Voukoum. Esprits rebelles du carnaval gouadeloupéen

How does the Mas technique fit in with post-colonial history and evoke deportation and enslavement? How does Voukoum (‘disorder’ in Creole) combat consumer society and denounce the relationships of domination that are still at work today? What role do its members play in safeguarding the living heritage, the Creole language and, in particular, the art of gwoka music?

Featuring the testimonies of those involved in the carnival, this book offers a largely unknown insight into the history of Guadeloupe and the unique place occupied by the French West Indies in the Caribbean. Voukoum, esprits rebelles du carnaval guadeloupéen introduces the reader to the life of a collective that strives publicly, resisting the effects of racism, to rebuild the broken thread of ancestral ties and to constantly reinvent essential narratives.

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Flore Pavy is a member of the Social Anthropology Laboratory at the École des Hautes Études
en sciences sociales. After extensive fieldwork in the West Indies, notably in Cuba, she was awarded the 2023 thesis prize by the Fondation pour la mémoire de l'esclavage for her doctorate, under the supervision of Philippe Descola and Laurent Berger, on the gwoup-a-po of Guadeloupe. Her research focuses on the social implications of new rituals in the Caribbean. To carry out her research, she has learnt Creole and integrated herself into Guadeloupean society, offering a participatory ethnography.