Remarks on the sceptical turn in the historiography of the Haitian Revolution: lessons from the art of abstraction

ABSTRACT

One of the major arguments made in the current boom in Haitian revolutionary studies connects today’s conditions of possibility for modern democracy and human rights to the abolition of slavery during the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). During the last decade, however, this connection between the Haitian Revolutionary period and our own age has been questioned by an increasing number of scholars: a phenomenon that this article conceptualizes as the ‘sceptical turn’. The article argues that the sceptical turn consummates its critique through unacknowledged rearrangements of abstractions, and therefore misses its target. A corresponding critique of the sceptical turn is formulated here using Bertell Ollman’s tripartite concept of the abstractions of vantage point, extension, and generality. Ollman’s notion enables a shift of focus onto modes – instead of the more common focus on levels – of abstraction. Thus, the author argues, contra the sceptical turn, not only that the connection between the Haitian Revolution and the political and social situation of today is plausible, but that it also provides a more profound conceptual basis for analyses of revolutionary events in general.

KEYWORDS:

• The concept of abstraction
• the Haitian Revolution
• human rights
• democracy
• modernity
• abolition of slavery
• critique

The sceptical turn and the problem of abstraction

During the last two decades, both academic and public readerships in the anglophone sphere have been flooded by a wave of essays, articles, and monographs on the Haitian Revolution (Ferrer 2019, 220; see also Joseph 2012, 37–55; Girard 2013, 486; Wilén 2021, 6).¹ The recent surge of interest took shape around the turn of the twenty-first century, when historians, philosophers, and literary scholars such as Lynn Hunt, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Susan Buck-Morss, Peter Hallward, and Laurent Dubois began to protest against the exclusion of the black Haitian revolutionaries from the grand narratives of modernity, democracy, and the Age of Revolutions. Their protest was heard. Today, the stories of the revolutionary slaves who, together with their allies, broke the chains of slavery at its strongest link in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1804, are no longer part of a ‘silenced past’, as Trouillot (1995) deemed the Haitian Revolution twenty-five years ago.

What was to become the mainstream view of the Haitian Revolution, I designate as the ‘universality analysis’ (Wilén 2019), due to the way it considered the following key events: the revolution’s beginning with the mass mobilization of slaves in 1791; the abolition of slavery in 1793 by the Jacobin commissioners who risked losing control of the prosperous colony both to competing states and to the growing revolution; and the Declaration of Independence in 1804 when Napoléon Bonaparte’s attempt to retake control over the colony had failed, bringing about the end of the revolution. These events of the revolutionary period are read by the universality analysis as a historical rupture with the age-old history of exclusion, owing to the inclusion of the former slaves within the Rights of Man and the Citizen. By logical extension, the results of the Haitian Revolution – which stands alone amid the Age of Revolutions in its achievement of the long-term abolition of slavery – are interpreted as a contribution to human rights, modernity, democracy, transnational anti-slavery, and anti-racism, as these ideas, institutions, and struggles are united insofar as they demand or presuppose a rupture with exclusion. (For early accounts in this vein by important advocates of what I term the universality analysis, see Trouillot 1995, 98, 88, 89; Hunt 2000, 16–7; Hardt and Negri 2000, 117; Buck-Morss 2000, 837, 835–6; Hallward 2004, 2, 1; Dubois 2004, 3).²

Yet, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a reaction against the universality analysis began to emerge. Particularly noteworthy in this regard was the intervention made by leading historian within the field of Haitian Revolutionary Studies, David Geggus, who accused the representatives of the universality analysis of ‘presentism’ (quoted in Fischer 2010, 165; see also Geggus 2010, 97, 99, 100; Geggus 2012, 164–7; Geggus 2016, 31, 32). Moreover, Geggus asked why the Haitian Revolution should be conceived of as a ‘democratic and universalistic revolution’ when the resulting state was ‘notoriously militaristic and autocratic’ and when ‘the universalist aspirations ended at the borders’ (quoted in Fischer 2010, 165). Geggus’s arbitration opened the gates for the substantial number of ‘universality sceptical’ (Wilén 2019) responses that would crop up in the ensuing years, culminating in what this article will describe as the ‘sceptical turn’ in the historiography of the Haitian Revolution. Over the years, it has become clear that proponents of the sceptical turn do not connect with one another as advocates of a common or positive interpretation; rather, they are united negatively in their attacks on the connection between the Haitian Revolution and the history of contemporary democracy and human rights, located at the core of the universality analysis.

In the contemporary reception of the Haitian Revolution, the sceptical turn is rarely acknowledged. To the extent that it has been identified at all, it has only attracted a limited number of objections, ranging from pejorative labels such as ‘conservative’ and ‘neo-imperial’ revisionism (Forsdick and Høgsbjerg 2017, 7–10; Hazareesingh 2020, 8) to the presentation of isolated empirical counterevidence (see e.g. Hazareesingh 2020, 2, 11, 56, 100, 369; Kaisary 2015, 403). Yet another critical strategy has consisted of the claim that both parties in fact share common premises (see e.g. Ghachem 2012, 274; 2016, 109–11; Fischer 2010, 165; see also Wilén 2019; Gonzalez 2019, 42–7; Gonzalez 2017, 112). At bottom, so the critique of shared premises argues, both camps utilize presentist assumptions rooted in liberal individualism, according to which the sceptical critique searches for evidence of revolutionary failure, and the universality analysis looks for confirmation of success (Fischer 2010, 165).

This article contributes to the discussion by presenting the first systematic critique of the sceptical turn, thus complementing the few attempts that have been made to provide an empirically based critique as well as studies that have revealed how the universality analysis and the sceptical response share a number of premises, despite their superficial empirical differences. Yet, for such a critique of the sceptical turn to be possible, it is necessary to go a step further than existing objections have done so far. This extra step is warranted because major differences between the universality analysis and the sceptical critique do exist, and they are not limited to conflicting empirical statements. Instead, by utilizing a refined concept of the abstraction, my critique of the sceptical turn reveals how the attack on the links between the Haitian Revolution and today, intentionally or unintentionally, is accomplished by unacknowledged rearrangements of modes and levels of abstractions.

Since the sceptical critique is informed by alternative abstractions to those utilized by the universality analysis from the very beginning, I argue that it does not attach to its target without friction. Moreover, I show that the sceptical abstractions are not superior as such. To settle with either the presentation of empirical counterevidence or with the critique of the shared premises means losing sight of the unacknowledged differences in the assumptions about valid abstractions that inform and distinguish each respective party. In the last instance, without expanding beyond the existing critique of the sceptical turn, the latter would get away with its confusions of modes of abstraction and be sheltered from further criticism.

A critical analysis of the functions of different modes and levels of abstraction in the sceptical critique will not only allow me to accomplish a systematic critique of the sceptical turn; it will also enable me to highlight genuine weaknesses in the universality analysis. Ultimately, the ground will be prepared for a qualified defence of what the connection between the Haitian Revolution and our own time might look like, providing that the historical claims of the sceptical critique are plausible. In such a qualified and restricted universality analysis, political discourse and demands, intentions, attributes, actions, and labour regimes that deviate from the ideals of the French Revolution or Enlightenment need not necessarily be a problem as far as the constellation that connects the Haitian Revolution with modern democracy and human rights is concerned.

