What the skin says: “rayana” consciousness and post-earthquake solidarity in 2010

Through the concept of “rayano consciousness,” this article theorizes the Haitian-Dominican border within the framework of border studies. Encompassing the multiplicity of borders—transnational, interethnic and multilinguistic—that characterize the Dominican experience on and beyond the island, rayano consciousness engages the historical and present awareness of Dominican borders—symbolic, political, and geographical—a process that includes marginalized subjectivities in the imagining and narrations of dominicanidad. The essay analyzes a series of contemporary performances by David “Karmadavis” Pérez and Rita Indiana Hernández.