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4 The Haitian Revolution and Radical Visual Politics Jacob Lawrence, Kimathi Donkor, and the Cultures of Philately I have in the first section of this study sought to argue that a radical and original ensemble of writings, heterogeneous in medium, voice, and tenor, can be read as consistent in their ambition to recuperate the Haitian Revolution by mobilizing history as the carrier of their transformational, revolutionary messages. To elaborate the argument further, I now turn to the visual arts, in full knowledge that a proper discussion of the more than two centuries of iconography relating to Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution merits a book-length study of its own.1 I have therefore chosen to focus on two radical artists—one well known, the other less so—whose original and radical works contest the inheritance of overtly racist images of Toussaint and negative misrepresentations of the Haitian Revolution and its consequences—as well as representations of Toussaint and the revolution on commemorative stamps. These images, which are among the most important visual images generated by the Haitian Revolution, form a radical constellation of artworks that elucidate newly revealed affinities between the aesthetic-historical objects with which this study is engaged, and they enhance our understanding of how the tradition of imperial denigration has been contested. The first part of my discussion in this chapter focuses on the renowned African American artist Jacob Lawrence, whose work thematically, temporally, and politically complements the quartet of Black Atlantic radicalism inspired by the Haitian Revolution: Aimé Césaire, C. L. R. James, Langston Hughes, and René Depestre. In particular, the aesthetic creations of Lawrence and Césaire can be seen to share an ideological kinship. Lawrence, born in 1919, and whose early development took place within the milieu of the Harlem Renaissance, also demonstrates 78 Radical Recuperations affinities with Langston Hughes as well as the impact of Haiti on Harlem . Then, the visual language in the paintings of the lesser-known, but highly accomplished, contemporary black British painter Kimathi Donkor is discussed, since his paintings of Louverture and the revolution speak so powerfully to the major themes of this project and are particularly relevant to the current cultural currency of the memory of the Haitian Revolution in contemporary Britain. Finally, the chapter addresses the subject of memorializing Toussaint on commemorative postage stamps, a medium that has for too long been unjustifiably ignored in serious scholarly work on visual representations of black power and slavery. In his discussion of the six stamps produced in Britain in 2007 to commemorate the bicentenary of the Slave Trade Act, the critic Marcus Wood claims that the commemorative stamps “were without doubt the most widely viewed and widely disseminated visual art connected with the slave trade ever to be produced. They have been seen by both sexes and all ages, they have penetrated every continent , and given the prevalence of electronic messaging for most of the world’s population, they have been sent to many of the most underdeveloped parts of the globe, where email and the cell phone have yet to arrive.”2 Thus, taking my cue from this statement of the ubiquity, availability , and global reach of the postage stamp, and acknowledging that stamps have always been used to market nation states in particular ways, I comment in the final part of this chapter on the idea that the iconography of Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution generated within the genre of philately, contributes to the semiotic field accreted around the cultural legacies of the Haitian Revolution. The discussion of commemorative postage stamps also brings into focus some of the overarching questions this project raises: How, why, and in what contexts might Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution continue to be silenced or overlooked in scholarship and public awareness? Why might the historical fact and concept of the self-liberation of slaves remain invisible in some quarters even if it is not any longer unthinkable ?3 I am proposing that contrasting Toussaint’s representation on the commemorative postage stamps of Haiti, Cuba, and Dahomey (Benin), with the striking nonrepresentation of black agency on the 2007 British postage stamps celebrating the bicentenary of the British abolition of the slave trade, goes some way to answering these questions. I argue that Toussaint’s presence on (and absence from) commemorative postage stamps from diverse locations within the twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury Atlantic world highlights both Toussaint’s privileged status as [18.222.163.31] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 18:16 GMT...

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