Equally crucially, by offering a critique of the assumptions about valid abstraction in the sceptical critique of the universality analysis through a shift from the frequent focus on levels of abstractions to include different modes of abstraction, the present article’s contribution is not limited to the field of Haitian Revolutionary studies. The analysis herein can also provide a basis for analyses of contemporary and historical cases of revolutionary events in general, as well as a sophisticated conceptual apparatus for understanding and criticizing conflicts of interpretation that follow in the wake of major political events.

On the art of abstraction

At this point, before reaching back to the noisy clash between the universality analysis and the sceptical turn, we need to address the concept of abstraction, as well as a more specific differentiation between abstractions of generality, extension, and vantage point. To abstract is to establish a boundary in order to distinguish what is relevant from what is not (Ollman 2003, 60). If that is so, one must allow theoretically for the possibility of several levels of conceptual validity existing side-by-side. That is, different abstractions can be utilized for the purpose of giving the same sensory impressions, experiences, empirical observations or facts different forms, orders, and relative value (Ollman 2003, 74; Gunnarsson 2011, 31–2). This is of course not to say that there are no bad or invalid abstractions. Rather, it is a call for transparency. Every account ought to open itself up for assessment as regards the limits set by its claims, so that one can judge whether its abstractions are practically adequate or not (Sayer 1998, 125; Sweezy 1962, 12).

Moreover, the objects to which abstractions refer may be no less real than those denoted by more concrete concepts (Sayer 2010, 87; Ollman 2003, 75; Adorno 1976, 239). The concrete is not concrete simply because it exists, but rather because it is a combination or concentration of many diverse events, actions, structures, forces, processes, conditions or determinations. In contrast, an abstract concept refers to the isolation of a one-sided element of an object (Johansson Wilén and Wilén 2018, 67–9; Sayer 2010, 87; Sweezy 1962, 18). What we abstract from are any number of elements that in combination constitute the concrete object (Sayer 1998, 123; 2010, 87).

Thus, as far as terminology is concerned, when abstracting from concrete determinations, we find ourselves operating with a low level of abstraction, which rises as we include further elements, rendering the analysis more concrete. Put another way, contrary to the image of the abstract as a lofty sphere of nonsense, the terminology employed here implies a rising from the abstract to the concrete (see Hegel 1969 [1816], 70, 77; Marx 1993 [1857–58], 101).

To these general premises, Bertell Ollman has added a tripartite concept of abstraction. Ollman shifts the focus from the frequent distinction between low and high levels of abstractions to also include a distinction between three different modes of abstraction – abstractions of vantage point, extension, and generality.

With abstractions of vantage point, one decides on a specific place (for example, within a relationship) from which to view, investigate, and connect the other components of a relationship. ‘A vantage point sets up a perspective that colors everything that falls into it, establishing order, hierarchy, and priorities, distributing values, meanings, and degrees of relevance, and asserting a distinctive coherence between the parts’, Ollman (2003, 100) writes, adding that from ‘ … a given perspective, some processes and connections will appear large, some obvious, some important; others will appear small, insignificant, and irrelevant; and some will even be invisible’. As we will see later, a common abstraction of vantage point utilized in the sceptical critique against the universality analysis concerns individual acts, intentions, and attributes combined with concrete examples of greed and self-interest, mainly within the revolutionary leadership.

In the case of abstractions of extension, the scope in time and space of an object of knowledge – a part of a whole – is altered. ‘In abstracting boundaries in space’, Ollman (2003, 74) writes, ‘limits are set in the mutual interaction that occurs at a given point in time. In abstracting boundaries in time, limits are set in the distinctive history and potential development of any part, in what it once was and is yet to become’. An important abstraction of extension in the sceptical turn has proved to be the focus on continuities between l’ancien régime in Saint-Domingue and the post-revolutionary Haitian state and society, with concrete examples of continued despotism, violence, and militarism mobilized against the universality analysis.

An abstraction of generality is implied by the very act of deploying a specific abstraction of extension, since a limit is simultaneously constructed at a particular level of generality, differentiating specific boundaries not only of the part but also of the whole system to which that part belongs. ‘The movement is from the most specific’, Ollman (2003, 74–5) writes, ‘or that which sets it apart from everything else, to its most general characteristics, or what makes it similar to other entities’. Needless to say, every abstraction of generality also implies variations of abstractions of extension in time and space (Ollman 2003, 75). According to the vantage point of individuals wishing to maximize their own output, an abstraction of generality zooming in on properties common to humanity as such has been invoked by the sceptical critique against the universality analysis.

Three final specifications are in order here. First, one can utilize different levels of abstraction within each mode of abstraction. For instance, at a low level of abstraction, within a mode of abstraction of generality set at the Haitian Revolution as a totality, one cannot skip over the fact that it resulted in the abolition of slavery and the creation of an independent state, as a result of the involvement of black slaves themselves as revolutionary actors. Yet, one could also raise the level of abstraction while still operating with the generality of the Haitian Revolution as such, which would imply that further aspects ought to be included, such as different coalitions for and against abolition, including black slaves fighting for British generals against abolition and white Frenchmen fighting for the cause of abolition. Since it is plausible to contend that the involvement of black slaves themselves as a crucial element in the abolition of slavery is essential at a low level of abstraction in an analysis within the generality of the Haitian Revolution as such, and at the same time acknowledge the fact that a not insignificant number of black slaves fought for the continuity of slavery as the level of abstraction is raised, it is crucial not to confuse levels and modes of abstraction. Second, the modes of, and levels within, abstractions of extension, generality, and vantage point are always manipulated, irrespective of whether the author of a specific analysis is aware of, or transparent about, that fact. Thus, we will never have direct and unmediated access to the concrete object, which is also an abstraction. Still, if one is aware that the act of analysis necessarily entails manipulations of abstractions, it is possible to actively put ‘things into and out of focus, into better focus, and into different kinds of focus, enabling [oneself] to see more clearly, investigate more accurately, and understand more fully and more dynamically … [one’s] chosen subject’ (Ollman 2003, 75; see also Adorno 1976, 239; Nygaard 2007, 157–8; Paolucci 2011, 59). Third, all three modes of abstraction imply one another. Thus, while the main target of the sceptical critique is the abstraction of generality in the universality analysis that connects the Haitian Revolution with present-day democracy and human rights, the course of the sceptical attack includes a complicated set of unacknowledged manoeuvres involving other, different, abstractions of vantage point and of extension.

Sceptical modes of abstractions

Having elucidated the concept of abstraction, it is now possible to specify the key attributes of the universality analysis in terms of the three modes of abstraction, and to identify how the sceptical critique has responded by way of utilizing alternative modes of abstractions. Only then will it be meaningful to offer a critical assessment, first, of the sceptical turn, and then of the universality analysis.

