This article examines a self-published manuscript, Esè Entwodiksyon pou Listwa Achitekti Ayiti, which sets a political and scholarly precedent for creolizing the architectural histories of Haiti and the greater Caribbean through its approach to visual and written language and audience. This archived document is the only known architectural history of Haiti composed in Haitian Creole, and an addition to a limited number of Creole-language texts on architecture within the Caribbean. Listwa Achitekti self-reflexively attempts to assemble a broad narrative of building culture over centuries, and offers images and theoretical frameworks of Haitian architecture that are informed by, but also diverge from, global historiography. Interpreted through a frame of creolization, this case study demonstrates one entry point into creole architectural histories in Haiti and the Caribbean as dynamic products of their specific location, in dialogue with international trends and neither isolated, and exceptional, nor derivative nand or imported.
Irene Brisson (Mon,) studied this question.