Beyond the Slave Narrative
：Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution
( Liverpool Studies in International Slavery )
Publication subTitle ：Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution
Publication series ：Liverpool Studies in International Slavery
Author： Deborah Jenson
Publisher： Liverpool University Press
Publication year： 2011
E-ISBN: 9781781386194
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9781846314971
P-ISBN(Hardback): 9781846314971
Subject：
Language： ENG
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Description
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. An introduction to the Afro-diasporic literature of the Haitian Revolution, Beyond the Slave Narrative frames the unique contributions to anti-colonial thought of Haitian general Jean-Jacques Dessalines and other singular Haitian voices. 1. An introduction to the Afro-diasporic literature of the Haitian Revolution and its New World impact (with particular attention to its American journalistic dissemination). 2. A presentation of Jean-Jacques Dessalines as a radical black Atlantic voice in a tradition including Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X. 3. An introduction to a Haitian Creole poetic tradition dating from the Haitian Revolutionary era. 4. A new historical consideration of the international dimensions of the early Haitian Independence. 5. A broadening of the scope and genre-parameters of early Afro-diasporic literary contributions across language and national boundaries. Recent published works in the same field include : Christopher L. Miller, The French Atlantic Triangle; 2008, Duke UP, $23 Doris Kadish, Translating Slavery, 2010, Kent State University Press, $19 Chris Bongie, Friends and Enemies: The Scribal Politics of Postcolonial Literature, Liverpool UP, $95 Nick Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation, 2008, U of Virginia, $22.50 Pratima Prasad, Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination, Routledge, 2009, $103 Maurice Jackson, African Americans and the Haitian Revolution, $38 Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, 2010,Johns Hopkins UP, $37 Books in preparation: Nick Nesbitt, forthcoming book, Liverpool UP; Charles Forsdick, book on Toussaint Louverture, Liverpool UP Laurent Dubois, history of Haiti (publisher not known) Doris Garraway
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