Beyond Trouillot: Unsettling Genealogies of Historical Thought (original) (raw)
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Colonial Subjects No More: Histories of the Haitian Revolution
In his 1995 book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot has used the construction of both public memory and the academic M a t t s o n | 2 historiography of the Haitian Revolution to explore issues such as dominant narratives, historical silences, and the postmodernist recognition of many truths. These themes can in fact be seen quite often in the recent historiography of the Haitian Revolution due to its remarkable but for too long silenced impact on world history. Trouillot emphasizes the usefulness of the Haitian Revolution in examining the discipline of history itself, down to the insistence upon the rigors of research even in a postmodernist context. "The unearthing of silences," writes Trouillot, "and the historian's subsequent emphasis on the retrospective significance of hitherto neglected events, requires not only extra labor at the archives […] but also a project linked to an interpretation." 1 The historiography of the Haitian Revolution intersects with many issues of French colonialism; modernism, colonialism, postcolonialism, slavery, revolts, revolutions, racism, citizenship, republicanism and historical discourse are all topics which are well-represented in the scholarship. This essay will explore the English-language histories of the Haitian Revolution with a primary focus on the most recent works.
This essay discusses Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (Burning Issues in Haitian History) (1977), Trouillot's first published book, which is currently being translated to English for the first time. Ti dife boule is a complex and innovative text that lays the groundwork for Trouillot's later thought, but remains the least known of his publications because it was composed in Haitian Creole, was never circulated widely, and has long been out of print. This Marxist critique of colonial history through the prism of Haitian history shows how Haiti's Revolution (1791-1803) holds the clues to interpreting and critiquing Haiti's recent history. Instead of following the epic tradition glorifying revolutionary heroes, Trouillot critiques the European-inspired traditions of governance displayed by Haitian rebel generals and re-examines the contributions of the Haitian slave masses in the revolution. In a well-documented yet accessible manner, drawing from Haiti's popular storytelling tradition, proverbs, and songs, Trouillot explores the rivalries, murders, and gamesmanship that mark the formation of the Haitian State and traces their harmful effect upon the evolution of the State in independent Haiti. Ti dife boule's translators conclude this essay by reflecting upon possible reasons why Trouillot only recently authorized its translation to English.
Latin American Literary Review, 2021
Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s first book, Ti difé boulé sou istoua Ayiti [Stirring the Pot of Haitian History] (1977), exposes the foundational role of Haitian Vodou and the Kreyòl language in Haiti’s Revolution (1791-1804). This essay analyzes selected passages from Ti difé boulé that explicitly incorporate Vodou songs, prayers, and terminology to show how Trouillot provocatively deploys oral sources of historical narrative and memory. The young activist, writing in Haitian Kreyòl from New York City during the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, powerfully contests official versions of Haitian history by emphasizing the Haitian people’s agency. Vodou and Kreyòl, born out of struggle within a repressive colonial framework, are the forces underlying Haitian resistance. Ti difé boulé examines neocolonial patterns of oppression emerging during the nineteenth century and critiques revolutionary icon Toussaint Louverture, revealing how Haiti’s predatory State harnessed Vodou to continue systematically subjugating the Haitian people. Trouillot’s innovative yet understudied masterpiece offers contemporary readers “new narratives” (Ulysse, 2015) of Haiti. As twin pillars of Haitian resistance and cultural identity, Vodou and Kreyòl remain a vital and vibrant part of the American heritage. They merit more nuanced understandings within a cultural and political context where they have increasingly come under siege, inside and outside of Haiti.
Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti: Considering the stakes of Trouillot’s earliest work
Cultural Dynamics, 2014
This essay discusses Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (Burning Issues in Haitian History) (1977), Trouillot’s first published book, which is currently being translated to English for the first time. Ti dife boule is a complex and innovative text that lays the groundwork for Trouillot’s later thought, but remains the least known of his publications because it was composed in Haitian Creole, was never circulated widely, and has long been out of print. This Marxist critique of colonial history through the prism of Haitian history shows how Haiti’s Revolution (1791–1803) holds the clues to interpreting and critiquing Haiti’s recent history. Instead of following the epic tradition glorifying revolutionary heroes, Trouillot critiques the European-inspired traditions of governance displayed by Haitian rebel generals and re-examines the contributions of the Haitian slave masses in the revolution. In a well-documented yet accessible manner, drawing from Haiti’s popular storytelling tradition, ...
The Haitian Revolution in Interstices and Shadows: A Re-Reading of The Kingdom of This World
2004
Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of this World (1949), the only sustained literary rendering of the Haitian Revolution in the Spanish Caribbean, is known both for its fi ctional treatment of Haitian history from a slave's perspective and for the preface that claimed for that history the distinction of epitomizing marvelous realism in the Americas. This reading of the text's approach to one of the salient foundational narratives of Caribbean history looks at how, despite the "minute correspondence of dates and chronology" of the events narrated in The Kingdom of This World, the version of Haitian history offered by Carpentier is a fractured tale whose fi ssures may be read as subverting the adherence to the facts of Haitian history and its primary sources that the author claims for his text. It looks specifi cally as how the erasure of the leaders of the Revolution from the text, particularly that of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, reveals Carpentier's hopelessness concerning the Haitian land and its people.
The Haitian Revolution is one of the most important revolutions in the Western world, in which a large population of formerly enslaved Africans founded a new nation without slavery, put a permanent ban on colonial slavery in the new republic's first constitution, and declared the undivided human rights of and the absolute equality for all people. After a successful revolution against the inhuman institution of slavery and unflagging striving against the colonial-imperial powers of France, Spain, and Britain, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the general in chief who succeeded Toussaint Louverture, declared the emergence of the new state of Haiti on the first day of the new year in 1804. This essay is a critical evaluation on the most recent literary and historiographical scholarship on the Haitian Revolution. It reflects on the significance of the Revolution as a historic world event as well as a reference point for thinking about freedom, universal human rights, social justice and equality in our postcolonial moment. I argue that there has been an "intellectual shift," what I call "The Haitian Turn," in modern scholarship in North America on the Haitian Revolution. 1 I close with some suggestions on the future scholarship on the Haitian Revolution. This is not an exhaustive study on the scholarship of the Haitian Revolution but a critical reflection on the most recent important studies on the topic.