To begin with, the abolition of slavery in the Haitian Revolution is read by the universality analysis as a historical rupture comprising four core elements: the critique and realization of, as well as inclusion and contribution to, universal political concepts, institutions, and struggles. In short, the universality analysis theorizes the abolition of slavery and the proclamation of Haitian independence in terms of a rupture with the age-old history of exclusion, due to the inclusion of the former slaves within the Rights of Man and the Citizen for the first time in history. In utilizing the vantage point of inclusion and exclusion, the abolition of slavery in the Haitian Revolution appears as the most radical example of inclusion and realization in its time. If a rupture with exclusion is accepted as necessary for the ideas, struggles, and institutions of human rights and democracy, then an abstraction of generality that connects the revolutionary abolition of slavery with the modern history of democracy and human rights to this day is provided for. By implication, the abstraction of extension is set between the late eighteenth century and today, with a specific focus on the Haitian Revolution and its connections with the social and political problems confronted now, insofar as it sheds light on the difference between l’ancien régime and the post-revolutionary condition that we still inhabit. Thereby a critical horizon of an immanent critique of historical and present cases of exclusions from the Rights of Man and the Citizen is unlocked, which has the advantage of being immune to the charge of eurocentrism, since black slaves themselves realized the truncated ideals of universal emancipation and rights. (For early accounts by important advocates of what I term the universality analysis that can be analysed along these lines, see Trouillot 1995, 98, 88, 89; Hunt 2000, 16–7; Hardt and Negri 2000, 117; Buck-Morss 2000, 837, 835–6; Hallward 2004, 2, 1; Dubois 2004, 3).

Provided that advocates of the universality analysis would have ascribed to these limited claims, the sceptical prospects would have been meagre, even if all abstractions implied by the university analysis of course can be debated as such. Yet, as I will show, the universality analysis has occasionally exceeded these limited claims, thus setting the stage for the sceptical critique.

Before all else, however, it is time to delve deep into the universe of sceptical abstractions. Even if the major feature of the sceptical critique has been its attempts to undermine the abstraction of generality that connects the Haitian Revolution with the history of the present, it has utilized different abstractions of vantage point and extension to accomplish such ends. In fact, the sceptical critique consists of a veritable labyrinth of abstractions, all leading to a challenge of the connection between the Haitian Revolution and the history of the present. As concerns the major abstractions of vantage point, sceptics focus on individual acts, intentions, and attributes, power relations, and the problem of causality instead of inclusion and exclusion. As abstractions of extension, they trade revolutionary rupture for historical continuity between the old regime and the post-revolutionary social formation on the one hand, while on the other, they rearrange and decentre the elements of the revolution so as to focus on contingency rather than the grand narratives of abolition, and causes, events, and outcomes that challenge images of the revolutionary realization of truncated promises.

Abstractions of vantage point

The central abstraction of vantage point in the sceptical critique is first and foremost the revolutionary individual, in isolation and as part of the broader movement. If acts and intentions that deviate from the register of democratic values and ideals of human rights can be listed, the sceptical turn would appear to challenge the universality analysis of the Haitian Revolution as such. Thus, authoritarian acts, attributes, and the political discourse of individuals such as the foremost revolutionary leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines are taken to disprove the universality analysis. Their actions are interpreted as the outcomes of economic self-interest, as we are offered an image in which the primary aim of the revolutionary leadership was the re-creation of a planter class, with the revolutionary leader at the top, against ‘[l]iberal circles’ who ‘like to celebrate the revolution as a rare victory over racism, economic exploitation, and imperialism’ (Girard 2011, 345, 346, 326, 314). Consequently, the leaders of the revolution were ‘unapologetically dictatorial’ but gifted ex-slaves, who ‘never displayed the slightest regard for democracy’ (Geggus 2010, 97, 99, 100; Geggus 2012, 164–7; Geggus 2016, 31, 32; see also a similar, albeit more moderately formulated, statement in Popkin 2010, 129). From individuals, sceptical scholars have also moved their claims to the movement as such, emphasizing that, before the summer of 1793, it is questionable whether a commitment to universal emancipation based on natural human rights had been expressed within the revolutionary movement as such, and the revolutionaries ‘had certainly not begun to think of demanding independence’ (Popkin 2010, 10; Moyn 2013, 191). Some even state that, contrary to ‘being driven by “democratic ideals”’, the ‘revolution grew out of the slave uprising that was authoritarian from beginning to end’ (Geggus 2010, 97). In like manner, another sceptic asserts that it was ‘greed’ – rather than, say, demands for universal emancipation or the defence of the principles of the French Revolution against France herself – that represented the only constant factor in the Haitian Revolution, ‘as officers, merchants, and planters of all colors battled ceaselessly for a share of Saint-Domingue’s fabled wealth (other deadly sins from lust to wrath and envy were also frequently on display)’ (Girard 2011, 9). Yet another way of utilizing the abstraction of vantage point of the individual is more theoretical. It strikes at the way in which the universality analysis interprets the abolition of slavery as the realization of the truncated promises of the Enlightenment and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which entails an unacceptable reduction of agency. This ‘politics of fulfilment’ diminishes the space of agency as the revolutionary individuals become reduced to merely fulfilling ‘the task of universalization’ of formally universal, but curtailed, rights. That is, the only space left for the slaves is reduced to that of ‘realizing the concept’s already built-in potential’ (Moyn 2010, 30, 32; 2013, 190; Getachew 2016, 822).

Alongside the acts, intentions, and attributes of the individual, two additional abstractions of vantage point are important in the sceptical critique. First, the universality analysis is also questioned from the abstraction of vantage point of labour and power relations, with a specific emphasis on the attempts to re-subjugate slaves-turned-soldiers/citizens during and after the revolution (Girard 2018, 17). For instance, the labour codes issued during the revolution can be invoked against analyses that focus on the declarations of equality and freedom from slavery, since they were ‘actual policy decisions that impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Caribbean workers, not just discussion topics for Parisian salons […]’ (Girard 2018, 2). Moreover, the labour codes were drafted by black and mixed-race officers drawn from the ranks of the rebel army as well as by colonial officials sent from France (Girard 2018, 2). Notwithstanding their different authors, the codes all began by paying homage to the ideal of individual liberty ‘[…] while curtailing this liberty through various restrictive measures that were buried later in the text in a French legalese that was inaccessible to Kreyòl-speaking field hands’ (Girard 2018, 2). In contrasting the abstraction of vantage point of the ‘revolutionary gospel’ of individual liberty with the vantage point of the labour system, it is possible to challenge the sharp distinction between two distinct labour systems that is important for the notion of rupture among the universality analysists: one based on human bondage and the other on individual liberty. Instead, the relation between ‘field hands’ and ‘landowners’, rather than politics and individual agents, ought to come to light as the engine of historical change (Girard 2018, 17).

Lastly, an abstraction of vantage point centring on causality and contingency is also evoked against the universality analysis.³ The first move in the direction towards causality is the claim that ‘historians’ of the Haitian Revolution are now ‘focusing more particularly on the issue of causation’ (Girard 2018, 1; Geggus 2010, 97, 91). In the next step, representatives of the universality analysis are then questioned on the grounds that the revolution was hardly caused or driven by democratic ideals (Geggus 2010, 97, 91). As one sceptical historian has written, we must ‘recognize that the French revolutionary abolition of slavery was not, as French historians and politicians sometimes like to imply, a simple and logical consequence of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’ (Popkin 2010, 19, 383; see also 2019, 239). As far as contingency is concerned, since grand narratives such as the universality analysis seem to fail the test of the archive, it may be ‘more effective to cast aside all attempts at categorization and study revolutionary Saint-Domingue as the sum of hundreds of thousands of individual histories’ (Girard 2011, 9). A variation on the same theme reaches the conclusion that abolition can only have resulted from unplanned, uncoordinated action in unforeseen circumstances (as argued by Popkin 2010, 19, 383; see also Popkin 2019, 239; Ghachem 2012, 3, 109–10, 274).⁴ In the end, to state that the ‘connection between 1791 and 1804 was […] highly contingent […]’ is, indeed, a challenge to ‘deeply held beliefs about the power of libertarian ideals and of human agency’ (Popkin 2010, 19, 383; see also Popkin 2019, 239).

