 Hi everybody, I don't know if you can hear me, we're just waiting for our attendees to go in to arrive. Let me give it a couple of minutes. Welcome so much. Hi everybody, if you've just joined us, we're just waiting for a couple of us. We'll begin shortly. We're just waiting for everyone to join in. Thank you, tech support. Everyone, we're just waiting two more minutes and we're gonna start this evening's session. So we go ahead. Well, good evening everybody. It is my utmost pleasure to welcome everyone to join us tonight for this fascinating set of presentation and panel discussion on Suzanne Verture as part of the Soras Festival of Ideas and in celebration of Black History Month here at Soras and in the UK. It is a rare and indeed real treat for me to share this space with World Expo from Toussaint Louverture, Charlotte Lucia, Charles Fosdick, and Gabriella Beckles-Raymond and with you all remote attendees. We have people checking in from all corners of the globe, although globes don't actually have gone corners, as is fitting for a man of such historical stature and global significance as has Toussaint Louverture. I'm so happy to welcome firstly, Charleau Lucia, storyteller, poet, and digital artist, whose work has been published in many magazines and newspapers for a storytelling just for us on the scene. Charleau is the founder and director of Haitian Artists' Assembly of Massachusetts. She has developed a fascination since his childhood, vacationing and riding horses in rural Haities and imagining failed Toussaint taming wild horses. He has painted representations of Toussaint Louverture over the years, twice visited his cell in Fol-de-Joux in France, written poetry, told stories and offered lectures, unsuccessfully thus far coordinated an effort to have a street named after Toussaint Louverture in Massachusetts and helped organize several art exhibitions about Toussaint Louverture in Boston. After this, we will commence a panel side of the event. With our first talk from Charles Fourstick, Charles is James Byron Professor of French at the University of Liverpool. He has published wildly on travel writing, colonial history, post-colonial literature, comics, penal culture and the art of life of slavery. He is also a specialist on Haitian and Haitian revolution and is co-author of Toussaint Louverture, a Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolution and co-editor of the Black Jacobins reader. A former co-director of the Center for the Study of International Slavery, he co-edits the Glissant Translation Project for Liverpool University Press. Then I will speak. My name's Jo Davis and I am a literary theorist currently working with liberation discourses across a few centuries and across a few continents, particularly Africa and African America. I like to focus on anti-slavery and race solidarity in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and I am also a writer of fiction. Finally, Dr. Gabriela Beckels-Ramons will give her presentation, Revaluing the Power of Storytelling, Stories of a Post-Iestero Appearance. She will approach the subject from a Black feminist perspective. Gabriela will consider the power of storytelling rather than the relationship to Black feminist theory. Gabriela has 20 years of national and international experience in education. She is an interdisciplinary philosopher, writer, educator and strategic consultant. Gabriela's research and academic writing focuses on the philosophy of race and gender and is particularly concerned with questions of intersectional ethics, education and moral psychology. As a burgeoning children's book writer and member of the Black writer skill, Gabriela is passionate about ensuring young people see all of us respected in the literature we read. She is co-convener of the African Diaspora postgraduate seminar at Birkbeck University and co-founder of the Black Thought Collective. She works program lead for Canterbury Christchurch University award-winning theology degree partnerships. So some excellent people and an excellent evening's discussion. After the presentations and the panel lists have spoken, we will have time for questions and people will please back to ask you to put your questions into the Q&A function rather than using the chat function for questions otherwise the questions will be buried in comments and so on. So please do feel free to ask your questions as and when you have them and we will address them as soon as we can. Any observations? All right, then, shall we all over to you. Thank you so very much, Joanne, quite a pleasure to be with you from Massa Shoesets in New England, coincidentally. I am going to do what I call using stories to tell part of the history of Haiti or using history to also tell some stories about Toussaint, about Haiti, about Toussaint-Houverture in particular. I'll be sharing some PowerPoint slides and in between I will interject a few stories. Now, if I, as a Haitian person, have to talk about stories or storytelling, I first have to think about those folk tales that I used to listen and enjoy