Jean Price-Mars — Works Index

Jean Price-Mars — Works Index Overview Jean Price-Mars (1876–1969) — ethnologist, diplomat, politician, physician, and the most influential Haitian intellectual of the twentieth century — wrote the book that forced Haiti to look at itself. His Ainsi parla l'oncle (1928) argued that the Haitian elite suffered from a "collective bovarysme": they imagined themselves to be coloured Frenchmen, adopting French language, French religion, and French cultural standards while actively denouncing the African heritage that constituted the actual foundation of Haitian popular culture. The cure, Price-Mars insisted, was not political reform but cultural revolution — a systematic revaluation of Vodou, Kreyòl, folklore, oral tradition, and the African-derived practices of the Haitian peasantry.