ENCUENTROS ISSN 1692-5858. No. 16 Diciembre de 2010 • P. 31-43 Why Haiti is Maligned in the Western World: The Contemporary Significance of Bois Caïman and the Haitian Revolution Por qué Haití es visto como maligno en el mundo occidental: La importancia contemporánea de Bois Caïman y la Revolución Haitiana

Paul C. Mocombe [email protected] Professor of philosophy and sociology at West Virginia State University

Abstract

In this article, Paul C. Mocombe, the author, juxtaposes the historical events of Bois Caïman of the Haitian Revolution against Pat Robertson’s statement, following the January 12, 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, that the Republic of Haiti’s natural and social circumstances are a result of a pact that the people made with the devil to gain their indepen- dence from France, to argue that Robertson’s statement captures the “underlying” reason for the West’s anathema for the island of Haiti and the Haitian people: Haiti’s reluctance to completely accept the Christian metaphysics of their former white colonizers.

Key words: Ideological domination, Haitian Revolution, Haiti, Underclass, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Boukman Dutty, Bois Caïman.

Resumen

En este artículo de la reflexión, Paul C. Mocombe, el autor yuxtapone los eventos históricos de Bois Caïman sobre la Revolución Haitiana a la afirmación de Pat Robertson—proferida después del terremoto del 12 de enero del 2010, el cual destrozó a Haití—quien considera que las circunstancias naturales y sociales de la República de Haití son el resultado de un pacto con el diablo hecho por el pueblo para ganar su independencia de Francia. Se argumenta que la afirmación de Ro- bertson captura la razón “subyacente” del anatema del mundo occidental sobre la isla de Haití y los haitianos: la negativa de Haití a aceptar completamente la metafísica cristiana de sus anteriores colonizadores blancos.

Palabras clave: Dominación ideológica, Revolución Haitiana, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Boukman Dutty, Bois Caïman.

Fecha de recepción: 15 de agosto de 2010. Fecha de aceptación: 30 de octubre de 2010. 31 ENCUENTROS Introduction good may come. But right now we capitalist mercantile system, used the are helping the suffering people and Tainos to produce agricultural products On Tuesday afternoon January 12, 2010 the suffering is unimaginable. (p.1) for Spain (James, 1989). around 4:53pm an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 hit the Caribbean nation Robertson’s “true story” is actually a The genocide of the Tainos on the island of Haiti about 10 miles west of the capital, bastardization of the spiritual events of was one of the most brutal in recor- Port-au-Prince. According to all experts Bois Caïman, which Haitians celebrate as ded history. As a result, Bartolomew de this was the largest quake recorded in the the beginning of the Haitian Revolution in Las Casas, a Spanish priest, protested area since 1751. The earthquake left the August of 1791. In this article, I juxtapose against the massacre of the Indians and capital and its surrounding areas com- the historical and spiritual events of Bois demanded the cessation of the injustices pletely ravaged and devastated. Death Caïman against Pat Robertson’s state- committed against them. He advoca- toll ranges were as low as 50,000, to as ment to argue that Robertson’s statement ted for the importation of blacks from high as 200,000 people. The following day, captures one of the “underlying” reasons Africa to work on the mines as a means Wednesday January 13, 2010, American for the West’s contemporary anathema of ending Indian slavery on the island. televangelist Pat Robertson appeared on for Haiti: Haiti’s reluctance to completely Thus, in 1503, the first blacks landed the Christian Broadcasting Network’s accept the Christian metaphysics of their on the island. These initial blacks were “The 700 Club” where he stated. former white colonizers. indentured servants from Spain and not from Africa. Eventually, by 1697 blacks Something happened a long time ago The Haitian Revolution and the French would subsequently in Haiti, and people might not want displace the Spanish on the western side to talk about it. They were under Contemporarily, the island which Haiti of the island of Hispaniola. the heel of the French. You know, occupies in the Caribbean is inhabited Napoleon III, or whatever. And they by two independent nation-states: the In 1625, the first French adventurers lan- got together and swore a pact to the Republic of Haiti and the Dominican ded on the island of La Tortue (Tortuga devil. They said, we will serve you Republic. Initially, the island was occu- Island) in the northern part of what is if you’ll get us free from the French. pied by the Tainos indigenous people. today the Republic of Haiti. Later, they True story. And so, the devil said, In 1492 Christopher Columbus claimed began exploring and settling on the okay it’s a deal. Ever since, they have the island for Spain. The Spanish occu- main land to eventually displace the been cursed by one thing after the pied the island and renamed it Española Spanish from the western part of the other. That island of Hispaniola is one (written in English as Hispaniola). They island through warfare. Tired of their island. It is cut down the middle; on exploited the island’s gold mines and attack, and also because of the results of the one side is Haiti on the other is reduced the Tainos to slavery. After fifty- war in Europe, Spain signed with France the Dominican Republic. Dominican years of Spanish rule the Tainos, who the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, ceding to Republic is prosperous, healthy, full numbered about 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 the latter the western part of the island. of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate prior to the advent of the Spanish, were The French renamed their possession St. poverty. Same island. They need to decimated through the hardship of their Domingue. The French developed St. have and we need to pray for them condition as slaves, organized massa- Domingue