during my childhood, especially in rural Haiti when it was dark, when we have as a child to experience the fear of the Lugau, those flesh-eating monsters. When I came here in the U.S., I experimented more with the storytelling in the genre of anecdotes and the personal stories I joined a few groups after the Haiti earthquake of 2010 that wanted to use storytelling to help raise funds for Haiti. So this is both the cultural and the practical part where storytelling was used for humanitarian reasons and also to help build cultural bridges. So let me share some slides about Haiti here since we're going to talk about Toussaint-Houverture, who was named Man of the Year 1802. So I'm trying to bring you into the landscape of Haiti, Land of the Mountains, as named by the native Indians that were there before Christopher Columbus. Here the wonderful Citadel Henri Christophe, Christophe I, one of the Haitian leaders who entertained significant relationships with Britain and envisioned at some point being closer to Great Britain than to France or than to the U.S. Let me tell you how Toussaint would have heard what you know to be Toussaint being named Man of the Year in 1802. You'll take Consideré Toussaint-Houverture in Saint-Domingue as equal with George Washington or Jean-Paul-Léon Bonaparte. That's a Haitian-Korean translation by Professor Michel Degas, a linguist at MIT who's Haitian. And some of you who speak French may have picked up a few words. But what you heard was what was literally written in the annual register in 1802 Toussaint-Houverture was considered an equal to Washington or Bonaparte of Saint-Domingue. And then the man was fitted to be the principal instrument of restoring the Negro race to freedom and independence. Viewed in this light, undoubtedly the most interesting of all the public characters, which appeared on the great stage of political events for the present year. So this is the actual quotation. Man of the Year actually is from Hoshield, Barry, the chain, and thanks again to Professor Matt Carlin from the University of Texas who was able to actually dig the information for me. So this is in that context that I got interested to talk about Toussaint-Houverture. Let me share also as a Haitian person something that was tracking. It took me to move here in the U.S. to understand that the history of Haiti is still buried into archives, into bookstores, into libraries in the U.S. in Spain, in Great Britain because our history was written primarily by French scholars or witnesses who had their own take on Haitian history. So when I came here and started to learn about the abolitionist movement in the U.S., I realized that more digging needed to be done for me as a Haitian person or for Haitian students to understand. Listen to Malcolm X in 1963 when you want to tell me about black heroes, tell me about men who fought for freedom, tell me about Jean-Jacques de Salin and Toussaint-Houverture and Christophe, men who fought and bled for freedom and men who made others bleed. So what makes Toussaint-Houverture unique so that we have to understand him and tell his stories? We'll come back to that. You would understand that between the year 1791 up to 1803, that Toussaint-Houverture, 1802, Toussaint-Houverture would be the leader of the revolution in Haiti that was going to successfully defeat the Spaniards, the British troops and the French troops. That Toussaint-Houverture, if you think of him, was the first one to force friends to abolish slavery in 1793 in Haiti. That, for example, randomly, we can pick a few firsts that the United Nations awarded, a special award to Colonel Richard Prosper, a Haitian who investigated rape crimes in Rwanda. They found that Toussaint had the first official document furnishing of death. Soldiers found guilty of using rape as a spoil of war. We found that Toussaint now has statues in more than 60 cities on three continents. We found, as we first again, that back in the late 1800s, that John Adams has, for the first time, dispatched warships for the first time of the history of the US Navy history to lend some support to a friend nation. So there are those kind of firsts that would tell us that we are dealing with a very exceptional person. Now, if I was with you in Haiti under some of those mango trees where we tell stories, I will shout off you something like click. And I would expect all of you to reply to me as you group crack. I was just opening the door for a story. And before I start with a story, I will maybe share some of those funny Haitian riddles. I would tell you click, you would tell me crack. And technology is our limitation here. I have four feet. They serve me food morning, night, and days. But I never eat. Who am I? Has someone tried an answer in the chat room? Maybe yes. Maybe no. So in this case, after Yong Tu Sen would have attempted a few responses, his godfather Simon Baptiste would tell him to say we are talking about the table. So these are the riddles that are part of the way for Haitian storytelling to start before you get into the story. In this case, I