Raising the living dead in postrevolutionary Haiti: Glory, salvation, and theopolitical sovereignty in the kingdom of Henry Christophe
2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14788810.2023.2189410
ISSN1740-4649
Autores Tópico(s)Caribbean and African Literature and Culture
ResumoABSTRACTThis essay deploys the notion of the political zombie as a lens through which to examine the symbolic, metaphysical, and spectacular dimensions of the Haitian kingdom of Henry Christophe. I argue that divine-right monarchy provided a political theology through which to dignify the contradictions of what I call “abolitionist sovereignty”: that is, the virtual re-enslavement of the people on the part of the state in the interests of preserving territorial sovereignty and the abolition of colonial slavery. Analyzing the king’s coronation liturgy in the context of the history of French colonialism and its revolutionary overturning, I reveal how the monarchy imagined the mutual superhumanity of the sovereign and the people through supernatural tropes of glory, salvation, and spiritual nobility. Moving past the illusions of the universalization of rights, Christophe promoted a program of spiritual, material, and economic regeneration in an elusive effort to raise the living dead of slavery.KEYWORDS: Henry ChristopheHaitian RevolutionmonarchysovereigntytheopoliticalcoronationpostslaverypostcolonialityslaveryabolitionHaitian independence AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Gudrun Rath for inviting me to deliver a keynote address at the conference “Liberty and Death: Pirates and Zombies in Atlantic Modernity,” which she and Alexandra Ganser organized at the IFK in Vienna, Austria, in January 2018. This article is based on that presentation and contains a number of arguments I have outlined over the past decade in my book manuscript Liberty’s Majesty: Print, Performance, and Theopolitical Sovereignty in the Kingdom of Henry Christophe, and in lectures and in conference presentations I have given at the conference on Aimé Césaire and Négritude Revisited (2013), the Yale Conference on Popular Royalisms (2016), the Haitian Studies Association (2016), and the American Comparative Literature Association conference (2018).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 On the cultural appropriation of the zombie figure as a symbol of both oppression and resistance, see Lauro, The Transatlantic Zombie; Moreman and Rushton, eds., Race, Oppression and the Zombie; McAlister, “Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites.”2 Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, 36. On the cultural origins of the zombie in West Africa and the Caribbean, see Laroche, “Mythe africain et mythe antillais”; Ackermann and Gauther, “The Ways and Nature of the Zombi”; Hurbon, Le Barbare imaginaire, 124, 292–295; MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa, 162; and Métraux, Le vaudou haïtien, 249–252.3 Although scholars typically cite only the flesh-and-blood zombie as an allegory of slavery, the first and earliest literary mention of the zombi trope – the libertine short story entitled “Le zombi du Grand-Pérou,” published in 1697 by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois, an engagé in Guadeloupe – demonstrates that the zombie as an errant spirit is also a figure of slavery, signifying specifically the hyperbolic wickedness of the New World slavemaster. In the story, it is only by transforming into a malevolent spirit that white Creoles may perform, by means of magic, the extreme violence of the slavemaster on their enemies in the form of beatings, mutilations, and sexual molestation, all the while deriving from these acts a perverse mix of affective and sexual pleasure. See Garraway, The Libertine Colony, 146–193.4 Hurbon, Le Barbare imaginaire, 83.5 My synthetic characterization draws upon Métraux, Le vaudou haïtien, 282; Hurbon, Le Barbare imaginaire, 196–199; Moreman and Rushton, eds., Race, Oppression and the Zombie, 3; Depestre, quoted in Dayan, “France Reads Haiti,” 146; Glover, “Exploiting the Undead,” 105–108.6 Moreman and Rushton, eds., Race, Oppression and the Zombie, 5; Depestre in Dayan, “France Reads Haiti,” 146.7 On the ethnographic and literary history of the Haitian zombie, see Lauro, The Transatlantic Zombie, 40–42; Hoermann, “Figures of Terror,” 155–158; Glover, “Exploiting the Undead.” Zombie beliefs are more amply fleshed out in travel accounts published during and after the US occupation of Haiti, such as William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929), and the more professional ethnographic studies of Zora Neale Hurston and Melville Herskovitz, entitled Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938) and Life in a Haitian Valley (1937), respectively.8 [Governement d’Hayti], “Le général en chef au peuple d’Hayti,” 3. All translations of French material are my own unless otherwise stated. For a complete English translation of the Declaration, see Gaffield, The Haitian Declaration, 239–248.9 On the US occupation of Haiti, see Renda, Taking Haiti; and Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 