Re-membering Défilé: Dédée Bazile as Revolutionary Lieu de Mémoire

In this article, Jana Evans Braziel attempts to delineate a historical sketch of the woman Dédée Bazile, as well as to understand how and why she became the legendary and revolutionary figure Défilée-la-folle—or what the author is citing, following Pierre Nora, as a lieu de mémoire (site of memory). Drawing from the revolutionary Haitian historiographies written by Madiou and Ardouin, the historical reflections on Défilée by Octave Petit, and the trenchant contemporary analyses of this heroine by Joan Dayan, Défilée is examined as a national heroine whose meanings are suffused with political resistance, anti-imperialism, and patriotic reclamation: historically, she has been embraced and reclaimed during periods of national crisis, notably the period of US military occupation from 1915 to 1934 and later during the second “inter-vasion” (as it was satirically dubbed: somewhere between intervention and invasion), from 1994 to 1999. [author]