" The January/February issue of Radical Philosophy finally arrived. The first article is by the English Badiouian Peter Hallward, who must've written it at least a month or two ago. It celebrates the 200th year of Haitian independence. It can be accessed from my downloads site.
Hallward details seven reasons why we should "take an interest in the [Haitian] revolution". I list them here because what might have been some merely interesting theoretical notes have, in the context of recent events, acquired something like urgent and indispensable value, both for current inhabitants of Haiti and for us:
...2. The achievement of Haitian independence reminds us that politics need not always proceed as 'the art of the possible'.
3. The Haitian revolution is a particularly dramatic example of the way in which historical 'necessity' emerges only retrospectively.
4. Although the process was contingent and unpredictable, the achievement of Haitian freedom and independence was forced through direct action, without mediation of 'recognition', 'negotiation' or 'communication'.
5. The Haitian revolution is a powerful illustration of the way in which any actively universal prescription is simultaneously an exceptional and divisive revaluation of a hitherto unrepresentable or 'untouchable' aspect of its situation.
6. Haiti's revolution is a reminder that such divisive universality can only be sustained by a revolutionary subject. ...one factor above all accounts for the outcome of what became one of the first modern instances of total war: the people's determination to resist a return to slavery under any circumstances..."
a Gauche Mar.03.04
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The question is what's there? Why does anybody as rapacious as the power behind George Bush care about Haiti? Someone mentioned cocaine. That whoever's running the international cocaine trade these days, and God only knows who that might be, is using Haiti as a staging area on the way from Latin America to wherever. That Aristide wasn't co-operating, and so he had to go.
That and his refusal to privatize "major industries", which is what gets offered as the main reason for the coup and invasion.
