Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediato

Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology Volume 1, Issue 1, 2019, PP 33-43 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator Paul C. Mocombe West Virginia State University, Mocombean Foundation, Inc. *Corresponding Author: Paul C. Mocombe, West Virginia State University, Mocombean Foundation, Inc Email Id: [email protected]. ABSTRACT This work, using a structurationist approach, phenomenological structuralism, argues that unlike the traditional leaderships of Haiti what makes Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines unique is the fact that after avenging the Taino natives and Africans of the island against the French, Spanish, and British, he attempted to mediate between two diametrically opposing forms of system and social integration, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the mulatto elites and creole petit-bourgeois blacks who adopted the worldview of their former colonial masters; and the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of the African majority who synthesized their ethos with that of the Taino natives. While the former two social classes, mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks, sought to integrate Haiti into the global capitalist world-system of the European powers of the nineteenth century, Dessalines attempted to constitute the Haitian nation within the enframing ideology of the two distinct forms of social and system integration of the social actors on the island. Using a structurationist, structural Marxist, understanding of practical consciousness constitution, the work explores the origins and basis for Dessalines’s social, political, and economic policies. The death of Dessalines, I conclude, would undermine the Revolutionary impetus of the Haitian Revolution, and converted Haiti into the so-called poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Keywords: Ideological domination, phenomenological structuralism, embourgeoisement, black Underclass, Grandon, Mulatto Elites, Haitian Revolution, Bois Caiman, Affranchis NT, Tribe, Munda, Manki, Bhuinhar, Khuntkattidar. INTRODUCTION This work argues that unlike the traditional leaderships of Haiti what makes Emperor JeanJacques Dessalines, the founder of the Haitian nation-state, unique is the fact that after avenging the Taino natives and Africans of the island against the French, Spanish, and British, he attempted to mediate between two diametrically opposing forms of system and social integration, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the mulatto elites and creole petit-bourgeois blacks who adopted the worldview of their former colonial masters; and the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of the African majority who synthesized their ethos with that of the Taino natives, in order to constitute the Haitian nationstate. While the former two social classes, mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks, sought to integrate Haiti into the global capitalist world-system of the European powers of the nineteenth century, Dessalines attempted to constitute the Haitian nation within the enframing ideology of the two distinct forms of social and system integration of the social actors on the island. Using a structurationist, structural Marxist, phenomenological structural, understanding of practical consciousness constitution, the work explores the origins and basis for Dessalines’s social, political, and economic policies (Mocombe, 2016). The death of Dessalines, I conclude, would undermine the Revolutionary impetus of the Haitian Revolution, and converted Haiti into the socalled poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM The constitution of Haitian society and practical consciousnesses are the parallel evolution and reification of two social class language games (the term, “language game” is borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein and synthesized with structural Marxism and structurationist sociology to capture the mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, communicative discourse, and practical consciousness or purposive-rationality, which constitute the form of system and social integration of a society), the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism and the Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 33 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism (see Table 1). The argument here is that the purposive-rationality of the originating moments of the Haitian Revolution at Bois Caïman and the counter-plantation system originate out of the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the African masses and their Vodou leadership, oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo/dokté fey, and gran moun yo. It diametrically opposed the purposive-rationality of the liberal agents of the whites and Affranchis, mulattoes and petitbourgeois black creole classes, on the island. The latter three (whites, mulatto elites, and petitbourgeois black creole classes) sought to recursively reorganize and reproduce the practical consciousness of their former white slavemasters for equality of opportunity, distribution and recognition, while the agents of the former did not. The constitution of Haitian society, in the mountains and provinces, became an intent by the majority of the Africans to reorganize and reproduce their culture/civilization or language game, the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism, on the island, undergirded by the power elites, oungans, manbos, bokors, and elders, of the provinces, against the liberal bourgeois Catholic/Protestant language game of Europeans and the Affranchis operating through the state and its ideological apparatuses. The latter agents, mulattoes and petit-bourgeois black landowning classes, would marginalize and discriminate against agents, Vodouizans, peasants, and machanns (market workers from the mountains and provinces), of the former via economic policies and laws of the state attacking Vodou and its social and economic practices centered on the lakou system. In doing so, they established Haiti as an apartheid state dominated by the