Overview

The Haitian Revolution has generated responses from commentators in fields ranging from philosophy to historiography to twentieth-century literary and artistic studies. But what about the written work produced at the time, by Haitians? This book is the first to present an account of a specifically Haitian literary tradition in the Revolutionary era. Beyond the Slave Narrative shows the emergence of two strands of textual innovation, both evolving from the new revolutionary consciousness: the remarkable political texts produced by Haitian revolutionary leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and popular Creole poetry from anonymous courtesans in Saint-Domingue's libertine culture. These textual forms, though they differ from each other, both demonstrate the increasing cultural autonomy and literary voice of non-white populations in the colony at the time of revolution. Unschooled generals and courtesans, long presented as voiceless, are at last revealed to be legitimate speakers and authors. These Haitian French and Creole texts have been neglected as a foundation of Afro-diasporic literature by former slaves in the Atlantic world for two reasons: because they do not fit the generic criteria of the slave narrative (which is rooted in the autobiographical experience of enslavement); and because they are mediated texts, relayed to the print-cultural Atlantic domain not by the speakers themselves, but by secretaries or refugee colonists. These texts challenge how we think about authorial voice, writing, print culture, and cultural autonomy in the context of the formerly enslaved, and demand that we reassess our historical understanding of the Haitian Independence and its relationship to an international world of contemporary readers.

Full Product Details

Author:   Deborah Jenson (Romance Studies, Duke University (United States))
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   Liverpool University Press
Volume:   4
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.567kg
ISBN:  

9781846317606

ISBN 10:   1846317606
Pages:   322
Publication Date:   02 March 2012
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Race and Voice in the Archives: Mediated Testimony and Interracial Commerce in Saint-Domingue PART ONE: Voicing the Political Sphere Chapter 1 Toussaint Louverture, “Spin Doctor”? The Politics of Media in the Haitian Revolution Chapter 2 Dessalines’ American Proclamations of the Haitian Independence Chapter 3 Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: A French-Language Tradition of Black Atlantic Radicalism Chapter 4 Dessalines’ Anticolonial Imperialism: Santo Domingo, Trinidad, Venezuela Chapter 5 Kidnapped Narratives: The Lost Heir of Henry Christophe and the Imagined Communities of the African Diaspora PART TWO: Voicing the Libertine Sphere Chapter 6 Traumatic Indigeneity: The (Anti)Colonial Politics of “Having” A Creole Literary Culture Chapter 7 Mimetic Mastery and Colonial Mimicry: The Candio in the Popular Creole Literary Tradition Chapter 8 Dissing Rivals, Love for Sale: The Cocotte’s Rap and the Not-So Tragic Mulatta

