1915–1934: (Women’s Flesh in the Occupation Archive — Sylvain-Bouchereau’s Use of Littéralement Pointing Toward a Totalizing Physiological and Material Shift…

1915–1934: (Women’s Flesh in the Occupation Archive — Sylvain-Bouchereau’s Use of Littéralement Pointing Toward a Totalizing Physiological and Material Shift for Haitian Women in Body in Flesh in Relationship to One Another and to the Material World — a Rite of Passage, US Military Construction Reports from Over 500 Miles of Roads Bridges and Railways Recording in Their Side Notes and Mundane Descriptions Women’s Raised Punctured Lacerated and Dismembered Flesh at the Hands of Occupation Personnel, Fuentes’s “Mutilated Historicity” — Haitian Women Overwhelmingly Appearing in the Archive Disfigured and Violated Leaving a Degraded Historicization in Which Flesh Injuries Are the Remains with Which We Must Construct Their History, Georges Anglade Arguing That Understanding the Occupation Involves a New Configuration of Natural Space): Sylvain-Bouchereau’s use of littéralement points toward a totalizing physiological and material shift for Haitian women — in body, in flesh, in relationship to one another, and to the material and ametaphysicality of their world — a rite of passage. The seemingly static and formulaic construction reports from the US military’s work on over 500 miles of roads, bridges, and railways offer one record of women’s subtle and cumulative experiences of occupation. In the side notes and mundane descriptions of their work, casual references reveal women altered and were altered by the occupation. The banality of documentation threatens to flatten the recurring reports of women’s raised, punctured, lacerated, and dismembered flesh at the hands of occupation personnel’s vile intent and frequent recklessness. In what Marisa Fuentes has identified as a “mutilated historicity,” Haitian women overwhelmingly appear in the archive disfigured and violated, leaving us with a degraded historicization of the occupation in which flesh injuries are the remains with which we must construct their history. Yet at the intersection of women’s injury and the record of occupation landscape there is also evidence of women suturing the multiple shifts in personal and physical environment into new articulations of themselves and the nation. Haitian geographer Georges Anglade argues that understanding the impact of the occupation involves a new configuration of natural space in political, philosophical, and historical understandings of the nation.