HAITIAN SPIRALISM: PRESENT-ING THE PAST IN LITERATURE

What are the limits of history and how do artists and writers create new approaches to narrating the past?  Kaiama Glover and Laurent Dubois explore these questions in their forthcoming translation of Jean-Claude Fignolé’s novel Aube tranquille (Quiet Dawn). Our conversation will center on the artistic movement known as Spiralism, which emerged in Haiti in the 1960s under François Duvalier's dictatorship. Dubois and Glover will discuss the Americas' "history problem," the Haitian Revolution's haunting of our collective human past, and the major thematic and theoretical interventions of Fignolé’s novel.