Toussaint Louverture in a Globalized Frame: Reading the Revolutionary as Icon

Abstract

In the recent international growth of interest in Haiti, there has been an increased focus on the ways in which the narratives and impact of the Haitian Revolution have travelled beyond their historical and geographical points of origin. Researchers have explored the ways in which the Revolution has been actively “used” or instrumentalized in often very different cultural and ideological niches. This article asks whether interpretations of the Revolution have always been localized, and shaped by the clear national contexts in which they occur, or whether it is possible (and indeed helpful) to evoke a type of transnational or even global iconicity that sees the leader of the Revolution, Toussaint Louverture, adopted as a cipher for the wider understandings of Haiti in a global frame. Underlying this analysis is a comparison—often made but rarely scrutinized—between Louverture and Che Guevara. The article concludes with a consideration of the ways in which the status of Toussaint as a revolutionary icon in a global frame has acquired renewed intensity in recent years, but has arguably at the same time taken a new turn, as the focused implications of this iconicity for anti-colonial struggle and postcolonial reflection have lost their specificity and risked being diluted into generality.