The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination

The Haitian Revolution has been studied extensively for its historical and political significance. The work of C. L. R. James (The Black Jacobins) and Michel-Rolph Trouillot (Silencing the Past) are just a few of the influential texts that have shaped Haitian revolutionary studies, turning scholarly attention to the revolution’s enduring political importance for anticolonial thought and action and to how history, writ large, is studied and told. The fresh analysis of twentieth- and twentyfirst-century artistic representations of the Haitian uprising that Philip Kaisary offers in The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination: Radical Horizons, Conservative Constraints is firmly indebted to this tradition of Haitian revolutionary stud ies. Kaisary’s study of fiction and art inspired by the revolution rightly encourages attention to the manner in which literature and art both make and unmake how history and politics are understood and, in turn, undertaken. Indeed, Kaisary’s intent with this book is to consider “how certain aesthetic modes of recuperating the Haitian Revolution have enabled and or hindered particular political visions” (2), empowering, on the one hand, or negating, on the other, the radical “project of universal freedom” Haitians initiated in 1791 (175). Kaisary’s dedicated interest to this “project of universal freedom” owes as much to the scholarship of James and Trouillot as it does to Peter Hallward’s and Nick Nesbitt’s extensive work on postcolonial thought and Haitian liberation; their respective works are instrumental components of the rhetoric of universal human freedom guiding this book. 1 This interest in universal human freedom shapes how Kaisary approaches the literary and art texts in his book, determining what constitutes a “radical horizon” or a “conservative constraint.” The eight chapters that compose The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination are divided evenly into two sections, respectively, concerned with radical and conservative representations of the revolution. Kaisary’s underlying purpose in structuring his text this way is to “draw out the situation and ideological thrust of each of the works considered” (2). In doing this, he seeks to trace “the cultural and intellectual history of anticolonial, Black Nationalist, and Pan-African movements of the twentieth century” (3) as evinced in the implicit dialogue between the “radical” and “conservative” artistic camps. The literary and art pieces discussed

Political radicalism · Vision · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Caribbean literature · Haiti · History · History and criticism · in literature · Influence · Literature and history · Literature and the revolution