Abstractions of extensions

The clearest operation with abstractions of extension in the sceptical critique is the manifest call for a turn to historical continuity, in contrast to the ‘rupture narrative’ among the universality analysists.⁵ Accordingly, the rupture narrative ought to be seen as a common premise of tragic, progressive, and heroic tales about the Haitian Revolution alike. Thus, the narratives of continuity are suppressed by images of catastrophe or emancipation, which are just two sides of the coin of the logic of rupture (Ghachem 2012, 3, 109–10, 274). More concretely, a rigid invocation of the break of independence disguises economic, social, and political continuities with the old regime (Cheney 2017, 402). In yet another reaffirmation of the abstraction extension that calls for an emphasis on continuity, the fact that the labour codes fell short of outright freedom is said to force us ‘to reexamine the abolition of slavery in Saint-Domingue: more than an event that can be associated with a specific revolt or proclamation […] it was a contentious process that lasted decades and outlasted the French and Haitian Revolutions’ (Girard 2018, 2–3). On those grounds, we can confirm the superiority of examinations of ‘the revolutionary era in its totality (“l’histoire sociale” in Braudel’s taxonomy)’, which make ‘political upheavals recede into the background noise’ and bring forth ‘a form of continuity’, in contrast to a history focused on ‘“l’histoire événementielle”: the day-to-day minutia of individual lives’ (Girard 2018, 15–6, 17).

The second sceptical manoeuvre made within the mode of abstractions of extension rearranges and decentres the temporal focus within parts of the Haitian Revolution as such. The reordering of the analytical priorities towards the causes of the revolution unites with the emphasis on contingency in an analytical dissection of the revolution into different factors and temporal sequences. The different factors and sequences of events precede the revolutionary outcome of abolition, and thus the former can be used to challenge the focus on the latter. Similarly, contingent factors can also be used to question the universality analysts, to whom it is asked why only one of the major results of the revolution (namely abolition) has been singled out as significant, and why only specific events have been highlighted (such as the beginning of the independent slave mobilization or the proclamations of abolition in 1793 and 1804) while others are downplayed or overlooked (see references to Geggus and Popkin above).

Abstractions of generality

Having explored the labyrinth of sceptical abstractions of vantage point and extension, it should be clear that the three modes of abstraction cannot be neatly separated into distinct boxes. Thus, each mode of abstraction is present, as an implication, in the others, although not in any one-dimensional, unilinear or necessary form.

As already elucidated, a common vantage point in the sceptical turn is the individual, through the invocation of authoritarian acts and attributes of central revolutionary actors, a lack of manifest demands of universal rights during the early revolutionary years, or a theoretical critique of the model of realization as a diminishing of subaltern agency. Although each manipulation can be seen as a case of one and the same vantage point (individual acts, intentions, and attributes), they likewise contain different assumptions about valid abstractions of generality.

First, the focus on authoritarian attributes results in two different abstractions of generality. In one case, instances of despotism are coupled with greed alongside other deadly sins, which indicates an abstraction of generality set at what is common to humanity, thus involving an abstraction of extension that spans all times and places of human societies. In another case, it is instead a combination of the unique characteristics of specific persons and their fates – what distinguishes Louverture from the unnamed French revolutionaries – on the one hand, and characteristics that are common to agents of the age of democratic revolution in contrast to agents of the Haitian Revolution on the other, which are brought into focus as a result of two separate abstractions of generality.

Second, the invocation of a lack of demands as evidence against the universality analysis decentres the revolution and focuses on the abstraction of extension of a specific revolutionary phase. The abstraction of generality is set at the revolution as a whole, while it is rearranged according to the different temporal and spatial extensions of the parts that constitute the whole. That is, the analysis is concerned with the early phase of the revolution as a specific time period that lacks the demands of universal emancipation, and which is made visible in relation to an abstraction of generality of the revolution as a whole.

Third, the sceptical critique of the reduction of subaltern agency implied by the model of realization and subaltern agency converges with the model of greed through the abstraction of generality of the category of humanity in all places and at all times. It appeals to a supposed invalid reduction of agency in the universality analysis – a criticism which could hardly be less applicable to cases other than the Haitian Revolution.

As regards the vantage point of labour and class relations, it comes as no surprise that it has been explicitly coupled with a call for analyses of continuity at the level of extension. As such, this includes the interaction between the old regime of slavery and the event of revolution. Plainly, such attention enables an analysis that can disregard what would otherwise have appeared as elements of change. At the level of generality, the vantage point of labour directs the analysis towards the fairly wide range of class societies in general, since the case of continuity is hardly unique to l’ancien régime in Saint-Domingue. As for the problem of the vantage point of causality, contingent events, and outcomes, the latter instead connect to the abstraction of generality that is set at the revolution as a whole, or with the Age of Revolutions as such, with a specific emphasis on levels of extensions set at the parts that constitute the events between 1791 and 1804 as such or in comparison with other contemporary revolutions.

In sum, these major cases of universality-sceptical abstractions of generality all function to sever the link between the Haitian Revolution and modern democracy and human rights. Nevertheless, they contain different constellations of abstractions of vantage point and extension, and they vary from what is unique to the individual, via what is common to the Haitian Revolution and the Age of Revolutions as totalities, to class societies in general and humanity as such.

Critique of the sceptical turn

With an understanding of how the different constellations of the major sceptical abstractions are arranged, we can now assess their benefits and limits. Three concrete issues call for attention. The first is whether the universality analysis qua universality analysis operates with these abstractions as well. Indeed, to a great extent, the effectiveness of the sceptical critique depends on whether the universality analysis brackets the issues of intentionality, causality, and labour relations in its general assessment of the Haitian Revolution and within the abstractions of generality with which it operates. If so, the claims of the universality analysis would be located at a lower level of abstraction than is presupposed by the sceptical critique. Conversely, if intentionality, labour relations, and causality are not abstracted from in terms of the claims of the abstraction, the sceptical critique is successful, supposing that it is empirically valid, of course. The second issue that demands consideration is whether the sceptical abstractions can be defended as historico-theoretically valid, credible, and superior. Finally, yet crucially, the ground for an engagement with a third concrete issue will be prepared, which can be formulated as a simple question: what room is left for the universality analysis, given the benefits and disadvantages of the sceptical critique?

On claims and critique

As concerns the first concrete issue, due to the massive output of the universality analysists, a comprehensive analysis of their claims in relation to the sceptical critique is impossible in a single article. Nevertheless, as I will argue, despite failing in general, the sceptical critique successfully targeted some parts of the universality analysis.

