how common conceptualizations appropriate the body and time of women assigned the duties of support and protection.
Introduction
Theses on the anglophone and francophone Caribbean mobilize the concepts of matrifocality (Gracchus 1980, Smith 1956,), incomplete families (Clarke 1999), focal incest (André 1987), and deviant families to address the familial realities of women in the domestic space. These families are often portrayed as being led by all-powerful women who dismiss the importance of men. These facts implicitly refer to the nuclear family model that is elevated to the rank of universal model. Thus, families with single mothers are considered dysfunctional and disorganized: a disservice in light of the realities of singleparent families. In Haiti, the term used to describe these women-led families is poto-mitan, referring often to mothers who work outside their homes to assume the social and affective needs of their families with or without men in the roles of husbands/fathers. This figure deserves to be known, both at the theoretical and epistemological levels.
My text will take a genealogical approach, showing, much like Hortense Spillers (1987) in her foundational essay Mamas Baby, Papas Maybe: An American Grammar Book, that the poto-mitan family model is part of an obliterated and subjugated "grammar" that belongs to the long history of slavery and postslavery in the Caribbean region. This history deserves to be unearthed to better capture the specificities of the power relations at work in these families. Additionally, the European, colonial preoccupation with epistemological order used a local term related to the practices of Haitians, one that structures the cognitive universe of this society. This word-poto-mitan-deserves to be tracked beyond a simple observation, unveiling how it contributes to shaping the world and its relations with the internal and external history of this society. Employing theories of...