Nietzsche and Haiti: The Post-Colonial Rebirth of Tragedy

In this article I propose the constellation "Nietzsche and Haiti" for a decolonial reinterpretation of the Haitian Revolution as an emancipatory destiny. In Nietzsche's genealogy I seek for a way of dramatizing history so that revolutionary events acquire a renewed vitality through the alternative modes of emplotting them. It is Nietzsche's dramatization of history, in other words, what I consider most useful for a decolonial reinterpretation of the Haitian Revolution. The post-colonial contradictions of modern freedom, I conclude, are dramatized via the post-colonial rebirth of tragedy, a la Nietzsche, in the Afro-Caribbean reinterpretation of the Haitian Revolution.