would tell you click. And again, you wouldn't tell me crack. And my story is how Yong Tu Sen became at once African king Daugino and the Greek while he was part of this and Haitian abolitionist at Tu Sen Overture who makes opening. They were both sitting by the fire under the mango tree near the small hut where they live. Tu Sen Overture, Tu Sen Prada and his godfather Simon Baptiste. An old slave who's been living forever on the brader plantation in the northern part of Haiti. Nobody knew his age. Nobody knew that much about where he was born. He was telling Yong Tu Sen about the story of his ancestors about Africa. Tu Sen, you know, back in Africa, we have those animals that you would never see here in San Domingues. We have the roaring lion that can chop the head of a man in one bite. We have those huge, those humongous elephants that are as big as the house of the master on the plantation of Prada. We have those ferocious tigers. We have those snakes that can wrap themselves around the bull and kill the bull or that can swallow a man in one bite. Tu Sen was intrigued. But tell me, tell me, godfather, what do they look like? At this point, Simon pulled a book. It was one of those publications that were left in the house, in the master's house, and that came from friends. Nobody knew that he could understand but he knew some, he had some reading. He took the book and started to flip the pages. One by one. Look at this, Tu Sen. Now this is a lion. Repeat. Le lion. And Tu Sen was repeating the lion. And this is the tiger, the tiger. Now look, what is this letter, Tu Sen? Tu Sen has been learning the alphabet for quite some time. This letter is S. S-like? S-like, the serpent. Yes, the serpent, Tu Sen. Watch out. They are all over the place and you will find serpent in this colony. He was intrigued, Yong Tu Sen. But tell me, godfather, if you tell me that those lions, those elephants, those tigers are so mean, how come you are not dead? How come they didn't beat you alive? Tu Sen, you know, in Africa we had to learn to become lions and to roar like the lions so we don't show fear. We had to learn to become tigers and be ferocious when we were in danger. And we have to learn to be those snakes and lay low in the bushes waiting until we can get to our praise. Let's continue. Let's continue, Yong Tu Sen. Tell me something else that starts with S. He pulled under the book and showed the pictures of the great great warrior Spartacus who had defeated there for years the Roman armies. Now, tell me, what's this letter? S. S. Spatakis. Tu Sen couldn't say it well but he loved and he told him godfather, I love, I love Spatakis. I want to be like Spatakis. Come on, come on. Quiet down, Yong Tu Sen. Now it's time to go to bed. It's getting late. What do you say? Thank you very much, godfather. And how do you say that in your Creole language? And how do you say it in your Dahomean language of your ancestors? And Tu Sen couldn't answer because he was still learning. Tu Sen went to bed with stories and images and shadows of great lions, of elephants, of great snakes, and of Spatakis. He woke up in the morning and called his four friends hey, hey, I'm going to be Spatakis this morning and you are going to be the Roman soldiers. One of those stick and they started to fight. Tu Sen was swinging, he was ducking, he was hitting but Tu Sen back then was a frail and small, so he found himself cornered against a tree. I'm Spatakis, but his friends were mocking him. Tu Sen fought Rabaton, Tu Sen the walking stick, he can be Spatakis. Come on, but Tu Sen felt and swinging and digging and pushing, he escaped out of his friends and jumped on the horse and galloped and galloped and galloped. Tu Sen back in the days at the age of 12 and 13 was already known as one of the best horse riders in the savannah. He was the centaur of the savannah, the centaur de la savannah. But Tu Sen didn't have his ways only with horses. His ways with the livestock with the bulls. It started one day when a wounded bull wouldn't let anyone approach him. So Tu Sen went behind a tree and slowly waved a piece of sugar cane to the bull. The bull slowly came close to the tree and while Tu Sen was hidden behind the tree there was a bull shoe on the sugar cane. He audaciously tapped on the horns of the bull was able to rub some papaya leaves on the wound and slowly dropped a rope around the horn of the bull and tied it to the tree. Not too far, his young friends were in awe were applauding. Not too far, the commander of the plantation was very tired and decided this young man I'm not going to send him into the fields. I want him to stay in the plantation and I'll give him some work to do with the livestock and to manage my affairs. And that's how Tu Sen from his childhood sent 1743 up to the later 70s up to the later 80s was going to spend years of his life on the plantation never working hard in the field but all the while he kept a secret every night he was having nightmares wild beast from Africa wild lions, wild tigers, wild snakes running from Africa and coming right