From Paper to Practice: The Potential of Haitian Women's Fiction as a Conscious Raising Developmental Resource

Abstract

Within this thesis I explore the idea of using feminist fiction to further women's empowerment in the context of a developing area. Taking the use of feminist fiction as a conscious raising resource during the second wave of feminism in Canada, the United States and England as a starting point, I look to the canon of feminist fiction of Haiti as an unmined resource that may be used for similar purposes. I argue that texts within this canon may be used in the same way if it can be shown that they deal with the evolution or manifestation of feminist (oppositional) consciousness through the narratives of female protagonists. As such, I undertake the qualitative content analysis of five texts from five Haitian female authors using, as a measuring gauge, the four elements of minimal oppositional consciousness as put forward and defined by Mansbridge (2001). As oppositional consciousness plays an important causal role in the motivation to work for or act as agents within liberation movements, the potential within these feminist texts to rouse or crystallize such a consciousness within Haitian women provides the link between feminist fiction and the ultimate empowerment of Haitian women.