struggles between the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois black landowning (creole) classes for control of its apparatuses, which they use (d) to undermine the desires and interests of the African-born majority on the island (Du Bois, 2004, 2012). Hence two-thirds of the social actors who would come to constitute the Haitian nation-state were a discriminated-against African-born majority amongst a minority of mulattoes, gens de couleur, creole, and petit-bourgeois blacks (Affranchis) on the island interpellated, embourgeoised, and differentiated by the language, communicative discourse, modes of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of the West (the Catholic/Protestant 34 Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game). As such, given their interpellation and embourgeoisement via the language (French), communicative discourse, modes of production (slavery, agribusiness, mercantilism, etc.), ideology (liberalism, individualism, personal wealth, capitalism, racialism, private property, Protestant Ethic, etc.), and ideological apparatuses (churches, schools, prisons, plantations, police force, army, etc.) of the West, the latter, Affranchis, became “blacks,” dialectically, seeking to recursively (re) organize and reproduce the ideas and ideals, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, of the European whites in a national position of their own amidst slavery, racism, and colonialism against the African-born majority (See Table 1). As Carolyn Fick (1990) highlights about the Affranchis, [b]y 1789, the affranchis owned one-third of the plantation property, one-quarter of the slaves, and one-quarter of the real estate property in Saint Domingue; in addition, they held a fair position in commerce and in the trades, as well as in the military. Circumstances permitting, a few had even “infiltrated” the almost exclusively grand blanc domain of the sugar plantation by becoming managers of the paternal estate upon the father’s return to Europe or even inheritors of property upon the father’s death…. The affranchis imitated white manners, were often educated in France, and, in turn, sent their own children abroad to be educated. Having become slave-holding plantation owners, they could even employ white contract labor among the petits blancs (1990, pgs. 19-20). Following the Revolution, the Affranchis would come to recursively reorganize and reproduce their being-in-the-world as interpellated, embourgeoised, and structurally differentiated black “other” agents of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game seeking equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites amidst worldwide slavery, racism, and colonialism. The majority of the half million Africans in the mountains and provinces were not blacks, i.e., a structurally differentiated “other” defined within the lexicon of signification of whites based on their skin pigmentation, lack of culture/civilization, and desire to be like whites. They were Africans interpellated and ounganified/manboified by the modes of production, language, ideology, ideological Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator apparatuses, and communicative discourse of their African worldview or structuring structure, i.e., the Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism social class language game, which they reproduced in the provinces and mountains under the leadership of oungan yo (priests), manbo yo (priestesses), gangan yo/dokté fey (herbal healers—medicine men and women), and granmoun yo (elders) (Métraux, 1958; Deren, 1972; Genovese, 1979; Rigaud, 1985; Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992; BellegardeSmith and Michel, 2006; Mocombe, 2016). i Against the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the Affranchis with its emphasis on individualism, personal wealth, and capitalist exploitative labor, the Africans sought balance, harmony, and subsistence living. In the words of a racist colonial observer who saw the futility of attempting to establish a regimen of labor that would impose upon the freed slaves of Saint Domingue a European, occidental mode of thought and of social organization, central to which are the virtues of work, in and of itself, of competitiveness, profit incentives, and everexpanding production; in short, the virtues of the Western capitalist ethic as practiced by the whites and Affranchis, Unambitious and uncompetitive, the black values his liberty only to the extent that it affords him the possibility of living according to his own philosophy (quoted in Fick, 1990, pg. 179). The “philosophy,” Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism, of the blacks diametrically opposed/oppose the Western capitalist ethic of the whites and Affranchis highlighted here by the colonial observer. It is the failure of the Affranchis, once they gained control of the Revolution and subsequently the nation-state and its ideological apparatuses, to either (re)constitute Haiti via the philosophy/practical consciousness of the Africans or eradicate it completely (via their anti-superstitious campaigns) as they sought and seek to reproduce the ideas and ideals (Western capitalist Ethic) of their former colonial slavemasters amidst their own racial-class tensions, between the creole free blacks and the gens de couleur, mulatto elites, which maintains Haiti, after over two hundred years of independence, as the so-called poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Following the Haitian Revolution, the majority of the Africans, given their refusal to work on plantations or agribusinesses (corvée system), migrated to the provinces and the mountains, abodes of formerly established “maroon republics,” and established a “counter-plantation system” (Jean Casimir’s term) based on husbandry, subsistence agriculture, and komes, i.e., the trade and sell of agricultural goods for income to purchase manufactured products and services. The mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois free blacks, a Francophile neocolonial oligarchy, countered this counter-plantation system through their control of the ports, export trade, and the political apparatuses of