The Force of Farce: Emperor Soulouque and the Art of Racial Caricature

• In Event: Insurgent Imaginaries

Abstract

This presentation takes up the theme of insurgent imaginaries in a negative sense, examining anti-insurgent imaginaries. It considers what happens when images are used to quash and disarm insurgency and blunt its political effects. Here imaginaries are deployed as a form of counter-insurgency, one that aims to hamstring upstart movements by delegitimating, silencing, and marginalizing them.

Faustin Soulouque was inaugurated as the President of Haiti in 1847. He was installed by an oligarchy of mixed-race elites to quell an improvised, grassroots rebellion of rural peasants. These poor Black farmers called themselves The Army of Sufferers in recognition of their poor, destitute condition. They had won a number of victories against the Haitian military and were marching on the capital. As a Black army general who had been formerly enslaved, Soulouque was thought to have the right profile to appeal to the insurgents, while also being controlable by the men who engineered his election. To their dismay, however, he proved adept at outmaneuvering them, taking control of the Haitian state and declaring himself Emperor.

Those attempting to silence this subaltern had the last laugh, however. Emperor Soulouque had the misfortune of taking the throne as a rich tradition of caricature was developing in France. Artists like Honoré Daumier and Amédée de Noé were achieving celebrity for their pointed political cartoons. Disguised as humor, these images landed powerful political punches while avoiding the censorship of the Bonapartist state. Satirical publications like Le Charivari ensured their wide circulation and were a vast popular success.

For reasons that are unclear, Emperor Soulouque became a stock character in these publications. He reappeared frequently in absurd situations with buffoonish behavior. He was portrayed as simple, oafish, and having delusions of grandeur. This character assassination went hand in hand with Soulouque’s appearance. Daumier and Noé, the artists who caricatured him most frequently, revealed themselves to be great innovators in racist caricature. They rendered Soulouque absurd not only as a buffoon, but also as a racialized, bestialized colonial subject.

I argue that these early forms of racist caricature had a very particular place in the history of postcolonial politics. The potent conjunction of racist representation, postcoloniality, and the new satirical press made possible great innovations in postcolonial subordination. The public sphere adopted new functions of subordination to replace those swept aside by the end of colonialism. What used to be accomplished through whips and chains was now translated into more subtle form. The caricatures that attacked Soulouque as a racialized and postcolonial figure implicated not only him but all all citizens of Haiti and the former Caribbean colonies, as well as all members of his “race.” In short, these new techologies of subordination denigrated and delegitimized entire categories of people. This categorial delegitimation rendered them silent even when they were in plain sight. Their assertions, claims, ideas, and aspirations were stripped of value by the force of farce. This new genre of postcolonial subordination proved to be a substantial “improvement” on the older, colonial ones. It was cheap, easy to conceal, much more effective, and operated on a vast scale. With postcoloniality, technologies of subordination reached entirely new—and very contemporary—levels of development.

Author

• Kevin Olson, University of California, Irvine