In the first place, to a limited degree, the critique of the universality analysis according to the abstractions of vantage point of the individual, labour relations, and causality is convincing. Accordingly, the vantage point of individual acts, demands, and attributes clearly has the potential to undermine universality accounts, such as that of universality analysist Nick Nesbitt (2008, 145), who claims that the slave revolutionaries articulated ‘an unequivocal and unwavering commitment to universal emancipation based upon natural rights’. To state that the insurgents unequivocally and unwaveringly articulated a commitment to specific political goals is an empirical claim argued from the vantage point of individual intentions. In short, the sceptical critique, which cites empirical evidence that is meaningful as a result of the same abstraction of vantage point, strikes at the heart of Nesbitt’s general assessment, as well as striking anyone else who shares his combination of conclusions and abstraction of vantage point.⁶

Second, as concerns the vantage point of labour relations, the sceptical critique – this time building on a narrative asymmetry between superficial political declarations on the one hand, and weighty labour codes on the other – is not entirely without substance either. After all, former slaves participated in the Haitian Revolution on a mass scale. This was a revolution in which every party coming to power as a direct result of abolition had to confront the contradiction between small-scale production for subsistence and an export economy. If anything, the revolution was about labour (see Stephanson 2010, 203–4). Choices had to be made in support of either the rank-and-file revolutionaries or the rationale of export production. While it is false to say that the problem of labour is absent from the historical narratives of the universality analysists (see e.g. Fischer 2004, 267–71; Dubois 2004, 184–9, 239–50; Buck-Morss 2009, 94–101), the theme is conspicuous by its absence in their general assessments of the history of the Haitian Revolution.

Third, in considering the problem of causality and contingency, the sceptical critique is less credible. The weaknesses consist in that the manipulation of the abstraction of vantage point towards causality and contingency tacitly ascribes uniform objectives and analytical claims to the universality analysis. Not only are the universality analysists said to maintain that the slaves were being driven by democratic ideals, but also that they are all historians interested in the ‘issue of causation’. Here, those who, according to one of the sceptical historians, have described ‘emancipation in Saint-Domingue as an expansion of European Enlightenment ideals (Laurent Dubois, Nick Nesbitt, Sibylle Fischer) […]’ are included (Girard 2018, 1). The designation of Dubois, Nesbitt, and Fischer as historians obviously creates an image of a more coherent set of aims, methods, and disciplinary norms than if we would have instead met one historian (Dubois) and two scholars of literature and language (Nesbitt, Fischer). More importantly, the fact that Nesbitt and Fischer are not historians does not prevent them from attempting to explain why the Haitian Revolution occurred. Still, none of the three named scholars actually claims to study the causes of the Haitian Revolution. Dubois (2004, 2–3) aims to tell the ‘story of their [the actors of the Haitian Revolution] dramatic struggle for freedom’ and to ‘see with more clarity’ and ‘understand’ the revolution. One of Dubois’ (2004, 3) conclusions from the abstraction of vantage point of political inclusion and exclusion is that if ‘we live in a world in which democracy is meant to exclude no one, it is in no small part because of the actions of those slaves in Saint-Domingue who insisted that human rights were theirs too’. Fischer (2004, 1) aims to write a ‘book about the cultural and political landscape in the Age of Revolution’ and to understand ‘disavowed’ elements of modernity in a study situated within the literary field. And, as Fischer (2004, x) rightly notes, ‘standards of proof and treatment of evidence are not the same in the literary fields and the social sciences’, which means that a significant part of her ‘evidence is of a literary and cultural sort and requires a different kind of interpretative work’. In the cases of universality analysis, Fischer’s major vantage point is, like that of Dubois, the relation between inclusion and exclusion in relation to the Age of Revolutions and modernity. Nesbitt (2008, 5, 1) has a wider array of aims, even if his foundational purpose seems to be ‘to understand the Haitian Revolution, in both its historical singularity and its uniqueness along with its vital relevance to the present [… and to] explore the implications of this fundamental event of modern human history, the invention of universal emancipation’. To that premise, Nesbitt (2008, 3) adds a number of other statements, such as the assertion that ‘the testimony of the rebel slaves themselves unequivocally supports’ the ‘unquestionable’ conclusion that ‘the most immediate factor in turning’ the Haitian Revolution ‘into a struggle for the universal abolition of slavery was the publication of the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen in August 1789’. To conclude, Nesbitt is the only one of the three scholars that even comes close to claiming that he investigates the causes of the revolution, in stating that the Declaration of 1789 was the ‘most immediate factor’ in the transformation of the Haitian Revolution into a revolution for ‘universal abolition’. In their general assessments of the revolution, Dubois and Fischer utilize abstractions of vantage points that clearly do not include a claim to identify the causes of the revolution. In this regard, the sceptical critique simply misses the mark.

Likewise, the universality analysis is not seriously damaged by the sceptical abstractions of extension. First, granted that the Haitian Revolution has now been included in general histories and theories of change about the Age of Revolutions and the emergence of modernity and democracy from which the events between 1791 and 1804 were previously excluded, it is not surprising that elements of change have been stressed. However, as yet, the sceptical critique has not observed that the universality analysis is interested in the Haitian Revolution exactly as a consequence of its more fundamental interest in the continuities of l’histoire sociale. Namely, l’historie sociale that connects the Age of Revolutions with our own age, whether in terms of human rights, modernity, democracy or anti-racism. Hence, it would be more correct to state that the universality analysis includes an abstraction of extension in time that maintains a rupture-and-continuity narrative. Thus, it may be that the sceptical focus on continuity is useful in limiting the glorification of the Haitian Revolution, which results from isolating the abolition of slavery from its preconditions and other revolutionary outcomes in order to honour the unique contribution of the revolution to the history of human rights (et cetera) by means of overstatements about the revolutionary rupture. Nevertheless, the sceptics’ privileging of continuity largely comes to nothing, since it is clearly motivated by wanting to focus on the Haitian Revolution in terms of rupture, granted that the vantage point is based on the continuities and ruptures of the history of exclusion and inclusion.

Second, a critique founded on a manipulation of the temporal abstraction of extension that also includes the preconditions of abolition also fails, since the causes of abolition or specific events are, by necessity, anterior to the outcome of abolition. Stated in another way, the universality analysis, at the level of claims, has already from the beginning directly or indirectly abstracted from and excluded the temporal abstraction of extension implied by the problem of causality, or other preceding events.

Consequently, despite isolated benefits and strengths, I would conclude that the sceptical critique fails to undermine the universality analysis, since its representatives have seldom formulated their general aims and offered their general assessments of the revolution within the same modes of abstraction as those used to challenge them. Such a conclusion is strengthened by turning to some general reflections about the Haitian Revolution, found in the margins of the universality-sceptical oeuvre. Accordingly, in the peripheries of the ardent polemics, we discover not only the statement that the Haitian Revolution was authoritarian from beginning to end, but also the surprising assertion that, of ‘all the “Atlantic revolutions”, Saint Domingue’s most fully embodied the contemporary struggles for freedom, equality, and independence, and it produced the greatest degree of social and economic change’ (Geggus 2010, 87; Geggus 2011, 533). Similarly, despite claims that greed represented the only constant factor during the revolution, we also learn that Louverture confronted ‘the central dilemma that slave owning societies faced in the age of abolition: how to reconcile the ideals of universal freedom with the realities of plantation agriculture’ (Girard 2011, 257; 2018, 2). Finally, although black slaves in the Haitian Revolution were not part of the first abolition of slavery, enlisting ‘1804 alongside 1776 and 1789 casts a harsh light on the limits of the American and French revolutionaries’ notions of freedom’ (Popkin 2019, 233).