204–264. On the role of the occupation in the dissemination of cultural stereotypes about Haitian spirit beliefs, see also Ramsey, Spirits and the Law, 158–176; and Dash, Haiti and the United States, 22–44.10 On the dictatorship of François Duvalier and his manipulation of Haitian historical memory and racial politics, see Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation, 150–190; and Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 311–349.11 The term “lwa” is the Creole word for a spirit or deity in Afro-Haitian religion.12 In Haitian Creole, the term “petwo” refers to the branch of Afro-Haitian spirits that are believed to derive from colonial Haiti and the New World. They are considered fiercer and more aggressive than the older, Dahomean-derived spirits named “Rada.”13 On Duvalier’s exploitation of Haitian religion, culture, and his imitation of Baron Samedi, see Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 330–332; Lauro, The Transatlantic Zombie, 128–130; and Munro, Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature, 113–115. See also Hurbon, Culture et Dictature, 84–104.14 Munro, Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature, 113.15 On the literary reinvention of the zombie by René Depestre and Frankétienne during the first Duvalier dictatorship, see Glover, “Exploiting the Undead” and Haiti Unbound, 56–72; Munro, Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature, 100–115; and Lauro, The Transatlantic Zombie, 110–114 and 127–141.16 Depestre, Le mât de Cocagne, 14.17 Depestre, interviewed in Dayan, “France Reads Haiti,” 147.18 Depestre, cited in Munro, Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature, 103.19 See, for example, Moïse, Le projet national de Toussaint; Saint-Louis, Aux origines du drame d’Haïti; Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic; Casimir, “La Révolution de 1804 et l’État”; Étienne, L’Énigme haïtien; Péan, Économie politique de la corruption and “Droit et liberté dans la formation de l’État en Haïti.” See also the essays collected in Hector and Hurbon, Génèse de l’État haïtien. These Haitian historians’ views are not dissimilar from those expressed by others in the field such as Gérard Barthélemy, Carolyn Fick, Philippe Gérard, and Pierre Pluchon.20 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 11–40. See also the expanded book version by the same title.21 For a compelling theory of the popular ideology of the Haitian Revolution, which draws on the work of French sociologist Gérard Barthélemy, see Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation, 153–198.22 The major theoretical argument at the basis of modern political theology, according to which all concepts of modern political thought are secularized theological concepts, may be found in Schmitt, Political Theology. See also Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, and Santner, Royal Remains.23 Fischer, Modernity Disavowed, 250. See also Hector, “Problèmes du passage,” and “Une autre voie,” in Hector and Hurbon, eds., Génèse de l’état haïtien.24 Glover, “New Narratives of Haiti,” 200. A critical intertext for Glover’s intervention, and for my own, is Fischer’s earlier essay “Haiti: Fantasies of Bare Life,” which explores forms of complicity created by abstract representations of violence and suffering in Haiti, and offers a compelling critique of Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” through that lens.25 Glover, “New Narratives of Haiti,” 202. Glover’s insights here draw also on her readings of zombie tropes in the Spiralist literature of Frankétienne, Jean-Claude Fignolé, and René Philoctète.26 The text of the “Nomination de l’Empereur d’Hayti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines” dated January 25, 1804, attests that “a people can only be appropriately [convenablement] governed by one.” This text is reproduced in Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti, volume III, 216. At the origins of the scission of the Haitian state was the divide between “republicans,” whose power base was in the south, and advocates of a centralized, authoritarian power, who were primarily concentrated in the north. For a detailed treatment of the political history of postrevolutionary Haiti, see Leconte, Henry Christophe dans l’Histoire, Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti, vols. 3 and 4; and Ardouin, Études dans l’Histoire d’Haïti, especially volume 7.27 Drawing on the language of Rousseau and the French Revolution, the group of generals comprising the signatories of the constitution declare, in the preamble, that “the terms of this constitution are the free, voluntary, and unchanging expression of our hearts and of our constituents’ general will.” Article 26 enables the emperor to choose his successor, and articles 31 through 35 confer on him all of the powers of sovereignty – to make laws, control public finances, declare war, and appoint all government, military, and judicial officials. A complete English translation of the 1805 Haitian Constitution may be found in Dubois and Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 191–196.28 In a