The Prophet and Power: Jean Bertrand Aristide, The International Community, and Haiti by Alex Dupuy (original) (raw)

The Haitian Revolution (book chapter)

Oxford Handbook of History and International Relations, 2023

This chapter sketches out two divergent options for rectifying the neglect of the Haitian Revolution in the eld of international relations. First, we can make a claim for Haiti's centrality to international politics by tracing the effects and repercussions of its revolution on the Caribbean, the Americas and the world at large. Alternatively, we can see Haiti’s revolution as exposing the limitations of the categories we use to measure significance and meaning when we study the international. This latter option means abandoning the idea of centrality altogether, drawing on Haiti’s own intellectual history to sketch an alternative view of the international: its forms of power, hierarchies, constraints, and possibilities.

The Politics of Democratization: Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas Movement in Haiti

whose mentorship and professional guidance will not be forgotten. I wish to thank the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, Dr. Frank Mora, Liesl Picard, and staff. I am appreciative of the numerous opportunities I have had to work with the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), the Green Family Foundation (GFF), FIU Libraries, Mireille Louis Charles, Brooke Wooldridge, Rose Nicholson, and Adam Silvia. I would also like to thank all of my graduate student peers who have shared in both times of great difficulty, but also times of great progress. Lastly, an affectionate thank you to all of my family and friends, too numerous to name, who provided me with a core of emotional support that has carried me here to this point. This dissertation is very much a product of all the people who have supported me over the years. vi

The Haitian Revolution & Contemporary Theory

The Frantz Fanon Blog, 2014

This essay will discuss two of the ways in which the Haitian Revolution is significant for the practice of contemporary theory. It suggests that the Haitian Revolution unseals the silenced history of the contemporary praxis of liberal democracy-issuing a warning of the long-term consequences of silencing that which is deemed unthinkable at one time-and in the process offers the emancipatory potential of an actual universal doctrine of human rights. It will track the history of the hegemonic global political order that is now understood to be that of "neo-liberal capitalism and democracy" (Neocosmos, 2011: 362) and its limitation to a negative, legal interpretation of human rights (Nesbitt, 2009: 94). The contradictions and silenced chapter of that history establish the need for a rethinking of human rights. This is necessary for the practice of contemporary theory to constitute an emancipatory political project. The recognition of the Haitian Revolution shifts the genesis of contemporary human rights discourse - with emancipatory implications.

The Macoutization of Haitian Politics

Politics and Power in Haiti

This chapter will explore the characteristics of what I will term here the " macoutized state" under the Duvaliers, which includes exclusionary acts and repression, the collapse of distinctions between public and private spheres; the assertion of politics as a mystical force whether Christian, Vodoun, or both; and the construction of a noiriste and nationalist ideology to solidify power. In essence, political activity was seen as something that only a chosen few could partake in, with Fran ç ois Duvalier (and later his son) as the supreme guardian and patriarchal father of the nation. Peasants and the urban poor were treated as subjects of the state and were therefore excluded as participants in the discourse of nation building and equality. In the Duvalier macoutized state, just as in a traditional family, the "children" or its citizens were thought incapable of making complex decisions; only the father was regarded as competent enough to decide. Anyone who dared redefine the private and public spheres was systematically repressed. There were three dimensions of Duvalierist exclusionary politics and the entrenchment of the macoutized state: (1) deliberate ethnic policies against the traditional mulatto or white elites who maintained power along color and class lines, (2) systematic silencing, exiling, or imprisonment of university professors and students who did not adhere to the ideological framing of policies or the political leanings of the state apparatus, and (3) co-option and pressurizing of Catholic and small evangelical churches that had to adhere to the regime's policies, teachings, K. Quinn et al. (eds.

Haiti and Its Revolution: Four Recent Books

Radical History Review, 2013

Haiti' s history, Laurent Dubois tells us, "can-indeed must-serve as a source of inspiration, and even hope" (10). For those who would write it, this is a problem. Among the country's many burdens has been the exemplary role it has perforce played in international debates about slavery, colonialism, and race. Just as its earliest chroniclers often aimed to denigrate, modern historians frequently lean toward apologetics and celebration. The attraction exerted by Haiti's revolutionary origins has tended to pull in writers more eager to make a statement than to research its

Revolution and Universality: Interpreting the Time and Age of the Haitian Revolution 1791-1804

The Future(s) of the Revolution and the Reformation, Elena Namli (ed.), 2019

A major theme of the current “Haitian turn” has been what I call a “universality-analysis”, which stresses that the Haitian Revolution, in contrast to the American and the French, once and for all abolished slavery. The chapter investigates the intervention into the Haitian Turn by two scholars specialized in the history of human rights: Lynn Hunt, who advocates a universality-analysis of the Haitian Revolution; and Samuel Moyn, who defends what I call a “universality-skeptical” analysis. It is argued that a theory of universal political forms, understood as contradictory and limited by the social content of power they mediate, can reveal that Hunt presuppose the effectivity of the political form independent of social content and a theory of historical continuity connecting the Haitian Revolution to our own age, and that Moyn presuppose emptiness of the political form reducible to intentions of actors and outcomes of events and a theory of discontinuity.