into the richest colony in the a great turning to god and out of this cres, and diseases they contracted from world through the production of sugar. tragedy I’m optimistic something the Spaniards, who, within the global To build this wealth within the global 32 ENCUENTROS capitalist mercantile system, France im- As a result of these discriminatory prac- One of the most famous Haitian maroons ported thousands of slaves from Africa tices in Haiti, conflict arose between the was François Mackandal (James, 1989; who were submitted to virtually the same Affranchis and the whites throughout the Buck-Morss, 2009). abuses and mistreatments imposed on 18th century with the former claiming the Tainos by the Spanish. civil and political equality with the latter Mackandal was a houngan, or vodou who wanted to maintain the status quo priest, from Guinea. At night, he would The importation of Africans in large num- of white domination. Simultaneously, attack plantations, burning them and bers would change the demographic com- the whites were demanding from France killing their owners. During his six-year position of St. Domingue. St. Domingue’s the right to participate in the running rebellion, he and his followers poiso- population was divided into three main of the colony. They wanted to make of ned and killed as many as 6000 whites. groups, the whites or “Blancs”, the “Af- St. Domingue a country that would be In 1758, however, the French captured franchis”, a group composed of free blacks autonomous from France. Both groups him and publicly executed him on the and mulattoes, and the great masses of would voice their grievances at the time public square of Cap Francais. In 1791, imported African slaves who constitu- of the French revolution in 1789, which as the whites and the “Affranchis” con- ted 75% of the population. By 1789, the proclaimed the principles of liberty, equa- tinued on their war for greater partici- colony’s population comprised between lity and fraternity. pation in the running of the colony and 400,000 and 500,000 blacks, compared for equality, the black majority entered to about 25,000 whites and 40,000 mu- For the most part, the enslaved Africans, into a full-fledge rebellion that would lattoes (James, 1989; Buck-Morss, 2009). field slaves directly from Africa and those ultimately result in the creation of the A great number of mulattoes were the conceived on the plantations, who cons- nation-state of Haiti and the abolition offspring’s of the union between “Blancs” tituted the majority on the island, were of slavery on the land. Boukman Dutty, and African women who were raped by neither a part of the conflict between the another houngan following the path of their slavemasters. In many instances, Affranchis and the whites, nor this claim Mackandal, organized, on August 14, slavemasters adopted these children and for liberty, equality, and fraternity. The 1791, a meeting with the slaves in the provided them with the necessities of life. African slaves manifested their rejection mountains of the Northern corridors of These offsprings would in-turn inherit of their condition through different forms the island. This meeting took the form the wealth of their fathers. Thus, by the of resistance. Enslaved Africans poisoned of a spiritual vodou ceremony at Bois end of the 18th century, the mulattoes their masters; others committed infantici- Caïman in the northern mountains of the would own around 25% of the colony’s de to save their offsprings from the hellish island. According to Haitian folklore, it plantations and wealth, and most of them conditions of slavery. The most successful was raining and the sky was raging with went to France to get a higher education. and persistent form of slave protest was clouds; the slaves began the ceremony Nevertheless, in spite of their wealth marronage. Marronage consisted of sla- by confessing their resentment for their and education, the mulattoes, because ves running away from the plantation to condition (James, 1989; Buck-Morss, 2009). of their color, were considered inferior hide in the mountains of the island or A woman started dancing languorously to the blancs or whites by law and were in its forests to reproduce their African in the crowd, taken by the spirits of the discriminated against. For example, they cultural forms and practices. From their loas or African Gods. With a knife in her could not enter certain professions, law, retreat, the maroons conducted raids on hand, she cut the throat of a pig and dis- medicine, etc., wear European clothes, or the plantations and often would come out tributed the blood to all the participants sit among the whites in church. at night to poison or kill their masters. of the meeting who swore to kill all the 33 ENCUENTROS whites and mulattoes on the island. proclaimed himself governor of the co- pariah of the West bearing the mark of On August 22, 1791, the blacks of the lony. A constitution was soon drawn-up the poorest country in the Hemisphere. North entered into a rebellion, killing that same year declaring St. Domingue all the whites and mulattoes they met an autonomous French possession where Haiti Since 1804 and setting the plantations of the colony slavery was abolished. on fire (James, 1989; Buck-Morss, 2009). The impending defeat of the French in Napoleon Bonaparte, wary of Toussaint’s Haiti is widely credited with contribu- The French quickly captured the leader great power in the colony, sent 82,000 of ting to Napoleon’s decision to sell the of the slaves, Boukman, and beheaded his battle proven troops commanded by Louisiana territory to the United States him, bringing the rebellion under control. his brother-in-law, a fleet of warships, in 1803. Haiti is the world’s oldest black Just like Mackandal, however, Boukman canons, munitions and dogs in order republic and the second-oldest republic in had managed to instill in the African to quell the rebellion. Two years of war the Western Hemisphere after the United blacks the idea of his invincibility. Thus, ended in a stalemate; however, the French States (Buck-Morss, 2009). Although Haiti the French exposed his head on Cap’s treacherously