ABSTRACT
In 1995, the Haitian-American anthropologist and historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot published an indignant protest against what he called the “silencing” of the Haitian Revolution in the Western world’s historical memory. The French postmodernist theorist Jacques Derrida’s concept of the “supplement” is helpful in thinking about the issues the new interest in the Haitian Revolution poses for the study of the revolutionary era. The Anne-Louis Girodet portrait’s linking of black freedom and European Enlightenment reminds us that the Haitian Revolution raises questions about the claim that the revolutions of 1776 and 1789 were triumphs of not only of freedom but also of reason. The new scholarship on the Haitian Revolution complicates some assumptions cherished by Haitians and by scholars eager to put 1804 on the level of or even above 1776 and 1789. The new interest in the Haitian Revolution has spanned the academic disciplines, engaging scholars in fields including history, literature, anthropology, art history, political theory, and women’s studies, among others.
