Tree of Liberty:
Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic
World |
| |
| Edited by Doris L. Garraway |
| 304 pages, 6 x 9 |
| 2 b&w illustrations |
| Cloth 978-0-8139-2685-8 • $65.00 |
| Paper 978-0-8139-2686-5 • $24.50 |
| New World
Studies |
| March 2008 |
 |
On January 1, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the independence
of Haiti, thus bringing to an end the only successful slave revolution
in history and transforming the colony of Saint-Domingue into
the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere. The historical
significance of the Haitian Revolution has been addressed by numerous
scholars, but the importance of the Revolution as a cultural and
political phenomenon has only begun to be explored. Although the
path-breaking work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Sibylle Fischer
has illustrated the profound silences surrounding the Haitian
Revolution in Western historiography and in Caribbean cultural
production in the aftermath of the Revolution, contributors to
this volume argue that, while suppressed and disavowed in some
quarters, the Haitian Revolution nonetheless had an enduring cultural
and political impact, particularly on peoples and communities
that have been marginalized in the historical record and absent
from the discourses of Western historiography.
Tree of Liberty interrogates the literary, historical,
and political discourses that the Revolution produced and inspired
across time and space and across national and linguistic boundaries.
In so doing, it seeks to initiate a far-reaching discussion of
the Revolution as a cultural and political phenomenon that shaped
ideas about the Enlightenment, freedom, postcolonialism, and race
in the modern Atlantic world.
Contributors
A. James Arnold, University of Virginia * Chris Bongie, Queen’s
University * Paul Breslin, Northwestern University * Ada Ferrer,
New York University * Doris L. Garraway, Northwestern University
* E. Anthony Hurley, SUNY Stony Brook * Deborah Jenson, University
of Wisconsin, Madison * Jean Jonassaint, Syracuse University *
Valerie Kaussen, University of Missouri * Ifeoma C.K. Nwankwo,
Vanderbilt University
Doris L. Garraway is Associate Professor
of French at Northwestern University and the author of The
Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean.
