Revolting acts and impassioned Haitian men in the francophone world theatres of Vincent Placoly and Simone Schwarz-Bart

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This article discusses the presence of Haiti, and in particular Haitian men, in francophone theatre published and staged throughout the world. It discusses Haitian male protagonists’ engagement in quests for sovereignty, and specifically how their passion for this quest leads them into revolting states that are simultaneously yet varyingly political (revolt) and aesthetic (revulsion). Such a claim reawakens the argument that Haitians of Haiti or the diaspora – and even Haiti writ large – continue to be connected to heroic and sometimes misguided quests because of assumptions made about dramatic elements of Haiti’s revolutionary history. Alongside the novel, which has remained the most globally and critically known literary space where such questions take shape, dramatic works like Vincent Placoly’s Dessalines, ou la passion de l’independance (1983), and Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Ton beau capitaine (1987), have also inserted themselves into the conversation for decades. Through a discussion of these works, thi...