Revolving Revolutions: Ruptures, Returns, and Repetitions in Haiti and CubaThis article analyzes the usage of the fetishized term “revolution” as a category of practice in Haiti and Cuba in different historical moments. It argues that this keyword often implies and helps produce a temporality of returns and repetitions of various pasts, and not only future-oriented ruptures, as scholars typically take for granted. The sections about Haiti are mostly based on archival research and consider a long span between the late eighteenth and the late twentieth centuries. The Cuban component has an ethnographic character and is based mainly on fieldwork conducted in the island in the early twenty-first century. Engaging with the anthropologies of time and history, interdisciplinary discussions of the idea of “revolution,” and recent anthropological literature on revolutions, the article mobilizes the Haitian and Cuban cases to contend that some modern usages of the keyword “revolution” combine its sociopolitical meaning with the revolving temporality of its astronomic meaning.
KEYWORDS
Revolution; temporality; anthropology of history; Haiti; Cuba