the state, which increased their wealth through the taxation of the goods of the African peasants. As Laurent Du Bois (2012) observed of the process, the former enslaved Africans, [t]ook over the land they had once worked as slaves, creating small farms where they raised livestock and grew crops to feed themselves and sell in local markets. On these small farms, they did all the things that had been denied to them under slavery: they built families, practiced their religion, and worked for themselves…. Haiti’s rural population effectively undid the plantation model. By combining subsistence agriculture with the production of some crops for export, [komes,] they created a system that guaranteed them a better life, materially and socially, than that available to most other people of African descent in the Americas throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But they did not succeed in establishing that system in the country as a whole. In the face of most Haitians’ unwillingness to work the plantations, Haiti’s ruling groups retreated but did not surrender. Ceding, to some extent, control of the land, they took charge of the ports and the export trade. And they took control of the state, heavily taxing the goods produced by the smallscale farmers and thereby reinforcing the economic divisions between the haves and the have-nots (pg. 6). This counter-plantation system the African majority established against the spirit of capitalism social class language game, i.e., economic gain for its own sake, individualism, personal wealth, private property, labor exploitation, etc., of the Affranchis, mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois free blacks, who were interpellated, embourgeoised, and differentiated by the mode of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of the West was not a reaction to slavery or the material resource framework of the island as presented by Du Bois and Casimir. Instead, it was and is a product of the ever-increasing rationalization of the ideology (konesans) of Vodou and its Ethic of communal living or social collectivism, Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 35 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator democracy, individuality, cosmopolitanism, spirit of social justice, xenophilia, balance, harmony, and gentleness, which united all of the African tribes shipped to the island during the slave trade. In refutation of this counterplantation-system grounded in the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism, the Affranchis sought to continue the plantation-system of their former colonial slavemasters, which was grounded in the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the colonial economy. The Affranchis, embodied in the persons of Toussaint Louverture and Alexandre Pétion, for examples, like their black American middle class counterparts in America, pushed for liberty, equality, and fraternity with their white counterparts at the expense of the Vodou, Communist discourse, and Creole/Kreyol language of the enslaved Africans who were not only discriminated against by whites but by the mulattoes and free blacks as well who sought to reproduce the French language, Catholic religion, and liberal capitalist laws of their former slavemasters on the island (Du Bois, 2004; Buck-Morss, 2009). In fact, what role should mulattoes and free blacks play in the Revolution is at the heart of a bitter disagreement between Toussaint and Dessalines. The latter, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a houngan, Vodou priest, and founder of the Haitian nationstate, given the brutality he experienced as a slave, which stood in contradistinction to Toussaint’s experience as a literate free Affranchis, sought to kill many of the free and mulatto Affranchis along with the whites because Dessalines discerned that they played a role in their yearning to be like their white counterparts in oppressing the enslaved African masses, and given the opportunity they would reproduce the slavery system of the whites on the island (James, 1986). Hence Dessalines promoted a form of racial slaughter grounded in “an eye for an eye” ethical discourse, “we have rendered to these true cannibals [(the whites)], war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage; yes, I have saved my country: I have avenged America” (Jean-Jacques Dessalines cited in Morss, 2009, p. 143). Toussaint Louverture, however, believed that the technical and governing skills of the blancs (whites) and Affranchis would be sorely needed to rebuild the country, along the lines of white civilization, after the revolution and the end of white rule on the island. In fact, Toussaint was not seeking to make the island of Haiti an independent country; instead, he sought to have 36 the island remain a French colony without slavery (James, 1986; Du Bois, 2004; BuckMorss, 2009). Toussaint would go to war with the Vodou leaderships of the Africans and the mulatto elites, respectively, to ensure that the old mercantile system of the white Royalist planters would persist without slavery. His corvée system promoted a sharecropping arrangement where the former white plantation owners coupled with an emerging black landowning classes composed of Louverture’s creole generals became renters and owners of sugar and coffee plantations where the African majority toiled as cultivators who shared threequarters of their cultivations with the owners of the land and the state. All subsequent leaders, with the exception of Dessalines to some extent, would adopt Toussaint’s position following independence in 1804. Dessalines, it appears, sought to constitute the Haitian nation-state by mediating between and balancing the desires of the Affranchis on the one hand, which he sought to implement via the state; and the purposiverationality for landownership, husbandry, subsistence agriculture, and komes of the Vodou leadership of the African masses who wanted no part of a system that resembled slavery or Louverture’s corvée system, on the other hand. THEORY AND METHOD The argument here, building on Paul C. Mocombe’s (2016, 2017, 2018) theory of phenomenological structuralism, which posits structure