Black Radicalism after the Haitian Revolution
Langston Hughes’s Emperor of Haiti
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11272275 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Cooke Weeber (University at Buffalo , SUNY ,, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 110-132 |
| Publication date | 2024-12-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlae046 |
| OpenAlex | W4402266101 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
By most measures of literary and theatrical success, Langston Hughes’s Emperor of Haiti (1936) was a resounding failure. This article reads that failure as evidence of the play’s attempt to dramatize the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath as both historical and futural, radical and tragic—a vision that would account for both revolutionary upheaval and post-revolutionary disillusionment. The structure of the play—its refusal to dramatize the revolution itself or the declaration of independence; its jump in time from pre-revolutionary anticipation to post-revolutionary governance; and the multiple conversations and debates about freedom and slavery—forces the audience to shift its perceptions and remain open to multiple conflicting interpretations and visions at once. This strategy, perhaps only possible through drama, gets close to portraying the “previously unthinkable”: the Haitian Revolution as both rupture and repetition, both tied to its colonial past and gesturing toward an anticolonial future. Through Hughes’s dramatic work, we can see the unique potential for literature to help us sift through the past for glimpses of the future—to look to the revolutionary visions and Black radicalisms of the past with a mixture of optimism and pessimism so that we might mine them for glimpses of this anti-colonial future
Ancient history · Art · Art history · Emperor · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Highly cited | No |
|---|