here into the colony to create havoc. He was also hiding another secret because he had learned to read. He would from time to time pick up some of those books that the master would leave in the house and go through these books looking at pictures looking at reading about Maximus about the great Alexander about Julius Caesar about military war and battles. It was until 1781 when he came across one particular book l'histoire des deux endres the story of the two India by Abbey Reynald who had proclaimed but where is he who is he the great Eau Noir who will come to free his slaves when will he rise to take away his slaves where is he this great black hero who will stand up for his race and remove his race from the chains and from bondage to send and understood that all the while his Simon Baptist his godfather has been preparing him to become the black spot who deliver and free his brothers his racer from the chain to say understood that when the French came when the British came when the Spaniard came to rap to trap and to swallow him and his race they had to stand up and to be the revolution to be and to make the revolution to say had already mastered the fighting with the stick with the sword to say had already learned how to roll like a lion how to hide as a chameleon has to be aggressive like a tiger or how to dispatch this I mean to be the tiger when he couldn't be the tiger or how to lay low and to melt and to become like the bushes or to stand on the ground and wait until he can get to his prey to say became the master of the crossroads so in 1793 Toussaint was already the Spartacus the rebel slave and Toussaint was already the great warrior from Africa from the home of Gauguinot his grandfather Toussaint understood and decided that no way that any French Spanish British commander would ever get on his way to glory as the first man in Saint-Domingue and to push for slavery to be abolished in the America that was going to be his destiny that was going to be his faith that story I learned I mastered and someday in 1815 as I found myself on an island the Saint Helena rock where Napoleon Bonaparte was imprisoned where Napoleon was going to died I saw Napoleon and said look Napoleon Bonaparte how come you also foolish not to collaborate with Toussaint and take credit for the abolition of slavery Napoleon Bonaparte looked at me mad and gave me such a kick in the behind that I jumped all the way from St. Helene and landed right here in London at the University of London to tell the story the story of how Toussaint became the great African warrior Gauguinot and the great warrior Spartacus that's how I can usually as a storyteller get my son Sebastian or my daughter Malaiqa when they were a child to start understanding the importance of Toussaint and understanding how he was going to be a reference for so many so let me go through these slides again to bring more about Toussaint first late 1798 1801 Toussaint was already having correspondences officially as a French officer but with enemies of friends John Adams you would find that as I was mentioning before at some point in the spring of 1800 he will find he will send actually five warships to support Toussaint in his fight again rebel mulatto leader André de Gauguinot I also want to make a pitch now that my colleague Charles is going to talk about Toussaint and connection to England but I as I mentioned before came to understand the impact of Toussaint on the US and in the Americas in general here's one example one of his great admirers was Frédéric Duglas Frédéric Duglas has studied Toussaint Frédéric Duglas was able to advocate for Abraham Lincoln but he had to enroll the blacks into the Union so that they could actually fight against the Confederates because he was such an admirer of Toussaint has delivered speeches about Toussaint throughout the 1840s the 1850s when he became in 1889 the ambassador of the US to Haiti to a specific mission by President Benjamin Harrison to convince the Haitian government to sell a power of Haiti to become a naval base he foiled he sabotaged basically this mission because he didn't want to be part of any attack any encroachments on the sovereignty of the country that was the first black republic in the world of independence to Frédéric Duglas now guess what what was supposed to be a naval base in Haiti the idea was actually carried somewhere else and that's how this naval base became Guantanamo in Cuba John Brown I want to again mention John Brown was this great abolitionist who fought and brought together both black and whites in New England to Virginia to advocate for the abolition who was ultimately captured and then trialled and killed in 1859 again they found among his men when he died pamphlets, literature writing about Toussaint Louverture because they were using the Haitian revolution and the history of Toussaint Louverture in order to motivate blacks to join into the rebellion and into the fight I keep telling you about Toussaint Louverture but Louverture where does that come from quite a strange name now those of you again