1935–1960s: (Dwelling Spaces and the Book’s Conclusion — In Addition to Traditional Chapters the Book Told Through Three Dwelling Spaces — A Bridge A Pilgrim…

1935–1960s: (Dwelling Spaces and the Book’s Conclusion — In Addition to Traditional Chapters the Book Told Through Three Dwelling Spaces — A Bridge A Pilgrimage and A Feeling — Akin to a Wayfarer’s Daydream Holding Important Affective and Sentient Space, Echoing M. Jacqui Alexander’s Charge to Chart the Failures of Anticolonial Nationalism to Take Seriously the Psychic and Pedagogical Aspects of Decolonization, These Nonchapters Mapping Political Locations That Often Go Historically Unmarked Like Grief Whimsical Curiosity and Insecurity, the Book Ending with the Submission That Early Twentieth-Century Haitian Feminists Troubled the Revolution as an Uncomplicated Touchpoint for Freedom — Haiti Is No Exception and Feminists Have Historically Simultaneously Harmed and Helped Women with Whom They Claimed Collectivity): In addition to traditional chapters, the book is told through three dwelling spaces — “A Bridge,” “A Pilgrimage,” and “A Feeling” — akin to a wayfarer’s daydream, holding important affective and sentient space for locating these women’s political practice and lives. These nonchapters echo M. Jacqui Alexander’s charge to chart the failures of anticolonial nationalism and decolonization movements to take seriously the psychic and pedagogical aspects of decolonization. They map political locations that often go historically unmarked — grief, whimsical curiosity, and insecurity — as a reminder of the multiple registers of history and the pace of a wayfaring political practice. The book ends with the submission that early twentieth-century Haitian feminists’ work troubled the conceptual foundations and afterlives of “the revolution” as an uncomplicated rhetorical and institutionalized touchpoint for freedom. Haiti is no exception: feminists, feminism, and those attached to these subjectivities have failed to meet the possibilities of their visions, and have historically, simultaneously harmed and helped women with whom they claimed collectivity but who did not always claim them. Women of African descent have had fraught and often painful relationships with feminisms that cannot and refuse to see their experiences as intimate, intersectional, local, and global. The book presents a story of women’s political practice at the gritty margins — the generative space of multiple contacts and possibilities — of women’s curation, participation, production, and consumption of the archive.