arrested Toussaint L’ Ou- actively assisted the independence move- square to convince the slaves that their verture during a meeting in June 1802. ments of many Latin American countries, leader was really dead. The death of He was exiled to France and died in the independent nation of former slaves Boukman, although it had temporarily the Fort de Joux prison high in the cold was excluded from the hemisphere’s first stopped the rebellion of the North, it Alpine mountains of Jura in April 1803 regional meeting of independent nations failed, however, to restrain the rest of (James, 1989; Buck-Morss, 2009). in Panama in 1826, and did not receive the blacks from revolting against their U.S. diplomatic recognition until 1862 the condition. Toussaint L’ Ouverture, a free With the arrest, and eventual death, of year in American history of the signing literate black Affranchis, and Jean-Jacques Toussaint, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, an of the Emancipation Proclamation by the Dessalines, an enslaved African, would African slave, born in Haiti, whose dis- US President, Abraham Lincoln. In fact, assume the leadership of the revolt after like for the whites and Affranchis was since its independence the French and the death of Boukman. not shared by L’ Ouverture, emerged as the US have played significant roles in the new leader of the Haitian Revolution, undermining the political development Toussaint L’ Ouverture, proved to be a bringing it to its ultimate climax, the of the island nation-state. military genius and a formidable leader. first black independent republic in the He organized the masses of slaves and a world on January 1, 1804. Haiti’s thirteen In 1825, French officials arrived and in- few Affranchis free slaves and mulattoes year revolution against colonialism and formed the Haitian government that they into an organized army. With political slavery was the first successful black were willing to recognize the country as manipulation and military campaigns, movement resulting in an independent a sovereign nation but it would do so on he would gain notoriety in the colony. state headed by blacks. On January 1, account that they pay compensation and During the period of 1791 to 1800, Tous- 1804 Dessalines, to honor the memory reparation in exchange for the revolution. saint outmaneuvered the French, the of the Tainos who had been massacred Although Dessalines, prior to his death, Spaniards and the English. He managed by the Spanish, renamed the island its had refused to pay the indemnity for to eliminate all his enemies until he was original Tainoian name, Haiti or Ayiti the revolution, the Haitians, under the the only power left in St. Domingue. By (mountainous land). Since these glo- leadership of the Affranchis mulattoes, 1801, he governed the whole island, and rious events, however, Haiti has been the who assassinated Dessalines, agreed. 34 ENCUENTROS The French government sent a team of early twentieth-centuries, the United of state; and a prime minister, cabinet, accountants and actuaries into Haiti States continued clandestinely up to the ministers, and supreme court appoin- in order to place a value on all lands, twenty-first century by forcing Haiti into ted by the president with parliament’s all physical assets, the 500,000 citizens signing provisions that opened up Haiti’s consent. The Haitian Constitution also who were formerly enslaved (including markets to foreign investments that wi- provides for political decentralization members of the Cabinet who were also ped out Haiti’s agricultural economy. through the election of mayors and ad- valued because they had been enslaved ministrative bodies responsible for lo- people before independence), animals, After the revolution, two separate regi- cal government. Essentially, under the and all other commercial properties and mes—north and south—emerged, but guise of the United States the mulatto services. The sums amounted to 90 mi- were unified in 1820. Two years later, Hai- military and economic elites attempted llion gold francs. Haiti was requested to ti occupied Santo Domingo, the eastern, to convert Haiti into a Western liberal pay this reparation to France in return Spanish-speaking part of Hispaniola. In democratic capitalist state dominated by for national recognition. The Haitian 1844, however, Santo Domingo, with American industrial investments (major government agreed; payments began the assistance of the Americans and the league baseball, among many others) immediately. Thus began the systema- Spanish, broke away from Haiti and and food aid, which the island could tic destruction of the Republic of Haiti. became the Dominican Republic. With not afford given its growing unemplo- The French government bled the nation 22 changes of government from 1843 to yed urban population displaced from and rendered it a failed state. It was a 1915, Haiti experienced numerous pe- rural areas by American agribusinesses. merciless exploitation that was designed riods of intense political and economic and guaranteed to collapse the Haitian disorder, prompting the United States’ In December 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aris- economy and society. Haiti was forced military intervention of 1915. Following tide, a former Catholic priest, won 67% to pay this sum until 1947 when the last a 19-year occupation, U.S. military forces of the popular vote in a presidential installment was made. During the long were withdrawn in 1934, and Haiti regai- election that international observers, 19th century, the payment to France ned sovereign rule under a provisional with the exception of the US government amounted to up to 70 % of the country’s constitution drafted by Franklin D. Roo- and France, deemed largely free and foreign exchange earnings. In the years sevelt, which made Haiti dependent upon fair. Aristide took office on February when the coffee crops failed, or the sugar American food aid for its sustenance. 