Tropical Apocalypse: Haiti and the Caribbean End Times by Martin Munro (review)

Martin Munro's Tropical Apocalypse: Haiti and the Caribbean End Times draws together a number of novels and films that, Munro argues, cast certain cataclysmic events of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Haitian history in apocalyptic terms. Across the book's four chapters, Munro defines apocalypse in three distinct ways: 1) a unique relationship to time in a society marked by ongoing tragedy, 2) the uncovering of traumatic memory, and 3) the almost utopian promise of new beginnings following the end of an era. "Apocalypse" and its adjectival form "apocalyptic" are also frequently used to describe the conditions of poverty and destitution portrayed in many of the cultural productions Munro studies in the book. Though Munro repeatedly nods to the 2010 earthquake that wrought destruction across Haiti, he does not study it at length. Rather, Munro states that this apocalypse "had been prepared for, indeed prophesied to some degree in religious and political discourse, the arts, and culture more generally for decades, perhaps centuries" (1). The major crises Munro discusses are the Duvalier regimes and their effects and the violence perpetrated by the Chimères, militarized supporters of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Munro also discusses phenomena such as evangelical Protestantism and the potentially destructive environment as significant contributors to the apocalyptic strain in Haitian culture.

Munro's discussion of post-Duvalier accounts of traumas induced by that regime introduces a particularly innovative understanding of apocalypse. The book's first chapter makes use of the Greek definition of the term, meaning "to unveil or uncover," to explore works that narrate the repressed traumatic past of the Duvalier years. Munro states, "Narrative is thus a means of invoking the past in order to break with the sense of living endlessly in that time, and memory becomes a means of resistance, a deferred way of challenging the dictatorships and the amnesia that allows the terror of the past to haunt still the present" (40). The apocalyptic action of uncovering memory thus inaugurates a new era in which the past is no longer an endlessly present terror. The chapter turns to four texts that narrate the traumatic conditions of the Duvalier regimes: Raoul Peck's film L'Homme sur les quais (1993), Kettly Mars's novel Saisons sauvages (2010), Edwidge Danticat's novel The Dew Breaker (2004), and Évelyne Trouillot's novel La Mémoire aux abois (2010). With the exception of Mars's novel, each of the case studies narrates confrontations with memory following trauma, depicting the phenomenon as freeing. In the case of Saisons sauvages, Munro argues that Mars's portrayal of the regime's horrors serves as a warning and a defense against the return of dictatorial rule.

In the second and third chapters, which discuss the presidencies of former priest, liberation theologian, and populist politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Munro's close readings use "apocalyptic" to describe catastrophic, dystopian, or surreal descriptions in the films and novels he analyzes. Titled "Utopian Ends: Aristide and the Apocalypse" and "The Chimères and the Haitian Antihero," these chapters describe the troubling figure Aristide presents in Haitian history and culture. Aristide's radically egalitarian rhetoric was initially seen as the beacon of a new, post-Duvalier era in Haiti. However, these dreams were dashed when Aristide's supporters inflicted widespread violence upon Haitian society and were themselves unable to escape conditions of poverty. The novels and films Munro examines (including Lyonel Trouillot's Rue des pas perdus [1996], Raoul Peck's film Moloch Tropical [2009], Yanick Lahens's novel La Couleur de l'aube [2008], and Charles Najman's documentary Haïti, la fin des chimères? [2004], to name only a few) certainly represent a dystopian urban Haiti that appears perpetually on the brink of both tragic destruction and utopian rebirth.

The fourth chapter of Tropical Apocalypse does not focus on a particular apocalyptic event but rather addresses two distinct ways in which nature emerges as a force both...