Engaging Girard’s  “Toussaint Loverture: A Revolutionary Life” (Part I)

I’m working my way slowly and patiently through Philippe Girard’s biography on Toussaint Louverture, “Toussaint Loverture: A Revolutionary Life” (2016).

Here’s my brief and preliminary evaluation of the book (I’m still reading the text):

The strength of Girard’s work lies on his critical assessment of the  archival material on colonial Saint-Domingue and his attempt to present a balanced interpretation of Toussaint’s life,  the colonial order, and the Haitian Revolution.

Many of Girard’s claims and inferences about Toussaint and colonial Saint-Domingue are not new and groundbreaking, but they could be construed as recycled material and information;   his creative (re-) interpretation on previous and current studies on Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution is quite stunning and brilliant. This is an important work!

1. First of all, for Girard, Haitian oral history and stories about Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution are not reliable historical sources.

2. The first black church, although short-lived, probably started in Saint-Domingue not in the United States as traditional maintained in contemporary scholarship on black religion, by newly-slave converts to Catholic Christianity, and it is probable that Toussaint Louverture occasionally delivered sermons there.

3. Girard presents Toussaint Louverture as a man of faith and devout Christian.

4. Toussaint has intentionally abandoned the Fon language, and his African customs and traditions in which he was reared in colonial Saint-Domingue to accommodate with the new culture (French) and civilization (Western).

5. Toward the process of assimilation, Toussaint rejected his ancestral identity because he aspired to be French, White, and Western. He never referred himself as a son of Africa or an individual of African descent. He was ashamed of Africa and his African identity.

Consider Girard’s paradoxical statement below:

“Loverture is regarded today as a hero by the people of Benin in West Africa, where his parents were born, but having African roots was considered shameful in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue. Louverture purposely left behind much of his African cultural heritage as he grew up, from the Fon language to the Vodou religion, so as to embrace the dominant French cultural model. He was no black nationalist: he was trying to fit into a colony where everything African was deemed uncivilized, and lived much of his life as a Creole and an aspiring Frenchman” (pp. 23-4).

Do look forward for Part II.

​I just received the author copy of my new book, “Radical Humanism and Generous Tolerance: Soyinka on Religion and Human Solidarity “(Hamilton Books, 2016)

This is your Christmas present, folks:-)

​

In Praise of Vertieres, and  In Praise of Freedom and the Haitian Revolution

O Vertieres, how could we forget Thee!

You remind us that God created  men and women to be free and not to be enchained and enslaved by men.

O Glorious Vertieres, where we wrought our freedom and independence through our shed blood, You will always be a scar on our hearts and the path of freedom and inspiration for today’s troubles.

Today, the Haitian people are celebrating the Battle of Vertieres (November 18, 1803) which gave birth to two significant events in world history: the end of slavery and the founding of the first postcolonial state  and the first slave-free Republic of Haiti in the Western world. It was in Vertieres African revolutionarries and men and women who dared to die free and independent conquered the greatest military and imperial power in the world: France
To remember Vertieres  is to never forget the danger and threat of the unholy trinity of institutional slavery, colonization, and White supremacy in the world.
 To remember Vertieres also means to continue the fight against the vestiges of slavery (modern day slavery), colonization (neocolonization), imperialism, and any form of human oppression that engenders human suffering, dehumanizes people, defers human dignity, and challenges the image of God in humanity.

Jean Price-Mars and the project of Nation-Building in Haiti (Part I)

So I finished writing the 3rd chapter of my forthcoming book on Jean Price-Mars.

I’m currently working on the final chapter. It’s on the intersection of modernity’s racial imagination, Christianity’s contribution to it, and Price-Mars’ liberative ideas to remedy the crisis of human condition in modernity. Price-Mars presents the Haitian Revolution (its symbolic meaning as both a product of Western modernity and an alternative African modernity in the New World) and the founding of the “Black Republic” of Haiti as a double event and as the fulfillment of what Jonathan Israel calls “radical modernity” and what I call “Haitian modernity” (See my PhD dissertation, “The Haitian Turn: Haiti, the Black Atlantic, and Black Transnational Consciousness,” The University of Texas at Dallas, and my book, “Haitian Modernity and Liberative Interruption” (UPA, 2013)). In 2011, while writing my doctoral dissertation at UTD, I coined the phrase ” black transnational consciousness” (BTC) which revolutionary Haiti symbolizes, to explain the project of Haitian modernity and the new radical humanism Haitian revolutionaries had created in the Western world.

Few scholars and thinkers–both Haitians and Non-Haitians- have grasped Price-Mars’s cultural and intellectual project for Haiti and the Black Diaspora.

Price-Mars has inaugurated a new (black) epistemology and radically alternative way to (re-) “build” or reconstruct the nation of Haiti and reconceptualize the black experience in the Black Diaspora.

So far, in contemporary Haitian scholarship and Africana studies, I have encountered three scholars– Paul Camy Mocombe, Glodel Mezilas, Patrick Delices, Jhon Byron ( some of these perspectives on Price-Mars are stronger than others. I’m still waiting on Jean Eddy Saint Paul’s anticipated work on Price-Mars.) who have grasped what Price-Mars wanted to do in regard to what I call the ” Price-Marsian inaugurated black epistemology.”

It’s time to reread Price-Mars intelligently, responsibly, ethically, critically, and with care, conviction, and passion. If you want to understand the contemporary crisis of Haitian intellectuals and Haitian civil and political society, read Price-Mars. If you want to contribute to societal renewal and transformation in contemporary Haitian society and improve the lives of the underclass and the marginalized, read Price-Mars. You must go/read beyond his classic work, ” Ainsi parla l’Oncle” (1928). His ideas are interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and comprehensive.

Why Price-Mars Wrote: Toward Nation-Building

The whole of the Price-Marsian project was “to build” a new Haitian society and an alternative humanism rooted in these seven pillars: Africa, community, women, family, Haitian politics, education and equality of Haitian masses and peasants, religion. These ideological reasons explain why Price-Mars wrote whatever he has written about the Haitian people and the nation of Haiti.

1. Ancestral Affiliation and Identity: the reclaiming and acknowledgement of Africa’s indebtedness to Haiti. Africa has given Haiti its dominant religion and the legacy of strong and flourishing pre-colonial civilizations.

2. The ethics and practice of Communitarianism and Kombitism

3. The Haitian intellectual as servant leader and activist for the people.

4. Haitian Politics as a catalyst to foster national unity, cultural growth, and prosperity.

5. The education and equality of Haitian masses and peasants as imperative factors contributing to social development and human flourishing in Haiti.

6. The recognition of Haitian Women as the “cement” of Haitian society and as the “trait-d’union” (“hypen”) between the Haitian family and Haitian civil and political society.

7. The role of religion as a unifying force in society.

Happy Veteran’s Day!!!

The words of poets never die.

“Harlem” by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?