SPATIALIZING BLACK CULTURE THROUGH THE PLACEMAKING TRADITION OF THE RURAL LOUISIANA CREOLE BOUCHERIE

Abstract

Before the advent of refrigeration and grocery stores, Louisiana’s rural Creoles—mixed-race French-heritage people who usually identify as black—supplemented their diets through self-provisioning activities such as the ritual of butchering of a hog and distributing its products amongst kin and neighbors. Called a boucherie, this activity continues in the state’s rural southwest and is deeply linked to present-day Creole identity. Collected through ethnographic and archival methods, this research argues that the boucherie gives spatial expression to Creole culture through reuniting family members, sharing intergenerational wisdom and memories, and, for some, meeting sustenance needs. I draw from research on black placemaking—conceptualized as the ways black Americans “create sites of endurance, belonging, and resistance through social interaction,” (Hunter and others 2016, 1)—ritualized commemorative practices, and spatializing culture. This study contributes to the burgeoning field of black geographies by demonstrating how boucheries serve culture-sustaining roles for black Louisianans.