On De-Coloniality (III): Thinking Haiti, Thinking Jean Casimir
Walter Mignolo
The present dossier (third in the series “On Decoloniality”) is devoted to a truly de-colonial thinker, Jean Casimir, Haitian scholar and intellectual and former Ambassador of Haiti in Washington.
In 1981 Jean Casimir published a land-mark book La cultura oprimida. The book was published in México and was based in his doctoral dissertation. The French translation (La culture opprimée) appeared in 2001. Although Jean Casimir was well known among the Spanish and Luso intellectuals of the time (he studied sociology in Mexico under the guidance of Pablo González Casanova and was involved in the debates on dependency theory that included Brazilian intellectuals), time has left this book out of current discussion in Latin American circles, in spite of the fact that the book was originally published in Spanish. Perhaps because Spanish American and Brazilian intellectuals (and I include myself in my intellectual beginnings) of the time did not pay attention to Haiti (although we were very attentive to French authors and books); perhaps because Casimir’s book deals with the legacy of slavery, in a context in which colonial issues--at the time--were restricted to Spaniards, white Creoles and Indians but did not include slavery and people from African descent. Perhaps because in continental South America the winds of post-structuralism and modernization cast as traditional issues of decolonization (the work of Frantz Fanon began to be pushed aside in the seventies) and of la culture de l’opprimé. For reasons that can be summarized as coloniality of knowledge, the book unjustly fell in desuetude.
Rereading it a quarter of a century later, the argument has gained in force. In this dossier, Jean Casimir wrote a short introduction to a selection of articles published in recent years. We include also an early essay of 1984 (“Cultura oprimida y creación intellectual”), that shows the continuity of his thoughts.
Jean Casimir writes mainly in French and in Haitian Creole. Among his books we can mention La Caraíbe, une et divisible, co-edited by CEPAl-Caraíbe-Nations Unies and Editions Henri Deschamps, 1991 and was translated into Spanish as La invención del Caribe. In 2000, he published Ayiti Toma. Haití chérie, in French and Haitian Creole. And in 2004 he also published another land-mark book, in French and Haitian Creole, Pa bliye 1804/Souviens-Toi de 1804, published with the sponsorship of Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (Fokal). The Spanish translation, Haití, acuérdate de 1804. was published in México (Siglo XXI), in 2007.
The dossier is introduced by renowned historian, Laurent Dubois, author of A Colony of Citizens. Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill and London: UNC, 2004) and Avengers of the New World (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005).