L’irresponsabilité, une compétence de dominant

Abstract

This article breaks with the dominant theoretical framework which often describes the Republic of Haiti as a bankrupt, cursed, and frail state. By relying on interviews with Haitian women and their life stories, on documents outlining post-earthquake projects concerning women, and on the narratives which circulated about them among decision makers after the catastrophe, the article analyzes the close ties between political decision makers of both genders, NGOs, and gender relations in Haitian society. This Haitian-centric reading allows grasping the concept of governmentality and building the concept of irresponsibility as a competence held by dominants. This situation shows that the traditional position occupied by these decision makers in this society’s unequal relations has prevented them from taking on the problems faced by the population, which they have transferred onto women within families with the participation of NGOs. The Haitian state’s irresponsibility must be understood as a paradigmatic form of politics, another form of governmentality, in the same way as responsibility, in a context in which the state has refused historically to play its part.

Keywords

• poto mitan
• gender relations
• governmentality
• irresponsibility
• crises