The Haitian Revolution as a Function of Independent Perspective
In my final essay, I would like to examine the focal argument of Adom Getachew’s “Universalism After the Postcolonial Turn: Interpreting the Haitian Revolution” through the lens of CLR James’ revolutionary history The Black Jacobins. Getachew’s essay presents a challenging historiography, studying the way that we write history to centralize Europe and the ideologies that spill forth from it. Primarily, she urges spectators of history to turn, in their analyzation of revolutions-- specifically, the Haitian revolution, -- away from the view of freedom as a function of European ideology. This is necessary because the adoption of these ideologies—for example, the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen as a wellspring of equity from which all other revolutions flow-- as universal principles presents a challenge, both to those who attempt revolution under stricter forms of oppression and those who wish to analyze such events: Do we attempt to achieve a revolution through …show more content…
In his account, James focuses on the ways in which Toussaint is still bound, in his approach to freedom, by colonialism. He emphasizes that the significance of the Haitian revolution is not merely in acquiring freedom; it is in the attempt to gain freedom that Toussaint and Dessalines, his first lieutenant, wrestle with oppressive inherited ideologies-- results of colonization by the French-- that continue to govern their minds and compete for their realization. CLR James, in his discussion of this history, expressed that he had “made up [his] mind that [he] would write a book in which Africans or people of African descent instead of constantly being the object of other peoples ' exploitation and ferocity would themselves be taking action on a grand scale and shaping other people to their own
In my final essay, I would like to examine the focal argument of Adom Getachew’s “Universalism After the Postcolonial Turn: Interpreting the Haitian Revolution” through the lens of CLR James’ revolutionary history The Black Jacobins. Getachew’s essay presents a challenging historiography, studying the way that we write history to centralize Europe and the ideologies that spill forth from it. Primarily, she urges spectators of history to turn, in their analyzation of revolutions-- specifically, the Haitian revolution, -- away from the view of freedom as a function of European ideology. This is necessary because the adoption of these ideologies—for example, the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen as a wellspring of equity from which all other revolutions flow-- as universal principles presents a challenge, both to those who attempt revolution under stricter forms of oppression and those who wish to analyze such events: Do we attempt to achieve a revolution through …show more content…
In his account, James focuses on the ways in which Toussaint is still bound, in his approach to freedom, by colonialism. He emphasizes that the significance of the Haitian revolution is not merely in acquiring freedom; it is in the attempt to gain freedom that Toussaint and Dessalines, his first lieutenant, wrestle with oppressive inherited ideologies-- results of colonization by the French-- that continue to govern their minds and compete for their realization. CLR James, in his discussion of this history, expressed that he had “made up [his] mind that [he] would write a book in which Africans or people of African descent instead of constantly being the object of other peoples ' exploitation and ferocity would themselves be taking action on a grand scale and shaping other people to their own