Overall, I found that I enjoyed Alejo Carpentier’s novel, The Kingdom of This World, the most out of any text we have read so far this term. Not necessarily for any definable reason, although my cynical side wants to say I liked it because it was short. Regardless, it was interesting to read about Latin American history from the perspective of a French colony instead of a Spanish one. I do not know enough about the history of Haiti to know how much involvement the Spanish and French portions of Haiti had with each other, but this novel is obviously situated amongst the French half of the island. This might just pertain to this particular novel, but the political and social differences were made much more apparent than in previous texts we have read for this course. Previously, colonial and political realities were more obscure and less clearly defined than in The Kingdom of This World. The Underdogs is a good example of this. While the text concerns a deeply political event, the Mexican Revolution, the exact motivations and goals behind the violence are very opaque. Most characters involved barely seem to know why exactly they are fighting or who they are fighting against. As I said, this might simply be a coincidence of the texts I have read, but I do find it interesting that Carpentier himself was not from Haiti. From what I can gather from my super thorough Wikipedia research, he was in Haiti for the Revolution, but he entered it as an outsider. Therefore, it is easier to understand how he could have approached writing about the Haitian Revolution from a more academic perspective.
As for the text itself, I was very interested in how it compared colonial appropriation of the land and the people with how Macandal fused with his environment. The way in which “the one-armed [is] everywhere” evokes a mindset more akin to a spiritual connection to the land (Carpentier 24). Once again, I do not know the history of Haiti well enough to know if there was a native population there when it became a colony and if there was, what became of it. Whether this population was incorporated into the slave population or not, I can’t help but wonder if Indigenous spiritual philosophies inspired this line of revolutionary thinking. While this early foray into the possibility of a more reciprocal relationship to the land, the later events of the novel lay bare the violent realities that accompany pleasant revolutionary ideals.
Question: How much does an author’s origin affect their ability to write about somewhere else?
“From what I can gather from my super thorough Wikipedia research, he was in Haiti for the Revolution, but he entered it as an outsider.”
But from what you can gather from my lecture, he was in Haiti over a hundred years after the Revolution! NB also the island as a whole is Hispaniola, and the French half is Haiti; the Spanish half is the Dominican Republic. Before it was Haiti, the colony was called Saint Domingo.
Also in the lecture, I mention that the native population on Hispaniola (and basically across the entire Caribbean) was effectively exterminated very soon after the European arrival.
Meanwhile, yes, Carpentier does indeed perhaps show better the realities of racial exploitation and injustice, as a spur for the subsequent revolution. But how then to explain that exploitation continues even afterwards?
Oops, I think autocorrect messed up part of my message… As I say in the lecture, the French colony was Saint Domingue, not Saint “Domingo.”
Hey! I liked how your post highlighted the significance of a French perspective rather than a Spanish one. It’s unusual to associate Latin America with a Franco influence, and I found this to be one of the main elements of intrigue for this text.
I also found myself comparing this text to Azeula’s the Underdogs, since while both go over revolutions within their countries and have a similar “every-man” origin of perspective, they have a much greater multitude of differences in significance and meaning. I think an author’s origin only effects the text if what he is writing about is foreign to him. That is to say, the more an author brings themselves up in the context of what they wish to write about, the less foreign and ‘outside’ their lens on the topic will become.
Hi there,
thank you for sharing.
To respond to your question, I think the origin of an author can effect their writing of another place in a good way and in a bad way. For the good, it can offer an outside perspective that, with great research in both academic and humane elements, can provide a very thorough written work. For the bad, if not dealt with great care and consideration, it can be disastrous and almost inhumane.
A question that may be of interest to further this conversation is what does it take for an author to identify and embrace a historical narrative that is not their own in order to write something ethically representational?