At this final point in the assessment of whether the sceptical turn has failed to utilize the same modes of abstractions as those presupposed by its object of critique, it is necessary to pause and ask the following question: What abstractions of extension are actually presupposed if we are surprised that the Haitian Revolution contained violence, authoritarianism, greed, contingency, and so forth, given that the sceptical critique conspicuously agrees with the universality analysis that the events between 1791 and 1804 most fully embodied the contemporary struggles for freedom, equality, and independence? Obviously, the answer is that such dissociations arise in contrast to a (more or less idealized) present-day standard of democracy and human rights, which simultaneously isolates revolutionary Saint-Domingue from its own history of the brutal institution of slavery, as well as from other contemporary revolutions and revolutionary movements that also contained violence et cetera. If the abstraction of extension would have included pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue or other contemporary cases of revolution, one would hardly be shocked by the finding of despotic, greedy, and authoritarian attributes at the heart of the revolution. Thus, without the idealized contemporary standard, the sceptical opposition between the Enlightenment, human rights, democracy, modernity, et cetera on the one hand, and greed, violence, authoritarianism, et cetera on the other, would be harder to sustain.

On historico-theoretical validity

Since the sceptical modes of abstractions differ from those implied by the universality analysis, the critique does not attach neatly to its target. Even so, it would still be possible to argue that the modes of abstractions implied by the universality analysis are invalid as such, and that the sceptical abstractions are superior, a priori. Thus, in order to offer a systematic critique of the sceptical turn, further work is needed.

In fact, as concerns the vantage point of individual agency and labour relations as well as the shift from rupture to continuity, the sceptics argue against the universality analysis on a principal level. As regards the abstractions of extension that rearranges the focus from rupture to continuity, it is credible to shift focus to explore elements of continuity at the level of the revolutionary era in its totality, as well as in the Haitian Revolution in relation to, say, l’ancien régime. Without such a complement, romantic narratives, hungry for uncorrupted black slaves working in the service of goodness, reason, and Enlightenment, are close at hand, which will only attract new waves of sceptical attacks. But the burden of proving why continuity and rupture ought to be conceptualized as mutually exclusive categories still lies with the sceptical critique. It is in no way self-evident why the focus on continuity should be seen as an opposing, rather than a complementary, move. Instead of rigidly quarantining l’histoire événementielle from l’histoire sociale and seeing them as mutually exclusive, we should be able to identify the main contradictions within the power dynamic within specific events according to both temporalities. Obviously, instead of adhering to the pole of continuity by virtue of the simple existence of advocates of the pole of discontinuity, we should acknowledge that both extremes obscure the fact that we cannot catch sight of l’histoire événementielle without l’histoire sociale and vice versa, and that in a concrete historical event or process, there will necessarily be elements of both continuity and change.⁷

Moreover, the critique directed at the ‘politics of fulfilment’ is also formulated in direct contradiction with the modes of abstraction of the universality analysis. Yet, as the critique maintains that the notion of the Haitian Revolution as an event that realizes truncated promises unavoidably blocks the space for agency, it implies a rigid dichotomy between independent agency and the context of the French Revolution. That is, an analysis that contextualizes the actions of the black slave revolutionaries in relation to events in the French Revolution, including the mobilization of Enlightenment ideals in the Haitian Revolution against l’ancien régime, is condemned for being reductionist. Yet, this form of critique in a first step totalizes the French Revolution and the Enlightenment into a general, closed, and fully coherent monolith containing one, and only one, potential path. In a second step, it sets up a questionable choice between an analysis that either reduces the Haitian Revolution as a derivative sideshow of the French Revolution, or simplifies the complexity of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to the point that it is impossible for those who wish to resist slavery to draw on it in some form (Dubois 2006, 7). In both cases, the distinction between relation and influence seems to be conflated. After all, the ‘Haitian and French Revolutions influenced one another because they were related’; they ‘were not related because they influenced one another’ (Tomich 2008, 413).

True, even if the critique of the politics of fulfilment contains decisive weaknesses, the sceptical critique could still set out to damage versions of the universality analysis that from the very beginning do not include in their analytical claims and empirical conclusions the vantage point of individual acts, intentions, and attributes. If so, such critique could state that no analysis drawing conclusions about unintended consequences or results beyond the control, intentions, and actions of the individual is valid. However, it would first have to show why a binary opposition between the vantage points of inclusion and exclusion and intentional agency should be accepted. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the members of the sceptical party themselves would accept such radical forms of individualism.⁸

The vantage point of labour relations does not fare any better. Even if labour relations deserve their place among general assessments of the Revolution, when put to work as a vantage point in the sceptical critique, the argument has been pushed to the opposite end of the scale. By criticizing defenders of the universality analysis for overemphasizing the political documents and ideals, the sceptical critique has committed itself to an analysis that reduces the revolution to the problem of labour. Without the counter image of the universality analysis that has elevated the politics of the Haitian Revolution to a sacred register, the sceptical counter-proposal would be less warranted. It is almost as if the problem of labour inhabits a sphere all of its own, leaving the colonial system untouched by the political change forced through by the revolution. Borrowing a metaphor from Marx (1970, 80), just as Christians are equal in heaven yet unequal on earth, the abolition of racial discrimination and slavery belongs to the heaven of the Haitian Revolution, while only the earthly existence of labour matters in actuality, according to the logic of the sceptical argument. Thus, in this case, the sceptical critique has obligated itself to one form of inadequate abstraction (the endurance of the power dynamic and property relations without change and political categories) through the critique of another (change and universal right without conflicts over labour surplus and the stability of power relations). Yet, the relevant problem is not whether one labour system ‘was based’ on human bondage and the other on individual liberty, but rather that one could be based unproblematically on human bondage, and that the other could not, given that the support of the masses of revolutionaries was not going to disappear. In abstracting from the element of change that is documented in the political proclamations, an essential element of the Haitian Revolution is lost. Thus, to divorce conflicts rooted in property relations from their political forms of appearance is, to paraphrase C. L. R. James (2001, 230), an error less grave only than elevating political declarations into self-moving, mighty actors that are independent of social roots.

In conclusion, thus, the sceptical critique does not make use of the same modes of abstractions as implied by the universality analysis from the very beginning. Nor is it able to demonstrate the superiority of their modes of abstractions as such. By now, the abstraction of generality that connects the Haitian Revolution with the history of the present may appear to be secured. However, things are a little more complicated. Accordingly, we now reach the third concrete issue, which concerns the fate of the universality analysis itself after the sceptical turn.

