The Secret Lives of Bouki: Louisiana’s Creolized Folkloresque

Abstract

This article historicizes the character of Bouki in the context of Creole Louisiana, showing how the story of Bouki has evolved to become the story of Kouri-Vini, Louisiana’s native and endangered Creole language. This historicization takes place in three distinct periods; those periods are defined by their relation to Kouri-Vini. The first period aligns with the Antebellum period; the second aligns with the early 20th century; and the final coincides with the present day. Moving across these periods, Bouki finds himself demoted, at which point he enters the ‘creolized folkloresque.’ The folkloresque is a larger mosaic of folkloric forms detached from the material conditions of their production and available to popular culture; for the folkloresque to be creolized designates the same process but under vastly unequal social and material conditions. In short, Bouki enters the creolized folkloresque, becoming a folkoresque figure available to all who find themselves subject to creolized conditions. In the pre-American part of Louisiana’s history, creolized conditions included slavery and colonization; post-Americanization, linguistic discrimination plays an outsized role. Where such conditions persist in Louisiana, there Bouki can be found.