week 5 - reading 1 (Haitian Revolution) Flashcards
main focus article
- Haitian revolution
- omissions from accounts of events claimed to be of ‘world-historical’ significance
- how theory needs to be re-thought to take such events seriously
(Bhambra)
global sociology
- argues for sociology to recognize its multiple and globally diverse origins
theories of multiple modernities
- rose end cold war (unexpected fall of communism): idea that the west had won -> idea that the ‘west ‘ was a universal model rather than a universal existence
- fallacies need to be addressed: the idea that there is only one form of modernization + looking from the West to the East wasn’t necessarily a form of Orientalism or Eurocentrism
- still belief that the originary form of modernity was uniquely European
- acceptance of plurality and diversity believed to protect theories of multiple modernities against charges of ethnocentrism
- Dirlik: theories of multiple modernities doesn’t contest what it is to be modern
- continues to accept standard historical narratives of modernity
industrial revolution European?
- cotton was not a plant native to England, let alone the West
- cotton came from India + dying and weaving techniques also came from India
- cotton was grown in plantations of the Caribbean + southern USA by enslaved Africans
- expert relied on destruction of local production in other parts of the world
=> industrialization not solely Western phenomenon: it had global conditions for its very emergence and articulation
history of modernity as commonly told
- rests on the writing out of the colonial and posstcolonial moment
- rest of the world is assumed to be external to the world-historical processes selected for consideration
- colonial connections significant to the processes under discussion are erased
= because of disciplinary structure of knowledge production: separates the modern (sociology) from the traditional and colonial (anthropology) -> no room for the ‘colonial and postcolonial modern’ (modern understood in terms of the global conditions for its emergence)
modernity/coloniality
Quijano: European modernity is impossible to separate from its colonial domination
Mignolo: epistemology of the South, acknowledging distortions created in the production of knowledge by colonialism -> enables retrieval of different ways of knowing
Santos: events and processes that are standardly acknowledged are also constituted by events and processes ‘on the other side of the line’ that are not seen as significant for such understandings
the Haitian revolution
- rarely considered alongside other political revolutions (American, French), was at the same time
- revolution in Saint-Domingue let to existence state of Haiti
- Palmer only recognizes it as part of subsequent wave that copied North Atlantic
- Bayly doesn’t include it in his book
- Osterhammel only briefly mentions it (mainly to tell how it influenced the French revo) + doesn’t reconceptualize the global + talked about Haiti as a failed state without mentioning the French blockade of Haiti
- Dubois: Haiti was punished for its revolution + scholars are still not recognizing Haiti’s importance
- Sala-Molins debate: did Haiti make her revolution or did the French revolution spread to the colonies?
*delegation from Saint-Domingue originally only wanted inclusion and representation in revolutionary France, they were denied -> wanted full independence
contemporary scholarship = more attention Haiti: Trouillot, Geggus, Fischer, Dubois retrieved and made accessible histories of the Haitian revolution
political revolutions deemed to have brought modernity into being
- American Declaration of Independence
- French Revolution
- England, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy (same spirit)
Palmer: age of the democratic revolution (now: many scholars argue US+France weren’t democratic in Palmers defi.)
Palmer misses the Haitian Revolution (also an Atlantic civilization), as he focuses first (C18) on Western revolutions, later (C20) on other revolutions, presenting revolutions as a gift from the North Atlantic world (=idea of diffusion)
(Jean-Baptiste Belley)
Haitian revolutionary + representative of Saint-Domingue
- successfully argued for abolition of slavery within the French empire
- was part of the delegation that travelled to Paris to speak to the Constituent Assembly
- was a slave that bought himself free
- only a consequence of this delegation that the French Declaration included a clause abolishing slavery
*Baylys doesn’t take this into account in his book about the birth of the modern world (whilst Belley is portrayed on the cover)
what was the history of the Haitian revolution significant for?
revolts of enslaved people in the USA,
independence mov. Latin America and Caribbean,
cultural renaissance Harlem,
Maori movements for justice and equality
etc.
what might we learn about the birth of the modern world and its transformation if we took the Haitian revo. seriously?
- the formerly enslaved honoured the people who preceded them on the land (that were wiped out by European colonizers)
- Haitian constitution predicated on an understanding of citizenship that had greater universal applicability than e.g. that of France (e.g. equality + not racist + no slavery)
- Haiti called for immediate universal abolition of slavery
Trouillot: revolution may have been the most radical of its age, and maybe therefore silenced
the significance of the omission of the Haitian Revolution
- a reading of Rosanvallon
Rosanvallon 2013 = fails to engage with the complex rel. France and Haiti
- society of equals - equality that starts from singularity and distinction rather than homogenizing universality
- separatism (group identity) as poison of equality (*he doesn’t explain how/why there is separatism -> naturalizes group formation)
- presents group formation as a later disruption into a society (e.g. French after revo), ignoring that such a society was formed by exclusions based on characteristics ascribed to specific groups
- no discussion of what implications demand for inclusion delegation from Saint-Domingue had for understandings French citizenship
- normalizes/homogenizes national group identity (doesn’t see it as poison for equality)
- emergence of nation as endogenous + unconnected to colonization, dispossession and appropriation
- makes conditions of diversity now analogous to those in the past
*sees problems of the past as problems of exlusion rather than domination
reality
- debates during revolutionary France over if colour itself was an obstacle for citizenship
- debates based on group characteristics ascribed to individuals
- 1791 political equality for non-whites born of free parents -> overturned months later
- this + slave revolts Americas -> events Saint-Domingue intensified
- intensification Sain-Domingue -> more pressure on French legislature -> full racial equality 1792 + slave emancipation 1794 (were overturned by Napoleon)
period Haitian revolution = important to consider how/what to create a society of singulars (male equality transcended racial divisions)
Rosanvallon can’t consider the Haitian revo, cause it would make him have to redo his theoretical framework -> he doesn’t mention it, doesn’t look at how it contributes to contemporary understanding of equality
Code Noir
- late C17 decree to regulate enslaved in the French Caribbean
- was extended to cover all governing of the colonies + those who migrated from the colonies
Stovall: example of conflict between political and legal equality and racial discrimination within the French state
- was also the only comprehensive legislation that applied to the whole population, both black and white
why do histories like the Haitian need to be taken central to the dev. of the idea of the ‘‘global’’
- the global is constructed through such processes
perspective of ‘connected sociologies’
- recognizes events are constituted by broad processes
- inspired by Subrahmanyam’ connected histories
- recognizes plurality of interpretations and selections (as opportunity for reconsidering what we thought we knew)
- engaging with different voices = beyond simple pluralism to make a difference to what was thought, we need to think differently from how we previously thought
- historical global interconnections (takes e.g. seriously Haitian revo. as world-historical event)
puts Europe within wider processes + locates how it benefitted and created colonialism and enslavement + examines what Europe needs to learn
