Révoltes sans témoin: la tracée du marronnage dans la littérature haïtienne

UnrestrictedMy dissertation retraces the ways in which Haitian literature makes the prison an unexpectedly privileged space from which to rewrite Haitian history. It demonstrates that in the novels of many Haitian writers, it is in fact the prison, and not the landscape, as suggested by Martinican theorist Edouard Glissant, that is the ideal place from which to read and rewrite Caribbean history. The prison paradoxically serves as a credible and constant witness to Haitian history, a history of resistance in the tradition of “marronnage.” I argue that this tradition is still alive in Haitian history. These writers use fiction to “create archives” because there are no written documents that offer testimonies of what Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant refer to as “revolts without witness.”; I examine contemporary Haitian novels set in four different historical periods: the time of slavery in Rosalie l’Infâme (2003) by Evelyne Trouillot, the Haitian Revolution in Moi, Toussaint Louverture … avec la plume de l’auteur (2001) by Jean-Claude Fignolé, the Duvalier dictatorship in Le goût des jeunes filles (1992) by Dany Laferrière, and the arrival of Haitian refugees in the US in the 1980s in De si jolies petites plages (1982) by Jean-Claude Charles. These texts all focus on the efforts of protagonists who cope with and subvert existing power relations, and ultimately find a way to testify to their struggles, unaccounted for in official History. In addition to literature, I draw extensively on history, sociology and cultural studies to provide a better understanding of power relations in Haiti