Remembering and Forgetting the Duvaliers: Grappling with Haitian Memory in the Works of Marie-Célie Agnant and Dany Laferrière

Abstract:Comparing Haitian media responses to the death of Jean-Claude Duvalier in October 2014 to works of fiction by Haitian Québécois authors Marie-Célie Agnant and Dany Laferrière, this article examines Haitian discourse related to the Duvalier era. First, offering close readings of several articles from Le Nouvelliste and AlterPresse written in the days following Duvalier's death, I discern two different approaches that emerge in relation to memorializing either Duvalier or his victims: on one hand, the duty to remember; on the other, the necessity of forgetting. Turning my attention to Agnant's and Laferrière's works that deal most closely with the dictatorships, I argue that their approaches mirror those of the media. While they both articulate an awareness of the psychological dangers encountered by those who carry either too much or too little memory, Laferrière's narrators find personal freedom in the present by choosing to put the past behind them, whereas Agnant's protagonists believe that only in uncovering the past can a future for themselves or their nation be imagined. The two authors thus approach the history and future of Haiti from very different perspectives.