and agency as both a dualism and a duality, is that the purposive-rationality of the originating moments of the Haitian Revolution at Bois Caïman originates out of the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the masses and their Vodou leadership, oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo/dokté fey, and gran moun yo, and diametrically opposed the purposive-rationality of the liberal agents of the whites and Affranchis on the island. The latter three sought to recursively reorganize and reproduce the practical consciousness of their former white slavemasters for equality of opportunity, distribution and recognition, while the agents of the former did not. Instead, at Bois Caïman, the originating moment of the Haitian Revolution, Boukman Dutty, Cecile Faitman, Edaïse, and subsequent to them Macaya, Sans Souci, Sylla, Mavougou, Lamour de la Rance, Macaque, Alaou, Coco, Sanglaou, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines among many others, sought to recursively reorganize and reproduce their African practical consciousness, Vodou, Kreyol, Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator and communism embedded in the counterplantation system, husbandry, and komes of the Haitian/Africans against the purposiverationality of their former slavemasters and the Affranchis. In fact, my argument concludes by suggesting that it is the usurpation of the Revolution by the Affranchis that would give the Revolution (and Haitian consciousness/identity) its (postmodern, post-structural, postcolonial) liberal bourgeois Catholic/Protestant orientation, which makes Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial theories appropriate heuristic tools for understanding the subsequent developments of the Haitian Revolution and nation-state following Bois Caïman and the death of JeanJacques Dessalines in 1806. This (postmodern, post-structural, postcolonial) liberal bourgeois Catholic/Protestant orientation is the basis for the subsequent exploitation and oppression of the African masses on the island by the Affranchis seeking, like their black American and diasporic counterparts, continual equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their former white masters through the reenslavement (via the tourist and textile industries, sports, and agribusinesses) of the African masses who grow poor and sick so that a few of their fellow citizens can live lavishly within the liberal bourgeois Protestant capitalist world-system under American hegemony. This latter traditional liberal bourgeois (postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial) interpretation of the Haitian revolution and the purposive-rationality of the Affranchis attempts to understand their denouement through the sociopolitical effects and dialectical logic of the French Revolution when the National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée Nationale Constituante) of France passed la Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen or the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in August of 1789. The understanding from this perspective is that the enslaved Africans, many of whom could not read or write French, were a blank slate who understood the principles, philosophical and political principles of the Age of Enlightenment, set forth in the declaration and therefore yearned to be like their white masters, i.e., “freemen and women” seeking liberty, equality, and fraternity, the rallying cry of the French Revolution. Although, historically this understanding holds true for the mulattoes and free educated blacks, Affranchis, who used the language of the declaration to push forth their efforts to gain liberty, equality, and fraternity with their white counterparts while attempting to hold on to slavery and the mercantilist system. This position, however, is not an accurate representation for the African tribes/nations, “maroon republics,” and their Vodou leadership who organized and assembled (minokan in Vodou) at Bois Caïman, Macaya, Sans Souci, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines who would assume the reins of the Revolution following the capture and death of the Affranchis, Toussaint Louverture. Although Dessalines, unlike Sans Souci, Macaya, and many of the African leaders who assembled at Bois Caiman, was an “illiterate” (in the Western sense) creole, the argument highlighted by oral historian Byyaniah Bello and the Vodou community is that as a field slave, he was interpellated and ounganified (my term for internalization of the Vodou worldview) by the ideology (Vodou) and ideological apparatuses (Lakou, peristyles, lwaes, Kreyol proverbs) of the Africans as opposed to the ideology and ideological apparatuses of the French and Affranchis. As such, his early (1804-1806) reigns as emperor of the country was an attempt, like the Africans of the maroon republics who negotiated with the whites and Affranchis during the Revolution, to constitute a new nation-state amidst two opposing worldviews or structuring structures and their praxes, the Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism of the African masses and their leadership on the one hand, and the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism of the Affranchis on the other. Dessalines did not simply attempt to recursively reorganize and reproduce the ideas and practices of the whites as embodied in the ideology and practices of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism as I am suggesting that the Affranchis would do in constituting the Haitian nation-state following his death. Instead, he attempted, with the aid of his lwa mét tét (Vodou spirit), Ogou Feray, to weigh and reconcile the ideals of both worldviews amidst their antagonism as represented by the Affranchis desire for a liberal/capitalist state based on plantation export agriculture, and the subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and komes of the African masses. Conversely, the Affranchis, embodied in the persons of Toussaint, Boyer, Pétion, and Christophe, for examples, like their black bourgeois counterparts in North America and the diaspora, pushed for liberty, equality, and fraternity with