Introduction

“The Hemispheric French Atlantic” begins to suture a transatlantic to a hemispheric spatiality by tracing out the movement of texts, figures, and traditions within a complex and kinetic circulatory system that moves beyond the geometric model imagined by studies of the French Atlantic triangle. In tracking the discourses of politics, literature, and anthropology through a hemispheric French Atlantic space complicated by race and slavery, these five literary critical essays focus on the legacies of violence and promise that radiate through time and space from the Haitian revolutionary moment, spiraling across and beyond the long nineteenth century while circling across and around the wider Atlantic world. The forum insists on the inclusion of an extensive and under-studied archive of Francophone texts in our literary histories of the period and field, while also suggesting the need for greater flexibility in constructing the narratives through which we study literature, culture, and politics. They call especially for greater study and interrogation of the role of translation—not just between languages but between geographical locations and political orientations—in the post-revolutionary nineteenth century.