Raising the living dead in postrevolutionary Haiti: Glory, salvation, and theopolitical sovereignty in the kingdom of Henry Christophe

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay deploys the notion of the political zombie as a lens through which to examine the symbolic, metaphysical, and spectacular dimensions of the Haitian kingdom of Henry Christophe. I argue that divine-right monarchy provided a political theology through which to dignify the contradictions of what I call “abolitionist sovereignty”: that is, the virtual re-enslavement of the people on the part of the state in the interests of preserving territorial sovereignty and the abolition of colonial slavery. Analyzing the king’s coronation liturgy in the context of the history of French colonialism and its revolutionary overturning, I reveal how the monarchy imagined the mutual superhumanity of the sovereign and the people through supernatural tropes of glory, salvation, and spiritual nobility. Moving past the illusions of the universalization of rights, Christophe promoted a program of spiritual, material, and economic regeneration in an elusive effort to raise the living dead of slavery.