Opaque Aesthetics of Freedom: Romaine la Prophètesse, the Haitian Revolution, and Black Diasporic Possibilities

Abstract

The Haitian Revolution—the famed historical event that redefined the liberatory possibilities of modernity and altered Black diasporic subjectivities—offers a wealth of knowledge that has yet to be fully analyzed. This article explores the diasporic and queered possibilities embedded in the story and aesthetic representation of the revolutionary actor, Romaine la Prophètesse. This liminal figure of the early revolutionary era galvanized thousands of formerly enslaved people to fight against the French colonial apparatus while embodying a feminine, creative, and spiritual gendered subjectivity, diverting from the overdetermined masculinist and militaristic ethos of the time. Nonetheless, most accounts of Romaine are tangentially mentioned and do not explore the rebellious possibilities of this historical figure’s imaginative gendered presentation. To counter the analytical impasse imposed by Western and authoritative archives and methodologies, the author employs a “radical interdisciplinarity”—a crucial Black studies approach—to unearth the potential of creative genders and their role in upholding Black diasporic epistemes of freedom and resistance. Paying attention to Haitian abstract art, and particularly the work of Haiti-born, Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist Manuel Mathieu, the author explores how his pieces blur temporal, spatial and ontological registers offering a glimpse into undecipherable, yet affective, genealogies of “freedom dreams.” Indeed, through the use of a conceptual frameworks that honours the “right to opacity,” the author suggests that the obscured mythology and the abstracted aesthetics of Romaine la Prophètesse allow for a genealogical reading of queer spiritual ontologies that are part of larger Black diasporic freedom epistemes and that are demonstrated through contemporary Haitian queer designations and advocacy work.