The Convoluted Logic of Creolization the New Orleans Way

Abstract

These sections yoke texts with different interpretations of the creolization question, highlighting its ambiguities, cliches, and mythic potential. In New Orleans, "circumstances favored the reciprocal acculturation of Creoles of various lineages," states Joseph Roach in his Cities of the Dead : Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996), "within a unique network of African, American, and European practices" (9). Roach roots the multicultural aspect of New Orleans to the settlement pattern of colonial