The paradox of Haiti in African Diaspora Studies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is grounded on the premise that any critical discussion of the formation and intellectualization of the African Diaspora as discourse and field of study must confront the place and displacement of Haiti as a constitutive element of global black diasporic identity and consciousness. Since one of the tenets of African Diaspora Studies is the examination of the impact of displaced peoples of African descent, hence the significant tropes of displacement in African Diasporic literature, I argue that further research on Haiti in the field that attempts to tackle the paradox of Haiti would do well to consider the notion of Haiti as both displaced subject and object of intellectual inquiry. Such perspective not only contributes to critical investigation into global discourses of racialization and the erasure of global black histories, but also, more broadly, articulations of displacement in Diaspora Studies.