publication

This essay analyses prophetic religious discourses of the famous maroon leader and black prophet-messiah François Makandal of Saint-Domingue who led a devastating slave revolt in 1757 in the so-called prerevolutionary period resulting in 6,000 deaths. It attempts to reread creatively François Makandal’s program of systematic violence against white oppressors in the French colony of Saint-Domingue through Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial theory of decolonization and revolutionary humanism. The goal here is to underscore simultaneously the pivotal role of prophetic religion and the radical theory of “cathartic” violence in the cause of black freedom and independence from the colonial system. The essay establishes the relationship between slavery and freedom in hope that would help us understand historically Makandal’s desired goal of black freedom as well as develop an understanding of his decisive determination to put an end to black slavery in Saint-Domingue. It also engages the Makandalian rhetorical strategies and program of decolonization and black independence through the rhetoric of violence. It projects a creative reading of Makandal’s project of black liberation through the Fanonian logic of human freedom through decolonization as violence. It argues that Makandal envisioned imaginatively a radical project of decolonization and black liberation through the means of therapeutic violence.