Ana Lara

The Dominican Republic (DR) is currently experiencing an increase in xenophobic violence, fraught with ethno-nationalist tension around questions of race, and specifically Blackness. The proposed study, Ogun’s Fields: Black Ontologies on the Island of Hispaniola, examines mobilizations of Ogun among vudú practitioners (vuduistas) in local articulations of Blackness. Based on qualitative ethnographic research, Ogun’s Fields is an in-depth study of Blackness within a socio-political site that exhibits the ideological extremes of racial identification – where one side of the island is articulated as the Black Republic and the other a Catholic Hispanic ethno-state. Through ethnographic research I ask, “How do vuduista mobilizations of Ogun shape articulations of Blackness in the Dominican Republic?” To examine this question, I will conduct research over nine months with vuduistas in the Dominican Republic. This study intervenes in and contributes to anthropological debates on modern human ontologies – specifically on the role of Black people within modernity; anthropological theorizations of racialized subjectivities – and specifically Black articulations of subjectivity; and anthropological studies of the relationship between religions and Blackness – specifically the relationship between vudú and Blackness in the Dominican Republic.