7, 1991, but was overthrown that Sep- yield was down, the Haitian government tember in a violent coup led by army borrowed on the French money market From February 7, 1986—when the 29- elements and supported by many of the at double the going interest rate in order year dictatorship of the Duvalier family, country’s mulatto economic elites. The to repay the French government. When backed by the CIA, ended—until 1991, coup contributed to a large-scale exodus the Americans invaded the country and Haiti was ruled by a series of provisional of Haitians by boat to the United States. disbanded its parliament in the early 20th military governments trained and sup- From October 1991 to September 1994 a century, 1915, one of the reasons offered ported by the United States to protect its de facto military regime governed Haiti. was to assist the French in collecting its interests under the rule of the mulatto Various OAS and UN initiatives to end reparations. Hence, the collapse of the elites on the island. In March 1987, a the political crisis through the peaceful Haitian nation resides at the hands of constitution was ratified that provided restoration of the constitutionally elected France and America, especially. What for an elected, bicameral parliament; an government failed. On July 31, 1994, the France did openly in the nineteenth and elected president that served as head UN Security Council adopted Resolution 35 ENCUENTROS 940, which authorized member states to and suit in the World Court to obtain a woman taken by the spirits of the loas, use all necessary means to facilitate the the 90 million francs, with interest, from gods, they cut the throat of a black pig departure of Haiti’s military leadership France, was eventually deposed in Fe- and had all the participants in attendance and to restore Haiti’s constitutionally bruary 2004 and sent into Exile in South drink the blood. According to Haitian elected government to power. The United Africa. He was replaced by his protégé traditions, Boukman and the participants States’ military took the lead in forming President Rene Preval who was gover- swore two things to the loas present in a multinational force (MNF) to carry out ning the nation when the earthquake the woman if they would grant them the UN’s mandate by means of a military struck the overpopulated capital city success in their quest for liberty against intervention. In mid-September, with of Port-au-Prince, where the displaced the French. First, they would never allow U.S. troops prepared to enter Haiti by African population of the rural areas had for inequality on the island; second, force, Gen. Raoul Cedras, a mulatto, and migrated to in search of the industrial they would serve the loas and not the other top leaders agreed to accept the jobs promised by the neoliberal policies white man’s god “which inspires him intervention of the MNF. On September of the Bill Clinton administration. with crime:” 19, 1994, the first contingents of what became a 21,000-member international Bois Caïman Bon Dje ki fè la tè. Ki fè soley ki klere force touched down in Haiti to oversee nou enro. Bon Dje ki soulve lanmè. Ki the end of military rule and the restora- Since 1804, the political history of Haiti fè gronde loray. Bon Dje nou ki gen tion of the constitutional government. under the guise of the Affranchis mula- zorey pou tande. Ou ki kache nan President Aristide and other elected ttoes only sparingly captures its socio- niaj. Kap gade nou kote ou ye la. Ou officials exiled in the US returned on political significance in a world capitalist we tout sa blan fè nou sibi. Dje blan October 15, 1994 under the Bill Clinton world-system initially constituted by yo mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou administration provision that they open enslaving, marginalizing, and colonizing an vle byen fè. Bon Dje nou an ki si up the Haitian markets to American people of African descent. It renders bon, ki si jis, li ordone vanjans. Se li industrial and manufacturing jobs and insignificant the purposive-rationality kap kondui branou pou nou ranpote agricultural products such as rice, pigs, of the African masses. In other words, la viktwa. Se li kap ba nou asistans. chicken, etc. The American agribusines- Haiti’s political history captures the Nou tout fet pou nou jete potre dje ses, Tyson food among others, subsidized agential initiatives of the Affranchis, who Blan yo ki swaf dlo lan zye. Koute by the American government, destroyed owe their political power to the margina- vwa la libète k ap chante lan kè nou. the island’s agricultural economy and lized agential initiatives of the enslaved The god who created the sun which led to mass migration of Haiti’s African Africans, who met at Bois Caïman, and gives us light, who rouses the waves rural population to an overpopulated Jean-Jacques Dessalines. and rules the storm, though hidden capital city, Port-au-Prince. in the clouds, he watches us. He sees At Bois Caïman, as previously mentioned, all that the white man does. The god Aristide, in a coup led by the United the Jamaican-born houngan Boukman of the white man inspires him with States and France, partly because of his, Dutty initiated the Haitian Revolution on crime, but our god calls upon us to do raising of the labor wage in Haiti, failu- August 14, 1791 when he presided over good works. Our god who is good to re to follow-up on his commitment to a vodou ceremony in the area, which is us orders us to revenge our wrongs. implement the neoliberal policies of the located in the mountainous Northern He will direct our arms and aid us. Clinton administration, leftist leanings, corridors of the island. Accompanied by Throw away the symbol of the god of 36 ENCUENTROS the whites who has so often caused to understand it’s denouement through a first generation Haitian slave, which us to weep, and listen to the voice of the sociopolitical effects of the French Re- stood in contradistinction to Toussaint’s liberty, which speaks in the hearts of volution when the National Constituent experience as a free Affranchis, wanted us all (Buck Morss, 2009). Assembly (Assemblée Nationale Consti- to kill many of the free and mulatto Af- tuante) of France passed la Déclaration franchis along with the whites because That night the slaves revolted first at des droits de l’homme et du citoyen or he (Dessalines) felt