The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean and the World

Abstract

How does one explain Haiti? What is Haiti? Haiti is the eldest daughter of France and Africa. It is a place of beauty, romance, mystery, kindness, humor, selfishness, betrayal, cruelty, bloodshed, hunger and poverty. It is a closed and withdrawn society whose apartness, unlike any other in New World, rejects its European roots”. Nice passage, isn’t it? Well, those of you who know my work may have guessed that I am trying to trick you. These words are not mine. They constitute the very first paragraph of Written in Blood , a sensationalist account of Haitian history written by Marine Colonel Robert Heinl and his wife Nancy 2 . I quote this paragraph in lieu of an introduction because it typifies a viewpoint widely shared in Haitian studies, one that I wish to challenge, namely the fiction of Haiti’s exceptionalism. Heinl and Heinl start with a question: “How does one explain Haiti?” The question is then set aside for a laundry list of particulars. Then, at the end of the list, the emphasis shifts to Haiti’s apartness: Haiti is unique. It is unlike any other country in the New World. And indeed, if we keep reading the next 700 pages, we soon discover that it is unlike any other country – period. The notion of Haitian exceptionalism permeates both the academic and popular literature on Haiti under different guises and with different degrees of candidness. At first glance, this insistence on Haiti’s special status seems to be a simple acknowledgement of the country’s admittedly spectacular trajectory. I suggest, that there are hidden agendas – intellectual and political – behind this insistence, and that these agendas, rather than genuine interest in the particulars of Haitian history, underpin Haitian exceptionalism.