The Blood of a Pig Has No Power: Lame Selès and the Spirit-Filled History of the Haitian Revolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-30
Author(s):  
Lenny J. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

scholarly journals Viral Events: Epidemiology, Ecology and the Outbreak of Modern Sovereignty // Eventos virales: Epidemiología, ecología y la irrupción de la soberanía moderna

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Carlos Fonseca Suárez
Keyword(s):  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
Ecological History ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
History Books ◽  
The Revolution

      Like most revolutionary processes, the history of the Haitian revolution has typically been narrated from the perspective of revolutionary heroes. Whether as the feat of Toussant L’Ouverture, Francois Macandal or Jean-Jacques Dessalaines, historians have often tried to encapsulate the revolution within the narrow margins of human causality. In this article, I attempt to sketch the contours of another possible history: an ecological history in which the feats of the revolutionary heroes give way to the radical power of nature. By focusing on the role that two epidemic phenomena—yellow fever and mesmerism—had within the revolution, I attempt to show how the emergence of an “epidemiological discourse” proved to be fundamental for imagining the outbreak of modern sovereignty as it occurred in Saint-Domingue. Drawing on the ecological history of the Greater Caribbean and the routes of exchange that determined the historical development of its radical environment, the article attempts to imagine what an ecocritical history of the revolutionary process could look like. It lays out a political cartography unlike that which one usually encounters in history books, following a mosquito in its route from Africa to America and retracing the way in which a European pseudo-science—mesmerism—arrived from France to America. The epidemiological discourse surrounding both yellow fever and mesmerism reveals the emergence of a new sociological language capable of figuring the crisis of imperial modes of sovereignty as well as the emergence of new modes of radical subjectivity. Departing from the works Deleuze and Guattari, but also in dialogue with recent debates in ecocriticism, the significance of the Haitian Revolution is reconsidered in its relationship to the emergence of sociology as a language capable of explaining the emergence of the modern political subject par excellence: the modern multitude. Resumen      Como la mayoría de los procesos revolucionarios, la historia de la revolución haitiana usualmente ha sido narrada desde la perspectiva histórica de los héroes revolucionarios. Ya sea como la épica de Toussant L’Ouverture, Francois Macandal o Jean-Jacques Dessalaines, los historiadores han intentado encapsular la revolución dentro de los márgenes de la causalidad humana. En este artículo, intento esbozar los contornos de otra posible historia: una historia ecológica en la que las hazañas de los héroes revolucionarios ceden el escenario al poder radical de la naturaleza. Mediante una articulación del rol que dos fenómenos epidémicos—la fiebre amarilla y el mesmerismo—tuvieron dentro de la revolución, intento demostrar cómo la aparición de un “discurso epidemiológico” demostró ser fundamental en el proceso de crisis de soberanía imperial que ocurrió en Saint-Domingue. Investigando tanto la historia ecológica del Gran Caribe como las rutas de intercambio que determinaron la radicalización de su atmósfera política, el artículo intenta imaginar una historia ecocrítica del proceso revolucionario. A través de una cartografía de las rutas transatlánticas de circulación de un mosquito, así como del desembarco en América de una pseudociencia—el mesmerismo—el artículo esboza una historiografía política distinta. Se escudriña el discurso epidemiológico que giraba en torno tanto a la fiebre amarilla como al mesmerismo en relación con el surgimiento de un nuevo discurso sociológico capaz de representar la crisis de los modelos imperiales de soberanía y el surgimiento de nuevas subjetividades radicales. Partiendo de los trabajos de Deleuze y Guattari, pero también en conversación con los recientes debates sobre la ecocrítica, el significado de la Revolución Haitiana es reconsiderado en relación con el surgimiento de la sociología como el idioma del sujeto moderno por excelencia: la multitud.

The Haitian Revolution in Atlantic Perspective

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Geggus
Keyword(s):  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Free People ◽  
North And South America ◽  
North And South

Of all the Atlantic revolutions, the fifteen-year struggle that transformed French Saint-Domingue into independent Haiti produced the greatest degree of social and economic change, and most fully embodied the contemporary pursuit of freedom, equality, and independence. Between 1789 and 1804, the Haitian Revolution unfolded as a succession of major precedents: the winning of colonial representation in a metropolitan assembly, the ending of racial discrimination, the first abolition of slavery in an important slave society, and the creation of Latin America's first independent state. Beginning as a home-rule movement among wealthy white colonists, it rapidly drew in militant free people of colour who demanded political rights and then set off the largest slave uprising in the history of the Americas. Sandwiched between the colonial revolutions of North and South America, and complexly intertwined with the coterminous revolution in France, Haiti's revolution has rarely been grouped with these major conflicts despite its claims to global significance.

Silencing the Present? Decolonization, Nationalization, and Natural Right(s) in Émeric Bergeaud’s Stella (1859)

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-209
Author(s):  
Jonas Ross Kjærgård
Keyword(s):  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Political Novel ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

AbstractÉmeric Bergeaud wrote Stella (1859), his novelistic account of the Haitian revolution (1791–1804), at a most turbulent moment in Haitian history. Faustin Soulouque rose to power in the late 1840 s and soon began to pursue his political opponents with violent means. Coming from a “Boyerist” background, Bergeaud fled the country in 1848 and settled in St. Thomas where he worked on his novel while his health deteriorated. Despite his precarious life in exile, Bergeaud remained silent about Soulouque in his decisively political novel Stella. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Madeleine Dobie, and others have shown, the history of slavery has often been silenced in literature and public debate, but what does it mean for Bergeaud to silence the present and focus on the past? I argue that Stella in fact makes a significant intervention in the debates about mid-19th-century Haiti. Instead of confronting Soulouque directly, however, Bergeaud addresses a pair of structural problems of which I consider Soulouque and his policy emblematic expressions: decolonization and nationalization. Most existing readings have emphasized Bergeaud’s reflections on history, but in this contextualized analysis, I show that Bergeaud looks not only to the past but also and importantly to nature and natural right(s) philosophy in his novelistic search for a way forward for Haiti.

