1935–1960s: (The Scholarly Debate — Glover’s “Disorderly Feminine” Excluding the LFAS as Reformist, Carolle Charles Casting Early Feminist Activists as Elite…

1935–1960s: (The Scholarly Debate — Glover’s “Disorderly Feminine” Excluding the LFAS as Reformist, Carolle Charles Casting Early Feminist Activists as Elite Intellectuals Who Suffered from Narrow Class Perspectives, Myriam Chancy Countering That Haitian Feminists Could Not Afford to Be Narrow and That Categories of Oppression Are Not Static, Sanders Johnson Arguing That Taken Together Charles and Chancy Present a Nonutopic Feminist Frame That Challenges the Supposed Teleology of Haitian Political Work Where All Roads Do Not End in Victory and All Victories Are Not Measured by Revolutionary Relation to the State, the LFAS’s Focus on Rights Being Not Singular or Nonreflexive but Probing the Contours of the Frames That Exist): The commitment to radical social revolution in Haiti, as literary theorist Kaiama Glover writes, is part of the very fabric of the nation — a radicalism forged in exceptional tropes of martyred revolutionary heroes sacrificing themselves in the name of the people. Glover provocatively offers the title “disorderly feminine” to account for women’s political practice that unsettles the fantasy of selflessness that subtends narratives of nationalist revolutionary actors, but she excludes LFAS women from this definition, arguing that authors like Marie Vieux Chauvet were arguably more radically minded than the reformist Ligue. The measure of the LFAS’s political practice is prefigured through their presumed emphasis on rights, foreclosing any interpretation beyond the liberal frame. Haitian feminist sociologist Carolle Charles states that early feminist activists represented middle-class interests and suffered from narrow class perspectives, arguing that female suffrage was important because it opened the door to social mobility for a privileged minority. Literary scholar Myriam Chancy counters that Haitian feminists could not afford to be narrow in their vision and that the category of oppressed is not static. Sanders Johnson argues that taken together, Charles’s and Chancy’s work presents a nonutopic feminist frame that can hold the complexity of these women’s work — a frame that challenges the supposed teleology and performance of Haitian political work, one in which all roads do not end in victory and all victories are not measured by a revolutionary relation to the state. The LFAS’s focus on rights was not singular or nonreflexive; observing their organizing as a suffrage movement alone falls flat within the prototypes of politics in Haiti.