Postcolonial Mythologies: Jean Metellus and the Writing of Charismatic Memory

Abstract

The movements for cultural and political emancipation that led to the abolition of slavery as well as the independences grew out of a charismatic scenario, which in this essay means that the struggle for freedom was centered around a charismatic figure. Postcolonial mythologies are thus to be understood as an attempt to re-appropriate decolonization through the formulation of a new imaginary in the postcolony. The present study intends to analyze, from the writings of Haitian writer Jean Metellus, the process of mythification (of historical heroism, the crystallization of the founding figure of Jean-Jacques Dessalines as a catalyst of new existential, historic, and symbolic legitimacies. The strategies of marginalization set in place by postindependence authorities, the contemporary context of failure that lends credibility anew to the nostalgia for these messianic figures, and the limits of postcolonial mythology constitute the main points of this study.

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