they played a role Gallifet Plantation, then across the Nor- the Declaration of the Rights of Man in their yearning to be like their white thern Plains. Toussaint L’ Ouverture and and Citizen in August of 1789 (Buck counterparts in oppressing the enslaved Jean-Jacques Dessalines would join the Morss, 2009). The understanding from African masses and given the opportunity rebellion after Boukman was captured this perspective is that the slaves, many they (Affranchis ) would reproduce the and beheaded by the French. And as of whom could not read or write French, slavery system on the island; Toussaint, the proverbial saying posits, the rest is understood the principles, philosophical however, believed that their (Affranchis) history. Under the African Jean-Jacques and political principles of the Age of En- technical and governing skills would Dessalines, who crowned himself empe- lightenment, set forth in the declaration be sorely needed to rebuild the country ror for life, Haiti became the first black and therefore yearned to be like their after the revolution and the end of white republic in the world in 1804 and the white masters, i.e., freemen seeking li- rule on the island. Although Dessalines’s second republic after the United States berty, equality, and fraternity, the rallying position would become dominant after of America in the Western Hemisphere. cry of the French Revolution. Although, the capture of Toussaint, his assassination Dessalines, instead of reproducing the historically this understanding holds true by a plot between the mulatto, Alexander agricultural slave system the French for the mulattoes or Affranchis who used Pétion and Henri Christophe, would see established with their sugar plantations, the language of the declaration to push to it that the Affranchis’s purposive- essentially nationalized the land. He first forth their efforts to gain liberty, equality, rationality for equality of opportunity, redistributed some of the land among fraternity with their white counterparts, distribution, and recognition with their the black masses, who setup indepen- this position is not an accurate repre- white counterparts would come to histo- dent small farms, as they had in Africa, sentation for the slaves who met at Bois rically represent the ideals of the Haitian where they were able to provide for their Caïman and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. quest for independence and nationhood. own sustenance. Second, he used the This purposive-rationality of the Af- rest of the land to produce sugar for the In the late eighteenth century, the Affran- franchis is, however, a Western liberal global market by conscripting the men chis pushed forth for liberty, equality, and dialectical understanding of the events to either work on the state owned sugar fraternity with their white counterparts and the Affranchis’s sociopolitical and plantations or serve in the Haitian army. at the expense of the enslaved Africans economic power positions on the island. (It should be mentioned that Dessalines who were not only discriminated against refused to sell the sugar to the French, by whites but by the Affranchis and The events at Bois Caïman and Jean- and would only sell to Britain , Spain, mulatto elites as well. In fact, what role Jacques Dessalines’s actions, I want to and the United States). should mulattoes play in the Revolution suggest here, do not represent this at- is at the heart of a bitter disagreement tempt to fit the social agency of the Afri- Against the Master/Slave Dialectic Tra- between Toussaint and Dessalines (Ja- can participants of Bois Caïman within ditional interpretations of the Haitian mes, 1989; Buck-Morss, 2009). The latter, this master/slave dialectical thinking revolution and it’s aftermaths attempt given the brutality he experienced as or the universal history of the West as 37 ENCUENTROS represented in the praxis of the Affran- in him, as a result of the “class racism” white Americanism, for he knows chis. Instead, the events at Bois Caïman (Étienne Balibar’s term) of American that Negro blood has a message for and Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s actions, society, as a double consciousness: “two the world. He simply wishes to make represent a rejection by the African par- souls,” “two thoughts,” in the Negro it possible for a man to be both a Ne- ticipants of white culture, economy, and whose aim is to merge these two thoughts gro and an American, without being god for the actualization of an African into one distinct way of being, i.e., to be cursed and spit upon by his fellows, ethos as a “class-for-itself,” a group of whole again. without having the doors of Oppor- people with their own gods, economy, tunity closed roughly in his face. This, and culture, who rejected the inhumanity After the Egyptian and Indian, the then, is the end of his striving: to be a of the whites and their gods. It is this Greek and Roman, the Teuton and coworker in the kingdom of culture, postmodern attempt to (re) constitute an Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of to escape both death and isolation, African ethos of socioeconomic liberation seventh son, born with a veil, and to husband and use his best powers into the eighteenth-century world, while gifted with second-sight in this Ame- and his latent genius (Du Bois, 1995 rejecting the inhumanity of whites, their rican world, —a world which yields [1903], pp. 45-47). culture, economic-system, and god that him no true self-consciousness, but Pat Robertson refers to as a “pact to the only lets him see himself through This double-consciousness Du Bois devil.” The difference between what the the revelation of the other world. It alludes to, in this famous passage of Africans at Bois Caïman and Jean-Jacques is a peculiar sensation, this double- his work The Souls of Black Folk, is not a Dessalines wanted and the aspirations consciousness, this sense of always metaphor for the racial duality of black of the mulattoes or Affranchis can be looking at one’s self through the eyes American life in America. Instead, it summed up through a parallel or com- of others, of measuring one’s