'Internal Harmony, Peace to the Outside World': Imagining Community in Nineteenth-Century Haiti. Issue 2 (July 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hodgson, Kate
• Is Part Of: Paragraph. Volume 37:Issue 2(2014)
• Page Start: 178
• Page End: 192
• Publication Date: 2014-07
• Subjects: Criticism -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Art criticism -- Periodicals; 809
• DOI: 10.3366/para.2014.0120
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0264-8334

Abstract

<abstract xml:lang="en"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>This article explores the idea of community and 'internal concord' in a radically divided, post-independence Haiti. As the country negotiated the process of decolonization from France, Haitian political writings and speeches repeatedly returned to the problem of how a truly united Haiti might be envisaged. These reworkings of the idea of community were instrumental in the work of postcolonial nation-building in Haiti in the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet the publication of Haiti's <italic>Rural Code</italic> in 1826 gives a different perspective on the process of national construction of community through work, particularly agricultural labour. The article seeks to look beyond the ideals of unity and Concordia which were being vigorously proclaimed at the time, in order to understand the impact of questions of work and worklessness on political discourse surrounding the idea of postcolonial community in nineteenth-century Haiti.</p> </abstract>