"Dèyè mòn gen mòn": Horizoning as counter-plantation theory and praxis in Haiti

Abstract (English)

A few idiomatic expressions in Kréyòl (Haitian creole) hold a special capacity to condensate centuries of history into rather simple words. Facing personal misfortune (sickness, lack of money…) or collective hardship (flood, drought, militia encroachment…), a Haitian is expected to say “dèyè mòn gen mòn” with a resigned yet resilient tone. The expression means “one thing after another”, i.e., when a problem or obstacle ends, another will surely follow. Literally translated, though, it would mean: “behind a mountain, there’s another”. This speaks volumes of the powerful imagetic appeal of Kréyòl, but also of its rootedness in the tragedy of a people’s experience defending a notion of revolution still to be conquered in its fullness by the Haitians, wherever they might be – within the country, in the urban settings or in the rural world; or outside, in the diaspora.
This paper takes the act of horizoning past the mountains just to find more mountains in the way as an analytical guide to present what some scholars have already defended as a Haitian social conviction: the “counter-plantation” (Casimir, 1981; Barthélemy, 1989). It comes as a strategy to face colonialism and its many expressions and hauntings, demanding constant attentiveness to the efforts and perils of being. The dialogues between captivity-freedom or slavery-revolution take on a powerful meaning in everyday life in Haiti, something that people carry in their bodies in the form of a fear of returning to slavery, and a conviction that it is necessary to flee the many shapes of the plantation by imposing possible alternatives for it (Bulamah, 2018; Dubois & Turits, 2019).
Life in Haiti – especially for those outside the big cities (moun andeyò) – is not organized by the state, or along the lines that many expect or wish it to be. This doesn't necessarily mean that collectivities are “against” the state, but simply that acting within constitutional structures is extremely difficult, which often makes insurrection the only possible measure to effect change (Trouillot, 1991). Condensed in the term dechoukay (“uprooting”), many popular revolts are the stuff of Haitian history – of which the first succeeding one was the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) – and keep a set of references directly linked to the struggles of the past. Seeing that they are still put in motion on the social and political scene in Haiti today, in this paper we analyse the History and Anthropology of Haiti with the aim of exploring these uprisings as eloquent manifestations of a collective act of “horizoning” through a theory and praxis of “counter-plantation”. As Sylvia Wynter (1971) points out, if we glance past the threat to life, we can reach the strategy of survival, the political (and poetic) horizons hidden behind humanitarian.