Reviews

This book is a major and very significant addition to our understanding of Haitian print culture. The implications of Deborah Jenson's work are far-reaching and exciting ... [and] the author's complete command of the myriad details of the Haitian Revolution make this book a pleasure to read-with numerous revelations along the way. -- Professor Christopher L. Miller, Yale University Colonial and postcolonial studies will gain significant new breadth and depth with the publication of Deborah Jenson's Beyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution. This pathbreaking book brings to light the rich but largely neglected Francophone record of black literacy from the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Rectifying the anglocentric view that slave narratives were the only or most authentic form of black voices from the past, Jenson provides probing analyses of Creole poetry, political discourse, and other materials. Deeply committed to improving present-day conditions in Haiti, Jenson finds in the cultural heritage of the past the basis for a fuller understanding of current problems and for hope in the future. -- Doris Kadish, Distinguished Research Professor of French and Women's Studies Beyond the Slave Narrative provides a model, information, conceptual and theoretical tools, and a wealth of primary and secondary sources for future researchers to use. Nineteenth-Century French Studies 40, nos. 1 & 2 fall-winter 2012 Colonial and postcolonial studies have gained signifi cant new breadth and depth with the publication of Deborah Jenson's Beyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution. This pathbreaking book brings to light the rich but largely neglected Francophone record of black literacy from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rectifying the anglocentric view that slave narratives were the only or most authentic form of black voices from the past, Jenson provides probing analyses of Creole poetry, political discourse, and other materials. Jenson finds in the cultural heritage of the past the basis for a fuller understanding of Haiti's past. Beyond the Slave Narrative is divided into two parts of unequal length. The fi rst and longest, Authorizing the Political Sphere, is devoted to an analysis of the discursive structures in texts by Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, and Henry Christophe from 1791 through the early years of the creation of the Haitian nation in 1804. The second, shorter part, Authorizing the Libertine Sphere, is devoted to poems and songs that give voice and agency to Afro-diasporic women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The considerable differences between the two corpuses that Jenson has chosen to discuss requires justifi cation, which she provides. As explained in the introduction, in both cases the focus is on subaltern voices seeking to forge a free consciousness, to un-become the legal property of others, and to challenge Euro-American hegemony. Through political discourse, the founders of the Haitian nation used language to construct themselves and the nation. Libertine verse provides access to women's power and intelligence in conducting sexual and social transactions. Both corpuses have been undervalued if not ignored altogether. Because the authorship of the texts is typically collaborative, a notion that Jenson explores with great sophistication, they have been attributed in some cases to whites who published them or even, as with Toussaint's documents, not even considered writing at all. In eight striking illustrations, or textaul artifacts, Jenson shows exactly what Toussaint, Dessalines, and others put on paper. She also explains in detail her work in the archives that enabled her to unearth obscure material. Graduate students and scholars who plan to continue her work will be inspired and instructed by such explanations. The five chapters in Part I move from Toussaint Louverture, through Dessalines and Henry Christophe. It begins with an analysis of Toussaint's will to literary power and the decolonization strategy he used to challenge European universalism. Through correspondence and public statements, Toussaint sought to forge a dialogue and establish parity with metropolitan and colonial leadership. Three chapters are then devoted to Dessalines, whom Jenson identifi es as in many ways the star of this book and whose legacy she links to that of Malcolm X. In Chapter 2 Jenson provides an analysis of the discursive strategies deployed in the service of Dessalines's radical anticolonial and postcolonial philosophy. She then goes on in Chapters 3 and 4 to examine what the historical record tells, directly or in some cases obliquely, of his significance in the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Chapter 5 shows that a logical extension of the forced migration that occurred during slavery was the practice of kidnapping which affl icted members of the families of black leaders: notably the sons of Christophe and Toussaint. For Jenson the phenomenon of Napoleanic kidnapping exemplifi es the battle for cultural command of the transatlantic world that was taking place between Haiti and the metropole. The three chapters in Part II focus on the thriving, intertextual, but generally verbal poetic culture of women of color in pre- and post-independence Haiti. These chapters provide textual examples in Creole accompanied by English-language translation. Chapter 6 questions what constituted Haitian culture at the time and explores the theoretical implications of the notions of authentic and indigenous. Jenson asserts that in a racially hybrid Haitian context, indigeneity signaled an identity of dispossession and a subsequent reconstitution of identity. At the same time, Jenson does not waver from her central contention that oraliture ( oral literature in contact with print culture ) is of popular origin and not, as was often thought the sole production of colonial transcribers. Paying close attention to how this literature came into print through the mediating activities of collectors or anthologists in chapters 7 and 8, Jenson focuses on two hybrid literary fi gures whose links with African and Caribbean social practice and language attest to the popular origin of the material. The fi rst is the seductive candio who exercises linguistic mastery and poses a threat to slaves and masters alike. The second is the cocotte, a female slave who entertained her mistress even as she often stood in sexual competition with the white woman. Both fi gures exemplify the complex workings of social mobility for blacks in colonial society. Jenson's scholarship in Beyond the Slave Narrative is exceptionally thorough and far-reaching. (The detailed footnotes in each of the eight chapters of the book range from 40 to well over a hundred). The analyses are fascinating. For example, Jenson discovered an only partially erased calculation on a poem written in Creole, in which a courtesan warns a newcomer against exchanging her favors for love rather than money. Jenson's analysis of the poem in the introduction and in the last chapter shows the extent to which the economic and the sexual were closely linked and the degree of agency for black women, in contrast with traditional readings of such poetry in which women are viewed as merely objects of beauty or pleasure for men. It is true, as Jenson admits, that such analyses do not provide a comprehensive view of writings by non-whites from the colonial period. How could they? An incredible amount material remains to be examined or discovered, as Jenson details in the Epilogue. Fortunately, Beyond the Slave Narrative provides a model, information, conceptual and theoretical tools, and a wealth of primary and secondary sources for future researchers to use. Nineteenth-Century French Studies 40, nos. 1 & 2 fall-winter 2011-2012 Nineteenth-Century French Studies 40, nos. 1 & 2 fall-winter 2011-2012

