Introduction

I want to tell a story. The time is the 1850s. The place? Haiti. The narrative of the story foregrounds the political life of Faustin I, a forgotten Haitian monarch, his performance(s) of sovereignty and the ways that his machinations during this era would impact on the widespread use of images and objects that sought to transform Haitian sovereignty from parody to power. It is a narrative that also looks forward to the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries as it links activities from the past that challenged Haiti’s sovereignty under Faustin I to contemporary moments that illuminate the complexity of black sovereignty's constraints. Although the nineteenthcentury encounters described within this chapter occurred nearly half a century after Haiti's declaration of independence, they echo the unfinished sovereign encounters outlined in Chapters 1 and 2. These flashpoints highlight literary historian Michael Drexler's musings above about the ways that Haiti is tied to remnants of its colonial history as a perfect plantation machine, even as its revolutionary life challenged chattel slavery, colonialism and black nullification. It is not surprising if somewhere lost in those grand skirmishes is the Haitian state. As noted in earlier chapters, this book fills this gap and draws together a range of materials, perspectives, objects and political thought in order to delineate the forms and fractures of black sovereignty. Although much of this book focuses on the ways that Haitian officials, cultural workers and ancillary friends (and foes) made black sovereignty legible, contested its existence, or continued to fight for its relevancy in global politics, it also argues that black sovereignty was and is an unstable, unfinished figuration.

As tempting as it may be to wish for a teleological narrative of becoming that sees Haitians and others of African descent breaking off chains of enslavement and figurations of political dispossession before emerging as full sovereign agents, the figurations of black sovereignty, as chronicled in this project, resist such formulations.