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Jeannel Wyclef Jean-the Grammy award-winning musician, hip-hop star, founder of the nonprofit organization Yéle Ayiti, roving ambassador for Haiti, and one-time candidate for Haiti's presidency-is notorious in Haiti and in the jaspora (the Kreyòl term for diaspora).1 As a celebrity with global renown, Wyclef occupies a unique position that he often uses to represent Haiti. The extent to which Wyclef conflates his own identity with representations of Haiti and the jaspora makes him a particularly compelling figure for thinking through the role of cultural production in articulating diasporas. In this essay, I argue that Wyclef emblematizes what I call the myth of diaspora exceptionalism-the idea that the jaspora is exclusively positioned to transform the image of Haiti from degradation to idealization.2
My use of the term diaspora exceptionalism is indebted to the work of the anthropologist and historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who argued forcefully (and prophetically) against Haitian exceptionalism. According to Trouillot, the language of Haitian exceptionalism "permeates both the academic and popular literature on Haiti under different guises and with different degrees of candidness." 3 It is a fiction elaborated in service of other agendas that have nothing to do with Haiti. Building on Trouillot's "fiction of Haitian exceptionalism" and explaining the concept's relevance for today, the literary scholar Colin Dayan notes that in the language of Haitian exceptionalism, Haiti becomes "radically unlike any other place . . . grotesquely unique. But we must remember that both processes, whether idealization or degradation, displace the human element."4
An examination of Wyclef 's staged performances, videos, music production, and lyrics, work through his nonprofit organization, Yéle Ayiti, and cowritten autobiography, Purpose: An Immigrant's Story, reveals how diaspora exceptionalism operates through problematic overtones. Performance theory provides a critical lens for a sustained analysis of Wyclef 's representation of Haiti through symbolic use of language, history, and flag iconography. This theoretical model helps illuminate how jaspora, like other identity categories, is a performative that individual performances reinforce and undercut. I draw on performance studies professor Diana Taylor's argument for performance as events and as epistemology in The Archive and the Repertoire, in which she notes that "performance also functions as an epistemology. Embodied practice, along with and bound up with other cultural practices offers a way of knowing."...