their white counterparts at the expense of the Vodou, communal discourse, and Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 37 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator Kreyol language of the Vodou leadership, oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo, who were not only discriminated against by whites but by the slave-owning mulattoes and free blacks as well who sought to reproduce the French language, Catholic Religion, and liberal capitalist (mercantile) laws of their former slave masters on the island. It is not enough, however, to view Dessalines’s discourse and discursive practices along the inverted black-nationalist and pan-Africanist lines of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm-X, Henry Highland Garnet, Martin Robinson Delaney, and W.E.B. Du Bois as highlighted by Susan BuckMorss (2009) and David Nicholls (1979). To do so, would make his position a structurally differentiated dialectical response to enslavement, i.e., an “other” seeking to recursively reorganize and reproduce the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism in a national/racial position of his own. My position here is that his response, like the Africans Jeannot’s and Sans Souci’s positions, was “enframed” by the structuring logic, Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism social class language game, of the masses and their Vodou leadership on the one hand and that of the Affranchis on the other. As such, his movement as highlighted in the discourses of the Haitian oral historian Byyaniah Bello and Vodouizan, Max Beauvoir, was not only racial, but it was also class-based and cultural enframed by the cultural and structural logic of the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism as constituted at Bois Caiman as it stood against the spirit of capitalism of the whites and Affranchis. Dessalines, under the guidance of his Vodou lwa mét tét (Vodou spiritual guide), Ogou, was seeking land and economic reform, racial and cultural pride, and social justice for the African masses on the island “whose fathers were in Africa” at the expense, some believe, of the interests of the mulatto elites and petitbourgeois black property owners on the island who assassinated him for doing so (Dupuy, 1989; Nicholls, 1979; Du Bois, 2004, 2012). As Dessalines declared, “the sons of the colonists’ have taken advantage of my poor blacks. Be on your guard, negroes and mulattoes, we have all fought against the whites; the properties which we have conquered by the spilling of our blood belong to us all; I intend that they be divided with equity” (Dessalines quoted in Nicholls, 1979, pg. 38). This statement of Dessalines was not only rhetorical. In order to commence his nationalization project, Dessalines, following 38 the Revolution, did not seek to recursively reorganize and reproduce the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the French. Instead, he rejected everything that was French, i.e., language, culture, and system of organizing existence, for the metaphysics and practical consciousness of the Vodou leadership who originated the Revolution. He, guided by Ogou, nationalized the land; disallowed whites, outside of the five thousand polish and Germans who fought with him during the Revolution, ownership of land on the island; amidst state owned plantations he allowed the masses land to reproduce their subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and komes; named the island Ayi-ti to honor the Taino natives and African ancestors who spilled their blood during the Revolution; erected a red and black flag to represent the people and the blood they spilled for their freedom as well as the lwa (spirit), Ogou, who, according to the Vodou leadership, directed the Revolution; removed all racial and class distinctions by denoting all persons on the island blacks divided between laborers and soldiers; and sought to make the entire island of Ayiti an independent black nation for all blacks in Haiti and the diaspora via an export trade with the British and the Americans. As Leslie G. Desmangles highlights, [d]uring the first three years after independence (1804-1807) under Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s administration, Haiti was united economically and politically…. At the outset of his administration, Dessalines… divided the citizens of the country into two categories, the laborers and the soldiers. Fearing the return of the French army, Dessalines… organized all those who had actively participated in the war of independence into an army of 25,000 men…. Those who had been on the plantations during the war continued as laborers and cultivated the large acreages the government had annexed from the white planters…. The newly militarized agriculture… produced largely sugar, cotton, and coffee, which mulatto overseers divided according to certain stateestablished criteria…. The overseers were to transmit one-half of the crops to the state: one half of this was used for export, and the other half paid the rent on the land. Another quarter of the total crop yield was retained for the workers’ salaries, and the remaining quarter paid the salary of the plantation overseers (1992, pgs. 38-39). These efforts, i.e., his eye for an eye morality, establishment of an empire ruled by an oungan, Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator honoring the Taino and African ancestors, social justice, communal living, social collectivism, equitable distribution of resources and salaries, and consultation with his lwa mét tét, etc., which the Affranchis deplored as it took away their properties and status, were a by-product of his interpellation and ounganification / manboification via the ideology and ideological apparatuses, Lakou, peristyles, etc., of the Vodou Ethic, and not an arbitrary reaction to his treatment as a field slave. ii In other words, they emanated from his African mind or structuring structure (form of system and social integration), which the Affranchis rejected while in many instances practicing aspects of its religiosity in secrecy. Unlike the creole, Toussaint, who was interpellated and embourgeoised by his slavemaster via the church