In Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions (Pluto) Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg have produced what is arguably the most important biography of Louverture since CLR James’ magisterial Black Jacobins was first published in 1938. Kicking against the contemporary anti-Black and anti-radical revisionism that downplays the historical importance of the revolution while […]
Tag Archives: representation
Revolutions and Revisions: An Interview with Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg
Posted in Haiti
Also tagged 1804, 1938, archives, Black Jacobins, CLR James, Dessalines, Haiti, history, memory, revolution
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Representing Haiti
When it comes to the political efficacy and ethical obligations of digital platforms, The Public Archive: Black History in White Times has been an irresolute failure. The site was launched soon after the 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It was meant to serve as a response to the toxic efflorescence of racist representations of Haiti in […]
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Also tagged archives, digital, Haiti, history, imperialism, solidarity
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We Are Not All Haitians
Reading and re-reading The Public Archive’s 2012 interview with the late J. Michael Dash I was struck by Dash’s refusal to talk about himself. In the interview Dash described many of the moments and encounters that shaped him as an intellectual. But he offered little in the way of personal motivation. There is nothing of the […]
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Also tagged archives, Caribbean, Haiti, literature, solidarity, sovereignty
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Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 12 January 2010
Evelne Alcide, Seisme (Earthquake), 2010. Museum of International Folk Art/Museum of New Mexico. Click links for more information; click image for larger version.
Lubaina Himid and the History of Haiti
Turner Prize-winning Black British artist Lubaina Himid has had a long standing interest in the intersections of the politics of race, representation, history, and memory. This interest has included a concern with Haiti. In the 1980s, she created a series of fifteen watercolors as part of the series Scenes from the Life of Toussaint […]
A Visit To / A Visit From / The Island
“….We are presented with a diptych of two beach scenes: one set on a sunny day off the coast of a posh resort with white people sunbathing and engaging in leisure activities; the other set in a storm with dark-skinned people―possibly Haitian refugees fleeing to Florida, in the midst of a crisis involving a seemingly […]
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Also tagged 1980s, art, freedom, Haiti, history, occupation, sovereignty
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Black Looks: The Haiti Feminist Series
After a ten year run, our dear friend Sokari Ekine has stopped publishing the excellent blog Blacks Looks, but she’s left us with an incredible archive of Haitian feminist intellectual, political, and cultural history. Black Looks’ “Haiti: Feminist Series” consisted of a clutch of essays, interviews, and videos with Haitian artists, intellectuals, and activists addressing […]
Dread and Dispossession: An interview with Colin Dayan
Colin Dayan, the Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has written on the literature and literary histories of the United States, Haiti, and Jamaica; on law, ritual, and anthropology; on prisons, torture, and the nature of the person. Her first book was an introduction to and translation […]