longer political theoretical analysis of the postrevolutionary Haitian social contract, I outline a theory of Haiti as an “abolitionist state,” meaning a state that comes into being as a result of a successful slave revolution. That is to say that unlike that of its neighbor to the north or its counterparts in Europe, which refounded the state on the basis of a liberal or republican constitutional compact, Haitian independence was fought for and defended on the basis of a claim to the ontological liberty of its subjects, who in the moment of independence are therefore declared both eternally freed from slavery, and, as such, “free” citizens of a new sovereign state. The question arises therefore as to the implications of this transition from slave to citizen of a sovereign state for the nature of the sovereign power, and the citizens’ status and rights in relation to that power. As I argue, the political authoritarianism of the abolitionist state is in part an effect of abolitionist sovereignty itself. For a complimentary reading of the early Haitian state as a re-instantiation of colonial structures of authoritarian power and control, see Fatton, The Roots of Haitian Despotism, 13–68.29 On the social and cultural innovations of the monarchy of Henry Christophe, see Leconte, Henry Christophe, especially chapters 13–22; Trouillot, Le gouvernement du roi Henri Christophe, Cole, Christophe, King of Haiti; Hector’s contributions in Hector and Hurbon, Génèse de l’État haïtien, 92–103 and 244–268; Cheeseman, The Armorial of Haiti, and Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti, vols. 5–6.30 In an edict of April 1, 2011 establishing Christophe’s royal coat of arms, his full royal titulature is given. It identifies him as “King of Hayti, Souvereign of the islands of Tortuga, Gonaïves, and other adjacent islands, Destructor of Tyranny, Regenerator and Benefactor of the Haitian nation, Creator of its moral, political, and military institutions, First crowned monarch of the New World, Defender of the faith, Founder of the royal and military order of Saint-Henry.” See Limonade, Relation des glorieux événements, 153. The 1807 and 1811 constitutions were first disseminated in Limonade’s coronation book, and have been reproduced, more recently in Dubois, Gaffield, and Acacia, Documents constitutionnels d’Haïti, 83–90. Articles 8 through 14 of the 1807 Constitution give Christophe, as president, exclusive powers to make laws, war and peace, administer finances, and choose his successor. The 1811 constitution did not alter the range of powers accorded to the sovereign, but conferred on him a hereditary throne, thus establishing the monarchy.31 See “Loi concernant la culture [Le Code Henry],” 1812. On the specificity of Christophe’s Code relative to the land reform and legislation of earlier Haitian revolutionary leaders and of colonial times, see Leconte, Henry Christophe dans l’Histoire, 286–296; Fick, “The Haitian Revolution” and “Emancipation in Haiti”; Blancpain, La Condition des paysans haïtiens, 137–138; and Fischer, Modernity Disavowed, 255–256.32 Nesbitt, Voicing Memory, 129–130. On the monument’s construction, see also Leconte, Henry Christophe dans l’Histoire, 351–366.33 For an interpretation of postrevolutionary Haitian despotism as an instance of the afterlife of colonial slavery and absolutism, see Péan, Économie politique de la corruption and Étienne, L’Énigme haïtien. For an earlier interpretation focusing on Toussaint Louverture, see Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture, 553–560. For a theory of postcolonial patrimonialism, according to which “the polity is an extension of the ruler’s household,” in the words of Igor Kopytoff, see Fatton, The Roots of Haitian Despotism, 62–64.34 Christophe, “Proclamation of the King to the Haitians,” in Saunders, Haytian Papers, 146, 149. For the original French, see Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti, 5: 302–303.35 See for example, the “Decree of General Liberty” issued by French Republican commissioners Léger Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel on August 29, 1793, in which Sonthonax exhorts the former slaves to show themselves worthy of freedom by submitting to a regime of forced labor and defending the French Republic against its enemies. An English translation of Sonthonax’s decree appears in Dubois and Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 120–125. On the adoption of nationalist or paternalistic rhetoric in French Republican abolitionist discourse and decrees, see Glissant, Caribbean Discourse, 26–34; and Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, 185.36 The editors of the 1798 Dictionnaire de l’Académie française define glory as follows: “honor, esteem, praise, or reputation bestowed by someone’s virtue, merit, great qualities, good actions and good works. […] It is also used to describe the honor and homage one gives to God. […] Glory is also used for shine [éclat], splendor.” https://artflsrv04.uchicago.edu/philologic4.7/publicdicos/bibliography?head=gloire accessed October 2020.37 Limonade, Relation des glorieux événements, 59.38 De Vastey, “Au Roi, Sire,” in Le système colonial dévoilé, 93.39 Mazères, Lettre à M. J.