Universality analyses after the sceptical turn

Despite its failure in general, the sceptical turn has brought to light some genuine weaknesses and clear limitations of the universality analysis. First, the sceptical vantage points offer the possibility to correct a one-sided interest in the political side of the events between 1791 and 1804 at the expense of, say, the problem of labour supply. Moreover, the sceptics undermine analytical and polemical overstatements and errors. For instance, following the sceptical turn, images of heroic slave champions striving to fulfil the Enlightenment promise of reason, or the French revolutionary promise of equality and freedom, can hardly survive, since such analysis also includes claims that draw on the vantage point of the individual. Put simply, excessively glorifying and celebratory accounts of the Haitian Revolution are now forced to explain why they ignore the authoritarian labour regime, the lack of widespread early demands for abolition, the outcome of the despotic state, and the concrete causes of the revolution (among which an attachment to French philosophy can hardly be counted). Thus, a complementary focus on labour and historical continuity is clearly justified.

Second, the sceptical turn has clarified that it is necessary to be conscious of the fact that the modes of abstractions implied by the universality analysis locate it on a low level of abstraction, thus excluding many determinations of the Haitian Revolution as a concrete revolutionary process. In keeping with a low level of abstraction, one can clearly defend a qualified universality analysis. Thus, contra the sceptical turn, the fact that the Haitian Revolution once and for all succeeded in abolishing slavery, while the American and French Revolutions did not, in spite of the values they mobilized against the old regime, is decisive in two ways. First, when measured from the vantage point of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the abstraction of generality of modernity, in contrast to categories of difference (legal and political systems of privilege, distinguishing through birth: slave from master; peasant from lord; et cetera), political and juridical categories with claims of identity (everyone is born equal and free) were realized to a greater extent in the abolition of slavery that resulted from the Haitian Revolution than in any other contemporary revolution. Second, in engaging the vantage point of inclusion and exclusion with categories of identity at the level of generality of the Age of (Atlantic) Revolutions as a whole, it follows that the level of extension includes all places of revolution (spatiality) of the age (temporality) of Atlantic Revolutions, and subsequently connects the Haitian Revolution with modern human rights and democracy in a history of continuity within an abstraction of generality. This is so because, by logical extension, inclusion cannot be accomplished without a rupture with the history of slavery. In such a qualified universality analysis, political discourse and demands, intentions, attributes, actions, and labour regimes that deviate from the ideals of the French Revolution or Enlightenment need not necessarily be a problem for the analysis.

However, conversely, when its representatives invoke as evidence of the universality status, say, causes and intentions or acts of individuals, the analysis obviously ventures into deeper waters. Therefore, ultimately, the universality analysis must be fairly abstract. There is simply no room to make it more concrete. Sticking to the determinations of causes and individual intentions, such a concrete universality analysis would claim that the Haitian Revolution ought to be included in the history of democracy due to an assertion that the cause of the revolution can be found in widespread devotion to the rights of man, or that its leaders first and foremost intended to realize democratic ideals. In short, a concrete universality analysis would only fuel the fire of universality scepticism.

All those heads on the wall

Even if a basic message from the art of abstraction is that, in alternating abstractions of vantage point, extension, and generality, the very same event or process can appear both as progress and authoritarianism, and that neither of the two appearances by necessity has to be more plausible than the other, none of the lessons learned from the art of abstraction supports a conclusion that ‘anything goes’. On the contrary, we must differentiate between abstractions of extension, generality, and vantage point, so that what appear to be incompatible statements can be situated at their proper level of abstraction, and within their proper mode of abstraction.

Therefore, with respect to the sceptical turn, several concerns have been raised in this article, of which the first out of four in total is what the sceptical critique actually consists of in terms of abstractions. The answer is that it utilizes the vantage points of individual acts, intentions, and attributes, labour relations, and the problem of causality and contingency. Moreover, the sceptics have shifted abstractions of extension from the rupture of abolition to historical continuity, preceding events and processes, different phases of the revolution, and outcomes other than abolition. Finally, the invocation of these abstractions of vantage point and extension have involved abstractions of generality that range from the unique individual, through to the Haitian Revolution as a whole, the age of Atlantic Revolutions, class societies by and large, and humanity as such, and yet they accomplish one common task. They all serve to undermine the defining feature of the universality analysis: the connection between the Haitian Revolution and the history of the present, not least in terms of human rights and democracy.

The second concern amounts to the question of whether the universality analysists operate with the same modes of abstraction that are utilized in the attack against them. The simple answer to this question is that, despite local cases and a few examples that indeed appear to be undermined by the sceptical critique, in general they do not. Thus, the sceptical critique misses the mark.

However, the sceptics could still assert that their modes of abstraction are superior as such. Thus, and this is the third concern, one must also assess the universality-sceptical abstractions in their own terms. In doing so, I have displayed that the room left for the demonstration of the a priori superiority of the sceptical abstractions is highly limited. In other words, in this regard too, the sceptical turn has a weak case against the universality analysis.

As regards the fourth concern, finally, I have argued that the fact of sceptical weaknesses does not automatically warrant the conclusion that the universality analysis can be advocated without qualifications. As a matter of fact, the only defensible universality analysis is limited to a low level of abstraction, and to the vantage point of inclusion and exclusion, which offers a basis on which the revolution can be included into an abstraction of generality that connects the revolution with the history of human rights and democracy to this day, beyond the problem of causality, contingency, and intentions. Therefore, there are examples of universality analyses that ought to be rejected.

If one takes a final step back so as to broaden the perspectives, a general pattern in the sceptical turn can be detected, which also displays a basic lesson from the art of abstraction. At the outset, as the universality analysis was diffused and popularized, its modes of abstraction were now and then taken to be more concrete than they in fact were. Thus, the abstract conclusion that the Haitian Revolution is the most radical example of inclusion in the Age of Revolutions was, as exemplified above, taken by a few universality analysists to mean that the Haitian revolutionaries displayed a commitment to the rights of man at a concrete level throughout the revolution. When universality analysists have overstated the meaning of abolition at the cost of other aspects of the revolution, the sceptical response has been to cling to alternative abstractions. In the weakest moments of the sceptical turn, the shift from one form of excess to another has meant that the universality analysis is criticized on the grounds that Saint-Domingue fails to fit present-day standards of democracy and human rights. Thus, one can conclude that the sceptical critique suffers from the tendency to cling to one predicate, due to the existence of invalid abstractions that are substituted for other invalid abstractions. Certainly, as murderers, thieves, and good-natured or unspoiled persons evidently are all much more than they would seem in the abstractions of the single vantage point of these designations in isolation (examples borrowed from Hegel 1977 [1807], 192–3), the Haitian Revolution was surely much more than the abolition of slavery or the inclusion of former slaves for the first time into the category of the citizen (first French, then Haitian). Still, the simple fact that the history of the Haitian Revolution is not exhausted by abstract categories – such as rupture, inclusion, critique, realization, and contribution – hardly warrants the conclusion that human rights merely represent ‘background noise’ when one tries to grasp the slave revolution in ‘its totality’, as one sceptic (Girard 2018, 15–6, 17) has it. Nor does a focus on individual despotic traits of persons or the authoritarian post-revolutionary state subvert the possibility that the Haitian Revolution may be relevant to histories of democracy and human rights, just because the events between 1791 and 1804 cannot be reduced to a perfect and pure case of democracy and human rights. Thus, in short, as much as ‘hunting is not all those heads on the wall’ (Amiri Baraka), it is obvious that in concrete terms, the Haitian Revolution is neither its labour codes nor its political declarations, neither egalitarian nor authoritarian, neither European nor African, et cetera.

