What Are Robespierre and Télémaque Doing in Saint‐Domingue?

Abstract

Charles Pigault‐Lebrun's play Le blanc et le noir (1795) is one of only a handful of French revolutionary plays to stage the Saint‐Domingue slave rebellion, a rebellion today better known as the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). I argue that Pigault‐Lebrun uses early melodramatic generic traits to develop a theatrical thought experiment revolving around three main themes: humanness, revolutionary legitimacy, and political order. Crucially, Pigault‐Lebrun does so by transporting French revolutionary figures and themes to the colonial setting, which means that his depiction of Caribbean revolt is seen through a distinctly Parisian lens. The first consequence of this framing is an omission of specifically Haitian concerns. The second is a particular infusion of colonial problems into metropolitan discussions. In analyzing this reciprocal transportation of figures and discourse, the article shows how the colonies not only affected the material lives of millions of Europeans but also influenced crucial questions of humanness, societal change, and political order.

Kleist and Haiti: The Haitian Revolution in Heinrich Von Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo

“…In Le blanc et le noir the central question is how to stop a legitimate revolution from evolving into a robespierrian Reign of Terror. Pigault-Lebrun's answer, a timely one a year after the fall of Robespierre, was work and moderation (Kjaergård 2018). Kleist is not interested in proposing solutions to this dilemma but rather in exploring its dynamics.…”