Rethinking the Haitian Turn–Beyond the Universality Paradigm and Its Enemies

Abstract

Recent assessments of the literature on the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) offer radically different images, ranging from the identification of a politics of universal human rights to objections against conservative assumptions. The present article instead uncovers an overarching conflict between what is named the universality paradigm and the sceptical responses. However, in the outskirts of the controversy, its participants agree that the Haitian Revolution was the most radical revolution of the period, and that issues of inequality cannot be disregarded. To advance the debate, polarisation must be transgressed and the assumption that universalism and inequality are incompatible must be abandoned.