Indeed, in view of the mutual clinging to the predicate of universalism and universality scepticism and the replacement of implausible abstractions with alternative implausible abstractions, the critique that has laid bare how representatives of what I call the universality analysis and the sceptical turn are united in presentist assumptions is persuasive. Still, the two parties do not just come together through shared premises, despite empirical differences; there are also fundamental differences in their arrangements of modes and levels of abstractions. Thus, the existing criticism that the universality analysis and the sceptical critique converge as merely two sides of the same presentist coin is limited, and only works as part of a broader critique of the field. If we settled on the critique of common premises or on an empirical counterattack, we would simply lose sight of the different ways in which the sceptical turn accomplishes its critique of the universality analysis by unacknowledged rearrangements of modes and levels of abstractions. Moreover, the points of difference between the universality analysists’ and the sceptics’ landscapes of abstractions are more significant than their points of overlap.

All things considered, lastly, several sceptical scholars are obviously in agreement with universality analysists that the Haitian Revolution deserves its status as the revolution that most fully embodies the contemporary struggles for freedom, equality, and independence. In the context of this agreement, the critical examination of the sceptical rearrangements of levels and modes of abstraction shifts the burden of proof back onto the sceptical turn, which must answer the question of why the abstraction of generality that connects the Haitian Revolution to modern human rights and democracy is unwarranted, given that the revolution most fully embodied contemporary struggles for freedom and equality. After all, in view of such an agreement, the sceptical turn cannot rest having merely disconnected the Haitian Revolution from the history of democracy and human rights; it is also required to consider the same conclusion in the cases of the American and French Revolutions. Moreover, the sceptical turn must present convincing arguments for why we should not be interested in the abolition of slavery in the Haitian Revolution if our abstraction of vantage point is the problem of inclusion and exclusion in relation to human rights and democracy in connection with the abstraction of generality of modernity as an epoch.

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Notes on contributors

Carl Wilén

Carl Wilén is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Gothenburg. His thesis has the preliminary title The Haitian Revolution and Critique of Right. Recent publications include: Wilén, Carl. 2021. Structure, Temporality and Theories of Revolution. Reading Alberto Melucci in Revolutionary Saint-Domingue, 1791–1804. Journal of Historical Sociology, e-publication ahead of print; Wedin, Tomas and Carl Wilén. 2020. Ancient Equality against Modern Democracy: Resources of Critique in Hannah Arendt and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 21, no. 1: 19–45; Wilén, Carl. 2019. Universality and Revolution: Interpreting the Time and Age of the Haitian Revolution. In The Future(s) of the Revolution and the Reformation, 97–120, ed. Elena Namli (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan); Johansson Wilén, Evelina and Carl Wilén. 2018. Resistance, Materiality and the Spectre of Cartesianism: A Contribution to the Critique of Feminist New Materialism. Journal of Resistance Studies 4, no. 2 (2018): 54–83.

Notes

1 In writing the article, I have had invaluable help from a number of persons. I want to thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as Evelina Johansson Wilén, Anton Törnberg and Tomas Wedin. Also, thanks to Hjalmar Falk and Nicolai von Eggers for organizing and participating in a panel devoted to the political history of ideas of the Haitian Revolution, at which I presented the embryo to the present article. Last but not least, thanks to Håkan Thörn and Daniel Seldén, who, as always, have read and re-read my work with great patience and edge.

2 For the latest instances of universality analysis, see e.g. Dupuy (2019, 70), Heller (2020, 1447, 1452), and Hazareesingh (2020, 2, 11, 56, 100, 369).

3 Additionally, specific outcomes and major events have also been adopted as vantage points to counter the universality analysis. For instance, as we saw in the introduction, the universality analysists have been confronted with the question of why the Haitian Revolution should be enlisted as a democratic and universalistic revolution even though the resulting state was ‘notoriously militaristic and autocratic’ (Geggus quoted in Fischer 2010, 165). Thus, if one of the specific outcomes of the revolution was a militaristic and autocratic post-revolutionary state, then analyses that focus on other outcomes (such as the abolition of slavery) are disproved, or at least need to explain that result. Another strategy has been to focus on major events that deviate from the image conjured by the universality analysis. For example, a specific moment of conflict between white rival groups in the summer of 1793 in Saint-Domingue’s capital Cap-Français that constitutes the direct background to the abolition of slavery by the Jacobin commissioners has been granted a whole monograph. Prior to the journée of 20 June 1793, it is questionable whether the black insurgents had demanded universal emancipation at all (Popkin 2010, 6–10). Accordingly, analyses of events such as those that led up to 20 June should not only force us to ‘revise widely accepted notions about the development of the slave insurrection’, but also be seen as the turning point that determined the direction of the revolution (Popkin 2010, 9–11, 385).

4 As we saw in the introduction, Ghachem (2012, 2016) also stands out in distancing himself not only from the account of Dubois but also from Geggus’s repeated criticisms of the universality analysis. Similarly, Gonzales (2017, 112; 2019, 42–4) turns against the mainstream of both currents with accusations of anachronism.

5 Here, obviously, the ‘Tocquevillian turn’ to continuity in the revisionist historiography on the French Revolution several decades earlier is recalled (see e.g. Furet 1978; for a critical analysis of the revisionists and their focus on continuity at the expense of rupture, see e.g. Nygaard 2007).

6 Moreover, in view of the valid critique of the assessments of Nisbett et consortes, the solution found in other universality analyses, which transfer radicality and universality from the Haitian Revolution as a totality, and from the (often creole) revolutionary leadership, to the group of subordinated rank-and-file revolutionaries (often Africa-born, so-called bossales), in which the seeds of ‘another universalism’ and ‘radicality’ are said to be found, appears to be ill-founded (for such a solution, see Getachew 2016, 828, 832, 835; Kaisary 2015, 394). Simply put, even if the existence of authoritarian intentions and actions among the revolutionary leadership are acknowledged and excluded from the universality analysis, preserving the vantage point of purposive agents – their manifest goals and intentions (albeit this time in relation to a subordinated group) – does not protect the analysis from valid sceptical critique. Obviously, examples of despotism and authoritarianism also exist among the bossales revolutionaries. Thus, the projection of ‘another universality’, ‘radicality’, or ‘true liberty’ onto the rank-and-file renders little more than short-term satisfaction (for further examples of this strategy, see Ciccariello-Maher 2014, 28; Tomba 2019, 43–8).

7 For a similar argument but in relation to the historiography of the French Revolution, see Nygaard (2007, 163, 169).

8 Certainly, such arguments, sometimes gathered under the banner of ‘methodological individualism’, are available in general. Here, an army is seen as nothing other than the plural form of a soldier, and all questions asked about the army can be reduced to statements about the concrete soldiers comprising it (Bhaskar 1998, 27; for a defence of individualist arguments, see Elster 2007, 24–5; Hedström 2005, 35). Yet, as said, the sceptical scholars do not seem to accept such a radical form of individualism, not least since they themselves often analyse extra-individual conditions.