4.0 NATIONAL POETRY AND FATEFUL POLITICS: THE WORK AND LEGACY
OF MASSILLON COICOU
4.1 INTRODUCTION
To begin this chapter I return to the bicentennial publication I referenced in my
introduction, the series of articles on Haitian literature, history, and culture, published in 2006
under the title Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks and edited by
2004 conference organizers Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw.^242 These editors
reflect in the study’s introduction on the events in Haiti of 2004 which included not only
bicentennial celebrations but also the political upheavals which ultimately resulted in President
Aristide’s exile. National failing, unending violence, and cyclical instability, they note, once
again seemed to characterize the Haitian plight.^243 Munro and Hackshaw-Walcott rightly
observe in the frenzy of media coverage of 2004 that “Haiti,” as in 1804, was subject to much
interpretation and misinterpretation, especially in the Western imagination.
Where, then, is the truth of Haiti, its history, its intellectual traditions, its culture?
What were, what are the cultural repercussions of Haiti’s revolution, in Haiti and
elsewhere? What role has culture played in shaping Haiti’s history, and
conversely, how has Haiti’s history determined, inspired, liberated and restricted
(^242) Munro and Walcott-Hackshaw.
(^243) Munro and Walcott-Hackshaw ix.