soul by speaks to Du Bois’s, as a black liberal plimentary analysis of the dialectical the tape of a world that looks on in bourgeois Protestant man, ambivalence master/slave relationship of the black amused contempt and pity. One ever about the society because it prevents American experience with their white feels his twoness, —an American, him from exercising his true American masters in America. a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, consciousness because of the society’s two unreconciled strivings; two wa- anti-liberal and discriminatory practices, Discussion and Conclusions rring ideals in one dark body, whose which over time forced Du Bois to adopt dogged strength alone keeps it from “pan-African communism” against his Black Americans subjectified/objectified being torn asunder. early beliefs in liberal bourgeois Protes- in the “Protestant Ethic and the spirit of The history of the American Negro is tantism (Mocombe, 2009; Hare, 1991). capitalism” of American society were the history of this strife, —this longing completely subjectified and subjugated to attain self conscious manhood, to Contrary to Du Bois’s later “pan-African on account of race and class positions merge his double self into a better and communist” message against assimila- (Mocombe, 2004, 2009). W.E.B Du Bois truer self. In this merging he wishes tion, however, to make themselves whole relying on the racial and national ideo- neither of the older selves to be lost. the majority of black Americans did not logy of the late nineteenth and early He would not Africanize America, yearn for or establish (by averting their twentieth century theoretically, enfra- for America has too much to teach gaze away from the eye of power or their med by Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, the world and Africa. He would not white masters) a new object formation conceived of the ambivalence that arose bleach his Negro soul in a flood of or totality, based on the “message” of 38 ENCUENTROS their people, which spoke against ra- 1977; Nobles, 1987), instead black protest was not the aim of Jean-Jacques Dessali- cial and class stratification and would for equality of opportunity, distribution, nes, Boukman, and the other participants have produced heterogeneity into the and recognition is a product of the black at Bois Caïman, however. The former, American capitalist bourgeois world- Americans’ internalization of the libe- Affranchis, like their black American system; instead, since there was no other ral bourgeois Protestant social norms liberal bourgeois counterparts, wanted “message” but that of the society which and values of the American Protestant equality of opportunity, distribution, turned and represented the “original” capitalist social structure. Thus black and recognition from, and with, their African message of their people into protest integrated the black subjects, former white masters by recursively inarticulate, animalistic backward gib- whose ideals and practices (acquired in organizing and reproducing their (the berish, they (blacks) turned their gaze ideological apparatuses, i.e., schools, law, slave masters) liberal agential moments; back upon the eye of power (through churches (black and white)), as speaking the latter, Boukman, Jean-Jacques Des- protest and success in their endeavors) subjects, were that of the larger society, salines, and the Africans of Bois Caïman for recognition as “speaking subjects” of i.e., the protestant ethic, into the American did not, but instead sought freedom to the society. Power hesitantly responded Protestant capitalist social structure’s practice their traditional African ways by allowing some of them (the hybrid exploitative and oppressive order—an of life against the purposive-rationality modern “other”) to partake in the order order which promotes a debilitating of their former white masters. In fact, of things, which gave rise to the black performance principle actualized through after independence Dessalines allowed identity, the liberal black bourgeoisie calculating rationality, which may result the masses to own small plots of land in or hybrids, which delimits the desired in economic gain for its own sake for a the provinces where traditional forms agential moments of the social structure few predestined individuals (Cohen, of African agricultural techniques and for all blacks (Frazier, 1939, 1957, 1968; 2002; Mocombe, 2009). organization were utilized by the people Myrdal, 1944; Kardiner, 1962 [1951]; Hare, to provide for their own sustenance. This 1991; Moynihan, 1965; Murray, 1984; Mo- The black American, like the early Du process of Africanization would be un- combe, 2009). Thus the black American Bois of the Souls prior to his conversion dermined by the Affranchis or mulatto as a structurally differentiated “class- to pan-African communism, in a word, elites, following their assassination of in-itself” (black underclass) within the became like their white masters within Dessalines, who once again (re) integra- American protestant bourgeois master/ the master/slave dialectic, which cons- ted the Haitian economy into the global slave order did not reconstitute American tituted their historical experiences, a capitalist economy by first reinstituting liberal bourgeois capitalist society by liberal bourgeoisie seeking wealth and the (sugar) plantation type agricultural recursively organizing and reproducing status like their white counterparts. The system among the masses so as to pay their Africanisms in American society as same can be said for the Affranchis of the 90 million francs to France for the theorists of the adaptive-vitality school Haiti, who, with their adoption of the revolution. Second, there was a simul- suggest with the notion that black protest (economic, social, and political) liberalism taneous movement to industrialize the against slavery was a product of both of the blancs on the island, sought for island by accepting, forcefully, foreign their Africanisms and their Americanisms equality of opportunity, distribution, and direct investment from the West, America (Asante, 1988, 1990a, 1990b; Billingsley, recognition with