The Evolution of Land and Labor in the Haitian Revolution, 1791-1820

1978 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Lacerte
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Political History ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Moderate Amount ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Peasant Economy

Between 1791 when the Haitian revolution began, and the death of Henri Christophe in 1820, important economic changes occurred in Haiti which transformed one of the most prosperous plantation economies in the New World into a republic of peasant proprietors. While the political history of the revolution has received a moderate amount of attention, the economic and social changes which accompanied it have been poorly understood. It is the purpose of this study to focus on the internal developments which were occurring in an irresistible way to bring about a peasant economy and to delineate the responses of a variety of governments, both French and Haitian, to try to halt these changes.

"Sons of White Fathers": Mulatto Vengeance and the Haitian Revolution in Victor Sééjour's "The Mulatto"

2010 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlene L. Daut
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
Tragic Mulatto ◽  
White Fathers ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
American Author ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Marlene L. Daut, "'Sons of White Fathers': Mulatto Vengeance and the Haitian Revolution in Victor Sééjour's 'The Mulatto'"(pp. 1––37) Although many literary critics have traced the genealogy of the tragic mulatto/a to nineteenth-century U.S. letters, in this essay I argue that the theme of tragedy and the mixed-race character predates the mid-nineteenth-century work of Lydia Maria Child and William Wells Brown and cannot be considered a solely U.S. American concept. The image can also be traced to early-nineteenth-century French colonial literature, where the trope surfaced in conjunction with the image of the Haitian Revolution as a bloody race war. Through a reading of the Louisiana-born Victor Sééjour's representation of the Haitian Revolution, "Le Mulââtre" or "The Mulatto," originally composed in French and first published in Paris in 1837, this essay considers the implications of the conflation of the literary history of the tragic mulatto/a with the literary history of the Haitian Revolution in one of the first short stories written by an American author of African descent.

scholarly journals A Revolução Haitiana e o Atlântico Negro: o Constitucionalismo em face do Lado Oculto da Modernidade / The Haitian Revolution and the Black Atlantic: Constitutionalism in face of the Dark Side of Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evandro Charles Piza Duarte ◽  
Marcos Vinícius Lustosa Queiroz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Double Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Thought ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Resumo: O presente artigo pretende ser um duplo movimento de reflexão sobre as categorias utilizadas para tratar da história do constitucionalismo moderno. Primeiramente, apresentará a categoria de “Atlântico Negro” e suas respectivas contribuições para uma “reperiodização” da modernidade, especificamente quanto aos movimentos sociais de reivindicação de direitos. Em seguida toma um evento particular desse Atlântico Negro, a Revolução Haitiana, como prisma hermenêutico e metodológico para pensar as disputas constitucionais. Busca-se, desse modo, adotar o ponto de vista de uma filosofia da história que lide, de maneira integrada, com a modernidade e o colonialismo. Por fim, tecerá breves comentários sobre como esse duplo movimento poderá contribuir para a reflexão sobre o direito constitucional contemporâneo. Abstract: The present paper aims to be a double movement of reflection about the history of modern constitutionalism. Firstly, it introduces the “Black Atlantic” category and its respective contributions to perform a “re-periodization” of modernity, specifically in relation to social movements of human rights. Then, it takes one particular event of this Black Atlantic, the Haitian Revolution, to be a methodological and hermeneutical prism to think the constitutional struggles. Thereby, the paper intends to embrace a point of view of the philosophy of history that deals with modernity and colonialism in an integrated manner. Lastly, it shows how this double displacement can contribute to the contemporary constitutional thought.

The Priest and the Prophetess

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
The North ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Coastal Cities ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Shortly after a slave revolt in the North Province of the French colony of Saint-Domingue sparked the Haitian Revolution in August 1791, a free black immigrant coffee farmer and gender-bending religious visionary named Romaine-la-Prophétesse launched a separate insurgency on behalf of his own beleaguered people. Leading thousands of free colored insurgents and the slaves they liberated in the colony’s West Province, Romaine achieved something that no other rebel leader ever did in the colonial history of the Americas: conquering not one, but two coastal cities: Jacmel and Léogâne. His political adviser was a French Catholic priest named Abbé Ouvière, who brokered the treaty that formally tendered to Romaine rule over the latter city. What was the nature of their relationship? In what ways was each man instrumental in broader revolutionary events in the colony? This book answers these and related questions, deepening our understanding of the function of religion in the Haitian Revolution, along with those of race, science, and medicine, in the broader revolutionary Atlantic world, the latter topics impelled by the second half of the priest’s remarkable life as a scientist and physician in the United States, as Dr. Felix Pascalis. That Abbé Ouvière and Dr. Pascalis were one and the same person has heretofore been lost on scholars, and that Romaine-la-Prophétesse, though ultimately betrayed by the priest, would be judged by him as worthy of honor from his “tyrannized nation,” accentuate the historical significance of each man and the major contributions of this book.

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