The Haitian exeption

It is a deeply peculiar phenomenon, Haiti’s ‘popularity’. Marked by qualitative extremes – first successful slave revolt, first black republic, most African Caribbean culture, most dangerous tourist destination, among others – the country occupies a unique place in the collective consciousness of the modern American hemisphere. And it is fair to say that many have been ‘obsessed by Haiti’ over the course of the so-called ‘American Century’, and since. Yet, at the same time, the nation has factored little and only indirectly (that is, without substantive, recognizable agency) in shaping the politics and the policies of a contemporary global order…