their blanc counterparts, in particular, who undermined the agri- 1968, 1970, 1993; Blassingame, 1972; Gil- which essentially meant economic wealth cultural economy of the island through roy, 1993; Gutman, 1976; Herskovits, 1958 and power at the expense of the enslaved their subsidized agribusinesses, which [1941]; Holloway, 1990a, 1990b; Levine, black African masses on the island. This forced Haiti to seek both foreign direct 39 ENCUENTROS investment and food from the West to already possessed equality of opportu- of departure. Thus, too, it remains the detriment to their own agricultural nity, distribution, and recognition under false according to identitarian logic: productive capacities. Dessalines’s nationalization system. The it remains the thing against which it Affranchis and the mulatto did not, howe- is conceived. It must correct itself in Hence, the forceful integration of the ver, and sought to use the resources (land, its critical course—a course affecting Haitian economy into the global capita- labor, and capital from foreign direct concepts which in negative dialectics list economic world-system by France, investment) of the island to achieve the are formally treated as if they came America, and the mulatto elites see- wealth and status of their white counter- “first” for it, too (Adorno, 1973 [1966] king wealth and status gave rise to the parts in France and America. p. 147). deagriculturalization of Haiti for cheap industrial and service (tourism) work that Essentially, the Frankfurt school’s “Nega- This position, as Adorno points out, led to the mass migration of the Haitian tive Dialectics” represents the means by is problematic in that the identitarian peasantry to the overpopulated capital which the Du Bois of The Souls, the majo- class convicting the totality of which city of Port-au-Prince looking for work, rity of liberal bourgeois black Americans, it is apart remains the thing against and a decline of food production on the and the Affranchis of Haiti confronted which it is conceived. As in the case of island, which was fulfilled by American their historical situation. The differen- black Americans and the Affranchis, their agribusinesses. Interestingly enough, ce between the “negative dialectics” “negative dialectics,” their awareness of contemporarily, the push by the mulatto of Du Bois of The Souls, the majority the contradictions of the heteronomous elites is for cheap industrial jobs in the of liberal bourgeois black Americans, racial capitalist order did not foster a city of Port-au-Prince, and tourism on the Affranchis, and the discourse or reconstitution of that order but a request the agricultural lands abandoned by the purposive-rationality of the enslaved that the order rid itself of a particular con- peasantry when they migrated to the city Africans of Bois Caïman is subtle, but tradiction and allow their participation further incorporating Haiti into the global the consequences are enormously ob- in the order, devoid of that particular capitalist world-system as they will re- vious. For the Frankfurt school, “[t]o contradiction, which prevented them main dependent on importing their food proceed dialectically means to think in from identifying with the totality, i.e., supplies, from American agribusinesses, contradictions, for the sake of the con- that all men are created equal except the which the labor force will still be unable tradiction once experienced in the thing, enslaved black American or the mulatto. to afford given their meager wages. and against that contradiction. A con- The end result of this particular protest tradiction in reality, it is a contradiction was in the reconfiguration of society (or This process of integration into the global against reality” (Adorno, 1973 [1966] p. the totality) in which those who exercised economy that led to Haiti’s misery began 145). This is the ongoing dialectic they its reified consciousness, irrespective of with the descendants of the Affranchis call “Negative Dialectics:” skin-color, could partake in its order and or the mulatto elites seeking wealth and obtain wealth and status. In essence, status with their white counterparts at Totality is to be opposed by convicting the contradiction, as interpreted by the the expense of the African masses on it of nonidentity with itself—of the black Americans, and just the same the the island seeking simply freedom and nonidentity it denies, according to Affranchis, was not in the “pure” iden- not equality of opportunity, distribution, its own concept. Negative dialectics tity of the heteronomous order, which is and recognition with blancs or the mu- is thus tied to the supreme categories reified as reality and existence as such, latto elites. They (the African masses) of identitarian philosophy as its point but in the praxis (as though praxis and 40 ENCUENTROS structure are distinct) of the individuals, ted, so that society can be reconstituted the “pure” identity of the American and i.e., institutional regulators or power eli- wherein “Being” (Dasein) is nonsubjective French totality and reject the contempt tes, who only allowed the participation and nonobjective, “organic” in the Ha- to which they were and are subject. The of blacks within the order of things be- bermasian (1984 [1981]; 1987) sense, it is contradiction of slavery in the face of cause they were “speaking subjects” (i.e., necessary, as Adorno points out, that the equality—the totality not identifying hybrids, who recursively organized and totality (which is not a “thing in itself”) with itself—was seen as a manifestation reproduced the agential moments of the be opposed, not however, as he sees it, of individual practices, since subjectively social structure) as opposed to “silent na- “by convicting it of nonidentity with they were part of the totality, and not an tives” (i.e., the enslaved Africans of Bois itself” as in the case of black America absurd way of life inherent in the logic Caiman). And herein rests the problem and the Affranchis or mulattoes, but by of the totality. Hence, their protest was with attempting to reestablish an order identifying it as a nonidentity identity against the