19th century portrait of Toussaint L’Ouverture by Nicholas Maurin. As a leader of the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint helped turn a slave uprising in 1791 into a successful bid for revolution, Haitian independence, and the abolition of slavery.
Synopsis
Join us this week for an all Haiti episode. Rather than go postal on the blah blah blah of corporate conventions and platitudinous political campaigning, the saucy boys turn up the volume on voices that matter. Our special guest is André Juste, a Brooklyn- based Haitian native, artist, writer, and global observer of all things vital. In a wide ranging discussion with Josh, Andre expounds on his own personal transformation, from a Haitian immigrant kid in New York City of the late 60s, to an intellectually hungry student at Brooklyn College, where he devoured works on the African diaspora and post colonial literature. “We are the contradictions,” reminds André, in a world that too seldom gives voice to the divergent voices of the formerly colonized and once enslaved. As a result, the rich creativity and wisdom of those voices and the contradictions they represent are relegated to what the Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot called the ‘silences’ that inform the dominant narratives of power. And the solution to that silence? Just listen to Haiti.
This week’s music: Arcade Fire, “Haiti”
To hear Episode 21 listen to Haiti, click on the link below:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/listen-to-haiti/id1505429529?i=1000488763969
Sources Referenced and Items of Interest:
André Juste, “Study for a study,” 2019,
oil stick, acrylic, wood on paper, 19″x32″x1.75.”
Michel-Ralph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (new edition, 2015)
http://www.beacon.org/Silencing-the-Past-P1109.aspx
David Nichols, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Color, and National Independence in Haiti (1996)
https://www.amazon.com/Dessalines-Duvalier-Colour-National-Independence/dp/0813522404
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World (new edition, with translation by Pablo Medina, 2017)
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374537388
The Kingdom of this World wikipedia page:
“…and the custodians of history shiver, afraid that the past is catching up too fast with the present.”
Michel-Ralph Trouillot
History Against the Grain 