Summary Of Freedom As Marronage

In the introduction Roberts states: “My inquiry aims to deepen our understanding of freedom not only by situating slavery as freedom’s opposite condition, but also by investigating the significance of equally important liminal and transitional social space between slavery and freedom” (Robert 21). Understanding the motive of this book, Robert studies the use of maroon communities mainly groups of slaves who vanished from plantations in the Americas to audit the idea of freedom and to break down the original ways of how freedom was educated. In addition, the author wants others to think about the definition of freedom by using marronage as a prime example throughout this book. Marronages are often times viewed with one sided accusations with …show more content…
In the introduction section of Freedom as Marronage, Robert explains freedom as, “though age-old contradictions and antinomies were lying in wait to force the mind into dilemmas of logical impossibility so that, depending which horn of dilemma you are holding on to, it becomes as impossible to conceive of freedom or its opposite as it is to realize to notion of a square circle” (Robert 19). The author is expressing that there is no true definition of freedom and that the ones in search of freedom were stuck between reality and what was a dream that they hope would come true. These slaves were looking for a way out and Robert is telling us that our minds think we can be free, but we really won’t be free. The author then explain his study as to why he is deciding to study this particular idea because he wants his readers to understand how the flight to freedom from slavery is underlining to the Haitian Revolution, European, New World and black diasporic societies. Roberts states that “slavery and freedom are intertwined and interdependent terms” (Robert 21). Robert is saying that these two terms have a great impact on each other and are dependent on each other as well. As I mentioned above, the author wants political theorists to grasp the notion of the process in which the people surfaced from slavery to …show more content…
While flight evokes in one’s mind movement from one state or location to another, it still remains a noun in lexicon” (Robert 27). According to Cesaire, he takes on marronage a different way in which he goes well beyond the average thinking of marronage. He mentions Haitian Revolution as the fight to end slavery which happened in the French colony of Saint- Domingue. “Maroons were fugitive slaves who often fled into the mountains and lived in small bands while eluding capture. This phenomenon, called “marronage,” was crucial to the fight for Haiti’s independence” (Shen 1). The Haitian Revolution is looked at in this book as poetry and the author develops memories of Haiti’s leaders and how they are affected in maroons. As mentioned above, The Flight to Freedom helps readers understand that the Haitian Revolution created a huge impact for marronage and Robert explains in his book that Toussiant L’Ouverture had a great deal when he delivered his letter to the directory about the revolutionary force in 1791 about marronage. In the chapter “Sovereign Marronage and It’s Others”, Roberts lets us know that Toussaint's idea of freedom and marronage is the same as the Haitian Revolution. “Toussaint has been the singular figure often described as synonymous with the Haitian Revolution, and his idea of freedom is memorialized as the only one espoused by its revolutionaries” (Robert 255). Toussaint has made