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Intimità e cancellazione: Haiti e gli Stati Uniti, da rivolta degli schiavi a sogni di libertà

This article explores the existence of a double history of the Haitian Revolution in the American imagination: one is a history of hope and one is of fear—hope for freedom for the enslaved, for black self-determination and citizenship, the promise of humanity for the dehumanized and fear of slave uprising and revolt, terror of violent retribution against white Southern slave holders, and a resulting demonization of Haiti as a free black state. The demonization of Haiti by powerful white politicians, writers, and culture brokers in the U.S. continues to this day, to the extent that a narrative of negative exceptionalism has come to characterize Haiti. Haitian exceptionalism is mirrored in American exceptionalism, a view that sees the U.S. as unique among nations in its embodiment of freedom and democracy. These dual exceptionalisms – one remarkably negative and the other remarkably positive – hold sway in the popular imagination of Haiti and the U.S. today, and reinforce the idea that the two countries share little in common with one another. But that notion is incorrect: Haiti is not only geographically close to the U.S., but shares with the U.S. a deeply entwined history, dating from the eighteenth century, when each of these two American colonies saw world historical anti-colonial revolutions that catapulted them to independence.

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Autori: 
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
titolo rivista di riferimento: 
Saint-Domingue/Haiti: l'altra Rivoluzione americana
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