This book is a major and very significant addition to our understanding of Haitian print culture. The implications of Deborah Jenson's work are far-reaching and exciting ... [and] the author's complete command of the myriad details of the Haitian Revolution make this book a pleasure to read-with numerous revelations along the way. -- Professor Christopher L. Miller, Yale University Colonial and postcolonial studies will gain significant new breadth and depth with the publication of Deborah Jenson's Beyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution. This pathbreaking book brings to light the rich but largely neglected Francophone record of black literacy from the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Rectifying the anglocentric view that slave narratives were the only or most authentic form of black voices from the past, Jenson provides probing analyses of Creole poetry, political discourse, and other materials. Deeply committed to improving present-day conditions in Haiti, Jenson finds in the cultural heritage of the past the basis for a fuller understanding of current problems and for hope in the future. -- Doris Kadish, Distinguished Research Professor of French and Women's Studies Beyond the Slave Narrative provides a model, information, conceptual and theoretical tools, and a wealth of primary and secondary sources for future researchers to use. Nineteenth-Century French Studies 40, nos. 1 & 2 fall-winter 2012 Colonial and postcolonial studies have gained signifi cant new breadth and depth with the publication of Deborah Jenson's Beyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution. This pathbreaking book brings to light the rich but largely neglected Francophone record of black literacy from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rectifying the anglocentric view that slave narratives were the only or most authentic form of black voices from the past, Jenson provides probing analyses of Creole poetry, political discourse, and other materials. Jenson finds in the cultural heritage of the past the basis for a fuller understanding of Haiti's past. Beyond the Slave Narrative is divided into two parts of unequal length. The fi rst and longest, Authorizing the Political Sphere, is devoted to an analysis of the discursive structures in texts by Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, and Henry Christophe from 1791 through the early years of the creation of the Haitian nation in 1804. The second, shorter part, Authorizing the Libertine Sphere, is devoted to poems and songs that give voice and agency to Afro-diasporic women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The considerable differences between the two corpuses that Jenson has chosen to discuss requires justifi cation, which she provides. As explained in the introduction, in both cases the focus is on subaltern voices seeking to forge a free consciousness, to un-become the legal property of others, and to challenge Euro-American hegemony. Through political discourse, the founders of the Haitian nation used language to construct themselves and the nation. Libertine verse provides access to women's power and intelligence in conducting sexual and social transactions. Both corpuses have been undervalued if not ignored altogether. Because the authorship of the texts is typically collaborative, a notion that Jenson explores with great sophistication, they have been attributed in some cases to whites who published them or even, as with Toussaint's documents, not even considered writing at all. In eight striking illustrations, or textaul artifacts, Jenson shows exactly what Toussaint, Dessalines, and others put on paper. She also explains in detail her work in the archives that enabled her to unearth obscure material. Graduate students and scholars who plan to continue her work will be inspired and instructed by such explanations. The five chapters in Part I move from Toussaint Louverture, through Dessalines and Henry Christophe. It begins with an analysis of Toussaint's will to literary power and the decolonization strategy he used to challenge European universalism. Through correspondence and public statements, Toussaint sought to forge a dialogue and establish parity with metropolitan and colonial leadership. Three chapters are then devoted to Dessalines, whom Jenson identifi es as in many ways the star of this book and whose legacy she links to that of Malcolm X. In Chapter 2 Jenson provides an analysis of the discursive strategies deployed in the service of Dessalines's radical anticolonial and postcolonial philosophy. She then goes on in Chapters 3 and 4 to examine what the historical record tells, directly or in some cases obliquely, of his significance in the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Chapter 5 shows that a logical extension of the forced migration that occurred during slavery was the practice of kidnapping which affl icted members of the families of black leaders: notably the sons of Christophe and Toussaint. For Jenson the phenomenon of Napoleanic kidnapping exemplifi es the battle for cultural command of the transatlantic world that was taking place between Haiti and the metropole. The three chapters in Part II focus on the thriving, intertextual, but generally verbal poetic culture of women of color in pre- and post-independence Haiti. These chapters provide textual examples in Creole accompanied by English-language translation. Chapter 6 questions what constituted Haitian culture at the time and explores the theoretical implications of the notions of authentic and indigenous. Jenson asserts that in a racially hybrid Haitian context, indigeneity signaled an identity of dispossession and a subsequent reconstitution of identity. At the same time, Jenson does not waver from her central contention that oraliture ( oral literature in contact with print culture ) is of popular origin and not, as was often thought the sole production of colonial transcribers. Paying close attention to how this literature came into print through the mediating activities of collectors or anthologists in