-C.-L. Sismonde.40 De Vastey, Réflexions sur une Lettre, 84–85.41 Lauro, The Transatlantic Zombie, 7–9.42 My discussion of the coronation ritual is indebted to explorations in political theology by Ernst Kantorowicz and Eric Santner as well as to the pioneering work of scholars such as J. Cameron Carter, Geraldine Heng, Jared Hickman, and Alex Weheliye. Drawing on earlier scholarship by Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter, they situate imperialism and the racial imagination at the center of the problem of modern Western political theology. See Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies; Santner, Royal Remains; Carter, “An Unlikely Convergence,” and “Paratheological Blackness”; Heng, The Invention of Race; Hinckman, “Globalization and the Gods”; and Weheliye, Habeas Viscus.43 On the history of the sacre, its origins in reference to Clovis, and the exceptional degree of sanctification it is seen to confer on French kings, see Giesey, “Models of Rulership”; Jackson, Vive le Roi; Valensise, “Le sacre du roi.”44 For example, in the orations for the coronation of Louis XIV, the king is presented as invested with God-given authority to eliminate all of his earthly enemies insofar as they are synonymous with God’s adversaries: “you [the king] will have them burned, you will exterminate their children from the surface of the earth, and their race from the milieu of men.” See [Pichon], Formule de cérémonies, 21.45 De Ségur, Procès-verbal, 47. On the structure, symbolism, and borrowings of Napoleon’s own sacre and coronation ritual in relation to the ancien régime royal tradition and the French Revolution, see Tulard, Le sacre de l’Empeureur; Chanteranne, Le Sacre de Napoléon; Dwyer, “‘Citizen Emperor’”; and the essays contained in [Musée Fesch], Napoléon: Le Sacre.46 “Procès verbal du sacre et couronnement de Leurs Majestés le Roi Henry Ier, et la Reine Marie-Louise,” in Limonade, Relation des Glorieux événements, 137.47 Ibid., 153.48 On Montesquieu’s views of the principles and aims of monarchy as a form of government, see Spirit of the Laws, 158.49 On education, culture, and state building in the kingdom, see Trouillot, Le gouvernement du roi Henri Christophe; Leconte, Henri Christophe dans l’Histoire; Fischer, Modernity Disavowed, 256; Sainte-Claire, “Régénération et élitisme scolaire.”50 My thinking here is strongly influenced by Aimé Césaire’s visionary play, La tragédie de Henri Christophe, in which the poet reflects critically by mixing the genres of tragedy and farce, on the specificity of the Haitian Revolution in which the republican rhetoric of freedom and equality gave way to the creation of postcolonial monarchy, dictatorship, and the renewal of the condition of individual unfreedom for former slaves. I read Césaire’s play as not only satire or a parody of a flawed individual but also, through the theory of tragedy, as a study of the irresistible, irrepressible, even necessary fall into re-enslavement as the destiny of post-abolitionist state-building in light of its impossible, yet noble, aims. Even more so than Christophe or his publicists, Césaire brilliantly unmasks the lack of a real alternative to an authoritarian sovereignty in light of the aporia of a liberal discourse of human rights in the context of an unrecognized, abolitionist state. See especially Césaire, La Tragédie de Henri Christophe, 59. Recently, scholar Chelsea Stieber has made a similar argument on the limits of liberal democracy in Haiti in her engaging book Haiti's Paper War: Post-independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic (New York University Press, 2020). My thinking on this problem, as elaborated in articles and conference presentations over the last decade, preceded and informed Stieber's work.Additional informationNotes on contributorsDoris L. GarrawayDoris L. Garraway is associate professor of French at Northwestern University. Her research and teaching interests include Francophone Caribbean literature and historiography from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, the Haitian Revolution, early modern French cultures, gender and slavery, postcolonial studies, law, and performance. She is the author of The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean (Duke UP, 2005; reprint 2008), and editor of Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (University of Virginia Press, 2008). She has published articles on a range of authors including Marie Chauvet, Aimé Césaire, Patrick Chamoiseau, Denis Diderot, Baron La Hontan, Moreau de Saint-Méry, and Haitian revolutionary figures Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Baron de Vastey. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Liberty's Majesty: Print, Performance, and Theopolitical Sovereignty in the Haitian Kingdom of Henry Christophe. Garraway has been awarded fellowships from Princeton University's Davis Center for Historical Studies, the National Humanities Center, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
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