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Isaac Louverture’s Mémoires: A Nineteenth-Century Representation of Black Masculinity in the Name of the Father
- Nineteenth-Century French Studies
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 39, Number 1 & 2, Fall-Winter 2010-2011
- pp. 11-32
- 10.1353/ncf.2010.0034
- Article
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Isaac Louverture’s 1818 memoir, when read in tandem with the memoir (1802) of his father, Toussaint Louverture, offers a nuanced representation of black masculine subjectivity and agency—one that elegizes his father’s legacy while simultaneously rewriting an episode from his father’s narrative. Within the context of the events in Saint-Domingue prior to independence, the son’s memoir suggests the possibility of a different dynamic between black and white men in part by calling into question his father’s account of the latter’s relationship to Napoleon and Saint-Domingue’s relation to France. (afs-a )