Kant and Trouillot on the Unthinkability of the Haitian Revolution

Abstract

The article begins with an analysis of Kant's essay “What is Enlightenment?” as a paradigm of the European Enlightenment to argue that such paradigm was European male-centered and presupposed freedom from forced labor. It then shows that such paradigm asserted European humanity in contradistinction to slaves as non-humans. Also, using Michel Rolph-Trouillot's critique of the European Enlightenment's paradigm, it shows that Michel Rolph-Trouillot's account of the unthinkability of the Haitian revolution is the logical implication of the European-male-centered paradigm of the Enlightenment. It then contends with Michel Rolph-Trouillot's view of the unthinkability of the Haitian revolution among the slaves and its leaders. The last section argues that instead of Michel Rolph-Trouillot's account of the unthinkability of the Haitian revolution, Voodoo Cosmology provided the religious unity, language, achievement of common destiny as an axiom of state formation and the conviction of universal humanity that made the Haitian revolution a successful critique and expansion of the European Enlightenment's ideals. Furthermore, the rise of Voodoo Cosmology is consistent with Buck-Morss's observation that reconciling tribal differences and the intersection of Voodoo practices and marronage were important accomplishments of the slaves of St-Domingue. The article concludes that these achievements made the Haitian revolution a coherent and systematic event from the perspective of the revolutionaries and its leaders.

Keywords:

• Haitian revolution
• Kant
• philosophy
• Trouillot

Notes

Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? Trans. Lewis White Beck (NJ: Library of Liberal Arts, 1997), 83.

Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime, Trans. John Goldthwait, (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1960), 78.

Ibid., 113.

Thomas McCarthy, Race, Empire and the Idea of Human Development (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 43.

Kant, What is Enlightenment?, 84.

Ibid., 89.

Michel Rolph-Trouillot, “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as a Non-Event.” In Haitian History: New Perspectives, ed. Alyssa Sepinwall (NY: Routledge, 2013), 35–37.

Ibid., 40–41.

Ibid., 42.

Olivier Gliech, L insurrection des esclaves de Saint-Domingue et Réflexions sur les causes sociales l'effondrement du pouvoir blanc. d'une <<révolution impensable>> 1789–1792 in Haïti 1804 Lumières et ténèbres: impact et résonances d'une revolution, ed. Léon-Francois Hoffman/Frauke Gewecke/Ulrich Fleischman (Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuet, 2008), 55.

Rolph-Trouillot, “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as a Non-Event.” In 41, 44.

Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (NY: McPherson & Company, 1984), 59.

Lilas Desquiron, Racines du Vodou (Port-au-Prince: Éditions Henri Deschamps, 1990), 76.

Mozella Mitchell, Crucial Issues in Caribbean Religions (NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006), 65.

Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (NY: McPherson & Company, 1984), 192.

Michel S. Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti (St Martin's Press, 1984), 70.

David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and, National Independence in Haiti (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 23.

Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti, 23.

George E. Simpson, Black Religions in the New World (NY: Columbia University Press, 1978), 14.

Desquiron, Racines du Vodou, 35.

Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier, 31.

Laguerre, Voodoo and Politics in Haiti, 38.

Thomas Ott, The Haitian Revolution (TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1973), 15.

Guérin Montilus, “Haïti: un cas témoin de la vivacité des religions africaines en Amérique et pourquoi.” In Les religions africaines comme source de valeurs de civilisation: Colloque de Cotonou, 16–22 août 1970 (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1972), 299.

George E. Simpson, Black Religions in the New World, 17.

Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 131-132.

Ibid., 63.

Ott, The Haitian Revolution, 47.

Nick Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 11.