ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the specific translocational interactions between the American South and the black republic of Haiti as invoked by William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom!. It also focuses on the Haitian revolution of the 1791–1804 periods. Tracing the emergence of Haiti as the preeminent signifier of black resistance to the ideological assumptions of white New World plantocracy, the chapter examines the overthrow of slavery and colonial capitalism in its primary historical manifestation. The chapter assesses the Haiti through the political filter of southern plantation cultures in the first third of the nineteenth century, attending specifically to Thomas Sutpen's introduction of "slave" labor into the American South in 1833. Faulkner's text argues a mode of antagonism that functions determinedly and as a counter-historical imperative to rescind and revise Haiti's revolutionary heritage. The chapter considers the Haiti-US relationship in the context of the twentieth century, aligning the formalism of Absalom, Absalom! with the nineteen-year US occupation of Haiti, beginning in 1915.