and his schooling, Dessalines was predominantly interpellated and ounganified/manboified in the language, communicative discourse, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and mode of production of his African parents and Aunt Mantou, who were not reactionary natives to their material conditions. Instead, they were agents of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, which they went about recursively reorganizing and reproducing on the island via the Vodou religion; its mode of production, subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and komes; and ideological apparatuses, lwa yo, lakous, herbal medicine, proverbs, songs, dances, musical instruments, ounfo, and peristyles. They interpellated and ounganified/manboified Dessalines within the aforementioned practical consciousness amidst his interpellation in the Western structuring structure as a field slave, which he would escape from when he turned 30 years of age. Dessalines, following his escape, continued his ounganification/manboification in the African maroon communities of the North under the leadership of Francois Papillon, Jeannot, and Georges Biassou. As such, with his assumption of the leadership of the Haitian nation-state following the Revolution, Dessalines attempted to constitute it within two opposing structuring structures, the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game on the one hand, and the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism on the other, both assuming to represent the nature of reality as such. That Dessalines would go about suppressing elements of Vodou following the Revolution is not on par with what Toussaint and the rest of the Affranchis—with the exception of Faustin Soulouque and Francois Duvalier—would go about doing to remove it entirely from the nation-state. Instead, Dessalines attempted to minimize the effects of political instability and magic done against him by the Petwo elements of Vodou and its leadership as he sought to balance of the two systems (Desmangles, 1992, pg. 45).iii Toussaint, a practicing gangan/dokté fey himself, however, also interpellated and embourgeoised by the ideology and ideological apparatuses of the West, believed that the technical and governing skills of the blancs (whites) and Affranchis would be sorely needed to rebuild the country, along the lines of white civilization, after the revolution and the end of white rule on the island. In fact, Toussaint was not seeking to constitute the island as an independent country; instead, he sought to have the island remain a French colony without slavery. Hence Toussaint rejected the practical consciousness of the Vodou leadership and the masses for the structuring logic of the West and the white Royalists. Although Dessalines’s position would become dominant after the capture of Toussaint in 1802, his (Dessalines’s) assassination by a plot between the mulatto, Alexandre Pétion, and petit-bourgeois black, Henri Christophe, who sought to pattern their leadership after Toussaint, would see to it that the Affranchis’s purposive-rationality would come to historically represent the ideas and ideals of the Haitian quest for independence and the Republic, which it produced. After the death of Dessalines, the country became divided between north and south, and between two rival political factions led by two ambitious men—tyrants who maintained political power solely by military force. Henri Christophe crowned himself king of the northern kingdom of Haiti in 1807 and ruled until 1820; his political rival Alexandre Pétion served as president of the south between 1807 and 1818. Haiti was reunited politically in 1822 during the presidency of Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818-43), Pétion’s former personal secretary and minister…. In both the south and, particularly, the north, the first part of the history of independent Haiti is a story of servitude supported by a militarized agriculture whose government was drawn from the mulatto class. Their despotic rule early in the republic paved the way for the emergence of a rigid new social structure in which former affranchis were Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 39 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator to become an elite distinctly separated from the black masses (Desmangles, 1992, pg. 38). This purposive-rationality of the Affranchis, to adopt the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism social class language game of whites by recursively reorganizing and reproducing their God, language, French, and exploitative ways of being-in-the-world, liberalism and capitalism, is, however, a Western liberal dialectical understanding of the events and their desire (captured in their postcolonial, poststructural, and postmodern discourses) to be like their white counterparts, which stands against the anti-dialectical purposive rationality of Boukman, Fatima, Edaïse, the rest of the maroon Africans who congregated for the Petwo Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman/ Bwa Kayiman, and the subsequent positions of Macaya, Sans Souci, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. (It should be mentioned that many of the African-born soldiers and leaders, such as Jeannot and colonel Jean-Baptiste Sans Souci, distrusted the creole Africans—seemingly because of their desires to be like the whites, vacillations during the war, and ties to the whites—such as Dessalines and Christophe, and in many instances refused to fight under their leadership. In fact, Christophe would murder Sans Souci, and name his famous palace in Milot after him, on the count that he refused to recognize his leadership.). