• [Scholar Legacy Series Ep. #80] "The First & Last King of Haiti: The Rise & Fall of Henry Christophe." A Continuing Conversation w/ Dr. Marlene Daut

  • Feb 2 2025
  • Length: 1 hr and 16 mins
  • Podcast

[Scholar Legacy Series Ep. #80] "The First & Last King of Haiti: The Rise & Fall of Henry Christophe." A Continuing Conversation w/ Dr. Marlene Daut

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  • Whenever I hear 1804-Haitian-fanatics—those who shout with fevered breath about the glories of the Haitian Revolution, about the unshakable Christophe, the unbreakable Dessalines, the brilliant Louverture—I think about something James Joyce once wrote, something about heroism and the lie that holds it together: “Do you not think the search for heroics damn vulgar? I am sure however that the whole structure of heroism is, and always was, a damned lie and that there cannot be any substitute for individual passion as the motive power of everything.” And maybe he was right. Maybe all the grand statues, all the history book renderings of Haitian men and women who lived and fought and bled—maybe they were always meant to obscure something harder to face: that there are no perfect person, no unblemished saviors, no mythic warriors who moved through the world without doubt, without error, without contradiction. That the stories we Haitians tell ourselves, the way we flatten our historical figures into marbles, the way we sand off their edges, all of it is less about truth and more about our comfort. That’s what struck me reading Dr. Marlene Daut’s “The First and Last King of Haiti.” It isn’t a portrait built for worship. Christophe emerges not as an untouchable legend but as a man—a man who built, a man who ruled, a man who inspired and also a man who made shitloads of mistakes, who punished, who carried the weight of the impossible on his shoulders. There is no neat symmetry to his life here, no easy moral at the end. But there is something real, something tangible. There is a man who shaped history and was, in turn, shaped by it. And this is where I think Joyce and the 1804 purists miss each other. Heroism, as an idea, is flawed because we are all flawed. But Haitian history does not belong to those who refuse to see the fullness of its historical figures. It belongs to those Haitians who can hold contradiction, who can see Christophe not as some distant legend but as a man who, for all his flaws, left something behind that still stands. And maybe that is the only kind of heroism worth anything at all. --------INTRO MUSIV-------------------- Neg Mawon Theme: by Dr. Roch Ntankeh Language: Medumba from West Cameroon African Nation Affiliation: Bamileke Musical Genre: Mangabeu Licensed to: Nèg Media Inc Lyrics Tell me the story/Give me the news/Listen to Neg Mawon Listen to the story of the land/Listen to the history of Haiti/People of St Domingue where are you?People of Haiti where are you?/Come listen to the history/Come listen to the story/Where are the scholars? (x2) Come and tell the history to all the people Chorus : Neg Mawon (x5) Tell me history Tell me the news of the land
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