practices of the totality, not simply based on what appears to be the that does not have the “natural right” the totality itself, since that would mean contradictory practices of a reified cons- to dictate identity in an absurd world denouncing the consciousness that made ciousness. For in essence the totality is not with no inherent meaning or purpose them whole, which prevented them from “opposed by convicting it of nonidentity except those which are constructed by achieving the wealth and status of their with itself—of the nonidentity it denies, social actors operating within a sacred white counterparts. On the contrary, according to its own concept,” but on the metaphysic. This is not what happened Boukman and the participants at Bois contrary, the particular is opposed by the in black America or with the Affranchis Caïman decentered or “convicted” the constitutive subjects for not exercising or mulattoes of Haiti, but I am sugges- totality of French modernity not for not its total identity. In the case of liberal ting that this is what took place with the identifying with itself, but as an adverse black bourgeois America, the totality, participants of Bois Caïman within the “sacred-profaned” cultural possibility American racial capitalist society, was 18th century Enlightenment discourse of against their own “God-ordained” pos- opposed through a particularity, i.e., ra- the whites and Affranchis. sibility (alternative object formation), cism, which stood against their bourgeois which they were attempting to exercise identification with the whole. In such a The liberal black American and the Af- in the world. This was the pact the parti- case, the whole remains superior to its franchis by identifying with the totality, cipants of Bois Caïman made with their particularity, and it functions as such. which Adorno rightly argues is a result loas, Gods, when they swore to neither The same holds true for the Affranchis of the “universal rule of forms,” the allow inequality on the island, nor wor- of Haiti, but not for Boukman and the idea that “a consciousness that feels ship the god’s of the whites “who has other participants of Bois Caïman who impotent, that has lost confidence in its so often caused us to weep.” They were went beyond the master/slave dialectic. ability to change the institutions and their simply seeking freedom to exercise their mental images, will reverse the conflict traditional African ways of being-in-the- In order to go beyond this “mechanical” into identification with the aggressor” world against the debilitating effects dichotomy, i.e., whole/part, subject/ob- (Adorno, 1973 [1966]p. 94), reconciled of an emerging global capitalist liberal ject, master/slave, universal/particular, their double consciousness, i.e., the am- world-system constituted by the physical society/individual, etc., by which society bivalence that arises as a result of the labor of the world’s people of color. or more specifically the object formation of conflict between subjectivity and forms modernity up till this point in the human (objectivity), by becoming “hybrid” Ame- Haiti has never been able to live out this archaeological record has been constitu- ricans or mulattoes desiring to exercise pact, however, given the liberal bourgeois 41 ENCUENTROS Affranchis’s, backed by their former under American hegemony. This has led and its product, République d’ Haïti, that colonizers, America and France, claims to a class disparity in Haiti in which 90-95 those, like Pat Robertson, of the Western to positions of economic and political percent of the population live on less than world who have adopted the historical power positions, which have resulted in one US dollar a day, and as a result they manifestation of the Jewish God under the passage of modern economic rules are unable to provide for their families the guise of the Protestant ethic and the and laws that have integrated Haiti into because the wage industries provided spirit of capitalism, malign Haiti and the the global capitalist economy and caused by foreign capital from the US pay them Haitian people. The African masses of once again the majority of the people to as such so that the mulatto elites can the island are directed by a structuring weep in dire poverty, while the Affran- achieve wealth and status in the global structure grounded in their vodou spi- chis and mulatto elites gain economic capitalist world-system at their (black ritualism—which stands against and is gain so as to live like their white (blanc) masses) expense. evaluated by a white global Protestant counterparts. So Pat Robertson, if we capitalist social structure “that looks on are to use his metaphysical discourse, So the by-products of the structural for- in amused contempt and pity” at their is essentially wrong. Haiti has “been ces promulgated by the global capitalist plight, which to a large extent rests on cursed by one thing after the other” not world-system under American hege- the desires of the Affranchis for liberty, because they “swore a pact to the devil,” mony are divinely interpreted by Pat equality, and fraternity with their for- but because, in keeping with the religious Robertson as punishment for the Africans mer white masters, France—in search of signification of Robertson’s position, the choosing two-hundred years ago to revolt freedom in a world in which the mulatto former enslaved Africans have not insti- and break away from its debilitating class elites are seeking wealth and equality of tuted the pact they swore to their Gods, effects to establish their own divinity and recognition with their white counterparts loas, at Bois Caïman because the mulatto social system. It is for this arrogance, at their (African masses) expense as they elites have instituted wage-slavery on the for positioning the loas of the enslaved (African masses) labor for them and island through the integration of Haiti Africans onto the historical landscape foreign interest so that they (mulatto into the global capitalist world-system that was and is the Haitian Revolution elites) can obtain that wealth and status.

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