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Following the Revolution, Haiti was marginalized by all the European powers of the time, and fighting amongst the three remaining groups, the mulatto elites, the free black generals, and the African maroons, emerged over the constitution of the new nation-state. The mulatto elites desired the land of their white fathers, the free black generals wanted to maintain their land they had obtained from Toussaint during the early parts of the war, and the African maroons wanted no parts of anything that resembled the old system of slavery or Toussaint’s corvée system. The former two, interpellated and embourgeoised by the ideology and ideological apparatuses of the West, sought to reproduce the same colonial system as their former colonial slavemasters, while the latter and the majority of the population interpellated and ounganified/manboified by the leadership of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism did not. Instead, they went about practicing their religion, husbandry, subsistence agriculture, and 40 komes as enframed by the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism in order to reconstitute the society in a national position of their own. Dessalines, who essentially sided with the grandons, sought to constitute the new nationstate within these two opposing structuring structures. As such in his 1805 constitution he proceeded to divide the land equitably among all those who fought in the Revolution; disallowed white landownership on the island; renounced everything that was French for systems grounded in the experiences of the people of the island; and renounced white supremacy for a Pan-African discourse that would have Haiti become the land for and of blacks (Fick, 1990; Nicholls, 1979; Du Bois, 2012). This constitution of Haiti did not sit well with the Affranchis who desired their pre-war status and wealth, which tied them to the global capitalist world-system. Instead of focusing on fortification of the island, national production, food security, and agricultural production for local consumption as Dessalines attempted to do with his equitable redistribution of land among the population, the Affranchis assassinated him over his land reform and the masses of Africans fled to the mountainsides. With the death of Dessalines, the majority of the productive land was divided among the mulatto elites, who took over their fathers’ land and estates, and the black commanding officers of the revolution. They kept intact the export based economic arrangements which existed under colonialism and Toussaint’s regime with the mulatto elites— because of their status as mulattoes—serving as the middle persons between the nation-state and outside merchants. What emerged in Haiti, following the Revolution, was the same colonial class structure under the leadership of the Affranchis and their adversarial partnership with an emerging foreign white and mulatto merchant class, which assisted in the acquisition of manufactured goods, petit-bourgeois blacks who converted their plantations into agribusinesses, and the Africans in the provinces and mountains whose products were heavily taxed by the emerging nation-state under the leadership of the Affranchis (Pierre-Louis, 2000; Du Bois, 2012). The continuous struggle between the mulatto merchant/professional class and the black landowning managerial classes for control of the state and its apparatuses, at the expense of the African masses in the provinces and mountains whose children they arm and use against each other as they migrate to Port-auPrince amidst American neoliberal policies Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator seeking to displace the masses for tourism, agro and textile industries, and athletics (basketball and soccer) continues to be a hindrance for the constitution of a sovereign Haitian nation-state. The former two, interpellated and embourgeoised in Western ideological apparatuses, seek to constitute Haiti, with the aid of whites (France, Canada, and America), as an export-oriented periphery state within the capitalist world-system under American hegemony against the desires of the masses of Africans in the provinces and mountains seeking to maintain their komes, subsistence agriculture, and husbandry, which are deemed informal. The grandon class, composed of educated professionals, former drug dealers, entertainers, and police officers attack the former Affranchis class, which is now a comprador bourgeoisie (composed of Arab merchants) seeking to build, own, and manage hotels and assembly factories producing electronics and clothing for the US market, under the moniker the children of Dessalines against the children of Pétion in the name of the African masses of the island, the majority of whom are peasant farmers interpellated and ounganified by the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism. Instead of focusing on infrastructure (artificial lakes, potable water, food security, mache—modern market spaces for komes, universities, and stateowned companies for the peasant class to sell, etc.) to augment national agriculture and the productive forces of the latter group, who constitute eighty-five percent of the population, the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks emphasize job creation through foreign direct investment in tourism, agro and textile industries, privatization of public services, infrastructure for an export-oriented economy similar to the one they had under slavery, and the constitution of a political bourgeoisie in control of the state apparatuses. However, their inabilities—given the voting power of the majority—to constitute two dominant rotating political parties to implement the desires of their former colonial slavemasters, leaves Haiti in perpetual turmoil. As in slavery, the African masses continue to fight, against their interpellation, embourgeoisement, and differentiation as wage-earners in the tourism trade and textile factories of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism of these two power elites seeking equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites at their expense, for the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of oungan yo, manbo yo, and granmoun yo of Bois Caiman and Jean- Jacques Dessalines. As the current historical conjuncture parallels the conjuncture of 1791 either a unifying national conference that parallels Bois Caiman or a second war of independence will determine the outcome of this perpetual economic and cultural civil war in Haiti. REFERENCES CITED [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 Althusser L (2001). