Writing race in Haiti's constitutions : synecdoche and negritude in post-revolutionary Haiti.

Date

2015-07-30

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

All political universals rely on a synecdoche in which a part of the population is taken to represent the whole. Modernity is characterized by a white supremacist synecdoche that selects the white portion of a population to stand in for the whole population. Haiti’s early constitutions invert this synecdoche, picking out the black population as representative of the whole. This thesis analyze Haiti’s 1805, 1806, 1807, and 1816 Constitutions for this synecdochal inversion. These synecdoches rearticulate Modernity in a way that frustrates Modernity’s white supremacist foundation. Because of this, Haiti’s early Constitutions are rich resources for negritude.

Description

Citation