chapters 7 and 8, Jenson focuses on two hybrid literary fi gures whose links with African and Caribbean social practice and language attest to the popular origin of the material. The fi rst is the seductive candio who exercises linguistic mastery and poses a threat to slaves and masters alike. The second is the cocotte, a female slave who entertained her mistress even as she often stood in sexual competition with the white woman. Both fi gures exemplify the complex workings of social mobility for blacks in colonial society. Jenson's scholarship in Beyond the Slave Narrative is exceptionally thorough and far-reaching. (The detailed footnotes in each of the eight chapters of the book range from 40 to well over a hundred). The analyses are fascinating. For example, Jenson discovered an only partially erased calculation on a poem written in Creole, in which a courtesan warns a newcomer against exchanging her favors for love rather than money. Jenson's analysis of the poem in the introduction and in the last chapter shows the extent to which the economic and the sexual were closely linked and the degree of agency for black women, in contrast with traditional readings of such poetry in which women are viewed as merely objects of beauty or pleasure for men. It is true, as Jenson admits, that such analyses do not provide a comprehensive view of writings by non-whites from the colonial period. How could they? An incredible amount material remains to be examined or discovered, as Jenson details in the Epilogue. Fortunately, Beyond the Slave Narrative provides a model, information, conceptual and theoretical tools, and a wealth of primary and secondary sources for future researchers to use. Nineteenth-Century French Studies 40, nos. 1 & 2 fall-winter 2011-2012 Nineteenth-Century French Studies 40, nos. 1 & 2 fall-winter 2011-2012 This is a fascinating study of texts written between the outbreak of the slave insurrection in Saint-Domingue in 1791 and the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806. Contesting the view that the texts signed by Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, and Henry Christophe were largely written by more- educated secretaries, the author shows that the leaders of the insurgency and early heads of state articulated distinctive political visions, tried to control the representation of events in US media, and gave unique expression to the revolt against white supremacy and colonial subjection in Saint-Domingue/Haiti. Beyond the Slave Narrative is thus not only the first in-depth study of texts written by former slaves or their descendants in the Francophone world but also a spirited argument against the notion that French lacks a tradition that bears witness to the experience of enslavement. The first part of the book, titled Authorizing the Political Sphere, focuses mostly on letters and proclamations written by Louverture and Dessalines and offers intriguing insights into their respective political ideologies. Part 2, titled Authorizing the Libertine Sphere, consists of close readings of Creole poems from the late colonial period and sets out to trace courtesan voices in the songs and poems collected by white colonists. Taken together, Deborah Jenson argues this corpus shows the emergence of a Haitian literary tradition that contrasts sharply with the much less political and highly moralized genre of the slave narrative, which looms large in studies of the origins of African diasporic literature in the English-speaking world. Jenson knows how to make texts speak. Her careful textual reconstructions of Louverture's and, especially, Dessalines's proclamations and letters (with their Creole tinge and distinctive rhetoric) are riveting, and her findings are more historically grounded than some of the high-octane chapter titles might suggest. Readers' opinions will differ as to whether part 2 really belongs in the same book as the much longer, and more historical, first part. One may also wonder about a critique of Anglocentrism that has so little to say about the Spanish-speaking Atlantic. Chapter 4 gathers interesting new materials from US sources on Francisco de Miranda's visit to Haiti and complicates the conventional views of Miranda's attitude toward Haiti, but the claim that Dessalines was a figure of identification for Miranda remains misleading in the absence of any discussion of the racial politics of the Creole elite in Venezuela. The complex relationship between Spanish-speaking populations in Santo Domingo and the insurgents in Saint-Domingue, too, is given a rather cursory treatment. Still, there can be no doubt that Beyond the Slave Narrative is an important addition to the growing literature on the Haitian Revolution and a truly original take on texts that have not received the attention they deserve. It is also, and very importantly, an excellent example of how the methodologies of historical research, critical theory, and literary analysis can be brought together to produce remarkable results that will no doubt inspire students in both the literary and historical fields. The Historians, Vol. 75 No. 4 25 201311 Beyond the Slave Narrative is an important addition to the growing literature on the Haitian Revolution and a truly original take on texts that have not received the attention they deserve. It is also, and very importantly, an excellent example of how the methodologies of historical research, critical theory, and literary analysis can be brought together to produce remarkable results that will no doubt inspire students in both the literary and historical fields. The Historians, Vol. 75 No. 4 201311

Author Information

"Deborah Jenson is Professor of Romance Studies, a Global Health Institute faculty affiliate, and co-director of the Franklin Humanities Institute ""Haiti"" Humanities Laboratory at Duke University. Other work includes Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France (The Johns Hopkins UP, 2001), MLA editions of Sarah: A Colonial Novella by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore."

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