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press. Beauvoir M (2006).“Herbs and Energy: The Holistic Medical System of the Haitian People.” In Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick and Claudine Michel (eds.) Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, & Reality (pgs. 112-133). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bellegarde-Smith P, Claudine M (2006). Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, & Reality. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Buck-Morss S (2009). Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Cohen J (2002). Protestantism and Capitalism: The Mechanisms of Influence. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Crothers C (2003). Technical Advances in General Sociological Theory: The Potential Contribution of Post-Structurationist Sociology. Perspectives, 26: 3, 3-6. Deren M (1972). The Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti. New York: Delta Publishing Co. Desmangles LG (1992). The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Du Bois L (2004). Avengers of the New World. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Du Bois, Laurent (2012). Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. New York: Metropolitan books. Fanon F (1967). Black Skin, White Masks (Charles Lam Markmann, Trans.). New York: Grove Press. Fick C (1990). The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. Genovese E (1974). Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Pantheon Books. James CLR (1986). The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’ Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Vintage Karenga M (1993). Introduction to Black Studies. California: The University of Sankore Press. 41 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator [17] Marx K (1992 [1867]). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Volume 1, Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Trans.). New York: International Publishers. [18] Marx K (1998 [1845]). The German Ideology. New York: Prometheus Books. [19] Métraux A (1958 [1989]). Voodoo in Haiti. New York: Pantheon Books. [20] Mocombe, Paul C. (2016). The Vodou Ethic and the Spirit of Communism: The Practical Consciousness of the African People of Haiti. Maryland: University Press of America. [21] Ramsey K (2014). The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [22] Rigaud M (1985). Secrets of Voodoo. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. [23] Rubin V (Ed.) (1960). Caribbean Studies: A Symposium. Seattle: University of Washington Press. [24] Smith MG (1960). The African Heritage in the Caribbean. In Vera Rubin (Ed.), Caribbean Studies: A Symposium (pp. 34-46). Seattle: University of Washington Press. [25] Trouillot MR (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. [26] Weber M (1958 [1904-1905]). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Talcott Parsons, Trans.). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Table1. Differences between the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and the Vodou Ethic and the Spirit of Communism in Haiti Differences Language Mode (s) of Production Ideology Ideological Apparatuses Communicative Discourse Power Elites The Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the Spirit The Vodou Ethic and the Spirit of of Capitalism Communism French Kreyol Agribusiness, Manufacturing (Industrial production), Subsistence Agriculture, Husbandry, and Post-Industrial Service and Komes (Wholesale and retail Trade) Individualism, Capitalism, subject/object thinking, Individuality, Social Collectivism, Authoritarianism, racialism, liberalism, private syncretic thinking, property Democratic, spirit of social justice, holism Ounfo, peristyles, dance, drumming, lwa yo, vévés, Secret societies (Bizango, which serve as Church, schools, police force, army, law, police forces of patriarchal family, Prisons, the streets, bureaucratic organization of The society), ancestral worship, alters Vodou magic work Economic gain for its own sake, wealth, status, upward mobility, Balance, harmony, subsistence living, and class perfection Upper-class of owners and high-level executives of businesses And corporations, educated professionals, bureaucrats, Oungan/manbo, bokor, gangan, dokté fey, Managers, etc. granmoun Notes I use the terms, ounganified/manboified, similar to how Althusser utilizes the term “embourgeoisement” as it pertains to the socialization process in the “Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism social class language game” (my term) of the West. Albeit in my usage ounganified/manboified refers to socialization within the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of oungan, manbo, gangan, and granmoun yo. Similarly, as the nation-state system in the West would come under the leadership of agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, the same holds true for kingship organizations of the African tribes and nations. Their kingship leadership and political culture emanated from their socioreligious life, i.e., the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism. During the Revolution, the African leadership was organized around their kingship and African military tactics, which was grounded in their religiosity (see Du Bois’s Avengers of the New World, 2004, pgs. 108-109). It should also be mentioned that the majority of the early leaders were either oungan/manbo themselves or consulted with oungan yo and manbo yo. i 42 Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology V1 ● I1 ● 2019 Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator ii In the Vodou pantheon of 401 lwa yo, Jean-Jacques Dessalines is associated with Ogou Feray. iii As heads of the Haitian nation state, Faustin Soulouque and Francois Duvalier, following Dessalines, openly, incorporated Vodou in their administrations and forms of governance. Citation: Paul C. Mocombe," Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Avenger and Mediator”, Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology, 1(1), 2019, pp.33-43. Copyright: © 2019 Paul C. Mocombe. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 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