Customer Reviews

Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (John Hope Franklin Center Books)

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This extraordinary book won the Frantz Fanon Prize of the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2004 and then went on to win the Modern Language Association's prize in Latin American Studies and the Latin American Studies Association prize in 2005 for outstanding book. It is all well deserved. This work challenges many of the contemporary approaches to the study of race by offering a rich interplay of the compexities of Latin American conceptions of whiteness and those in the U.S. as they converge in a unified denial of the existence---and more, the HUMANITY---of the first Black Republic in the New World. Dr. Fischer's array of specializations, which range from comparative literature, philosophy, and history to linguistic skills that include French, Spanish, German, and some of the indigenous languages of South America, brings out the nuance and challenges of the Haitian revolution as understood in Haiti and as feared, cheered on, or simply denied from without. This work is a must-read for anyone working in Africana thought, especially in Caribbean studies, and theories of modernity.

I must say that this book is a very good read. It's one of those book that captivate me mostly because it has another view than most on the subject of colonialism.This doesn't mean that it is an unbiased review. The Cuban section was done very good. That section was as unbiased as a book can get(pretty hard as most people interpret things differently. On the Dominican and Haitian section, you start to notice how differently those countries are treated. He depicts Dominicans as ignorant racists almost exclusively(as far as I can remember all mention of them is as self-hating racists), while Haitians are depicted as liberators, modernizers, an overall benign people that were victims of smeared. He paints this tolerant picture that Haiti was a civilized country and downplays the fact that the whites of the colony were literally wiped out(either massacred or fled). This book fails to mention the last Haitian incursion on Dominican soil by 'Emperor' Faustin the first (following the steps of 'Emperor' Dessalines, the country's first statesman). You cannot get the full reason why anti-haitianismo was/is so widespread without reading from original sources. From independence from Haiti to the reverting back to a colony, all of Haiti's statesmen save for one tried to reconquer the Dominicans, in the process committing horrible war crimes. In particular, Faustin the first was the key needed (as his long reign was dedicated to torment the Hispanics). After that monster, there was a mulatto (who like Boyer, was much less a savage than the others) that tried to reach out to the reach out to the racist white Dominican president (i.e Dictator) was by now fully convinced that in ordered to be saved by those savages, they needed outside help, and who else than Spain (what a tremendous disservice). To conclude, to me the Author is sincerely a Haitian apologist in the same way that there are Nazi apologist. while the desire was not extermination, it was a deliberate ideology to deprive a people of their land, language, and in short culture. Good book but read other (original sources) to get the full picture.