Jason Herbeck, professor and chair of the Department of World Languages, recently published an article in the 26th volume of La Revue des Lettres Modernes’ Albert Camus Series that focused specifically on the author’s posterity. Titled “Haïti et l’intertexte camusien: Au nom de quelle postérité?” (“Haiti and the Camusian Intertext: On Behalf of What Posterity?”), Herbeck’s article gave him a rare opportunity to focus simultaneously on two otherwise distinct areas of his research: Haiti and the French-Algerian writer Albert Camus.
For the past 15 years, Haiti and Camus have made front-page news for unrelated reasons. While coverage of Haiti has focused on the 2010 earthquake and subsequent reconstruction efforts, as well as other natural disasters, a presidential assassination and escalating gang violence, Camus has made headlines in the context of the 50th year anniversary of his death, former French president Sarkozy’s attempt to pantheonize him, and the publication of numerous fictional works inspired from his most famous novel, L’étranger (The Stranger).
Notwithstanding, since the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake, Camus is often cited in the context of the Caribbean nation. Bringing to light the recurrent yet ambiguous relationship between Haiti and the Camusian intertext, Herbeck reveals the diverging images of Camus and his works that have been proposed by the media, bloggers, NGOs and Haitian writers such as Edwidge Danticat and Yanick Lahens. While many references cite Camus in order to evoke themes such as solidarity and resistance, these supposedly universal values are in fact attributed to and assumed by different groups from one intertext to another. The frequency with which Camus is mentioned in the context of Haiti thus has a surprisingly contradictory result. While such intertexts contribute to the author’s posterity, the diverse and at times exclusive perspectives that they reveal also serve to irrevocably complicate it.