who speak and understand French you know that Louverture means the opening his initial name was actually Toussaint Breda of the name of the habitation where he was born I got this letter actually from Toussaint Louverture a while back and that was the letter where he was telling me about the story of his name now Louverture of course Louverture made it into history Louverture became history and Louverture in itself is a story I Louverture heard that some scholars have been passing the idea that I am I named myself Louverture because I have this gap in between my teeth a gap this gap actually I got them into battles they are part of the 17 wounds that you can find on my bodies 17 wounds in battles as I battled the Spaniards between 1791 and 1793 when they thought that they could enrol me into fighting the French and then dominate the island 17 wounds that I got into battling the British troops between 1794 and 1798 when they thought that they could trick me into becoming some kind of king in Saint-Domingue on behalf of his Majesty so I can turn against the French 17 wounds in battles as I battled the French to prevent them from reinstating re-establishing slavery in Saint-Domingue and as I was battling I found myself sometimes trapped sometimes surrounded so I have to call on the tactics of guerilla war that I learned from Simon Baptiste my godfather that he passed on to me that's what they were doing in Africa I knew about the terrains I knew how to escape when this surrounded me thinking that they are going to destroy me and my men I found a way to escape when the Spaniards sent Jean-François after me to kill me I found several times to escape because I thought that they had me cornered and about to be beheaded I heard I heard that my commander General Lavaux I heard that I was escaping that I was able to make an opening into my enemies and to escape and he exclaimed this man then he always find a way to create an opening how come I learned and I appreciated the comet I decided to ditch my slave name of Toussaint-Réda and I became Toussaint Louverture I became Louverture because I have to create an opening into the slave system to allow my brothers and sisters to become free men I became Louverture because I have to create an opening to allow for freedom for abolition for emancipation to find their ways into the heart of the slave system in the Americas and into the US in particular I became the opening because I have to make sure that I got into the mentality of my brothers and sisters from the 19th century up to the 21st century that slavery is not always about the physical part it's also about mental so this letter was sent to me by our very Toussaint Louverture as I have to explain again to my kids that behind every single word or every single name there was an explanation when you talk about Toussaint Louverture I am transitioning to what I was mentioning earlier the impact of Toussaint Louverture on the abolition movement I like to among so many books I like to refer to a very specific books sent to me by professor Matt Calvin which again made the case for the impact of so many extensive lectures, newspaper articles biographies during the 1840s 50s and 60s on Toussaint Louverture and get closer if you can remember a book such as Roots by Alex Ali if you can remember Paul Robertson if you think about C.J.R.L. James all of those documents and materials were going actually to mention the role and impact of Toussaint Louverture how he became the inspiration to most abolitionists in the US and then some of the rebels Turner, Denmark Veze John Brown Charles Sumner how he was going to become an inspiration to black soldiers of the 54th regiment in Massachusetts now some of you may have seen this extraordinary movie where Morgan Freeman and our friend Denzel Washington were among the lead characters and that was the story of this 54th regiment where Douglas had convinced Abraham Lincoln to admit those blacks to become part of this fight against the south and as a result when they enrolled these first 900 men they have used Toussaint Louverture as a model as a leader that they should emulate and this is how you found that the first officer of the 54th regiment he would name his son Toussaint Louverture Delaney you will find that within this regiment you will have several battalions that call themselves Toussaint or Toussaint C-W-O-C-E-N-T-S or Toussaint all kind of variations you will find that between 1863 16465 you are going to have maybe towns in Vancouver North Carolina, Arkansas Michigan calling themselves Haiti you will find that there will be hospitals and cemeteries of black folks named after Haiti I will only name Wendell Phillips and you can go and look at this quote how praiseful they were of Toussaint Louverture and what has been the legacy I will quote too first of all Toussaint was captured during a ceasefire where he was invited to a so called administrative meeting with General Brunet it was a trap he was captured put on a boat called Le Héro funny coincidence the Héro where he pronouns those words in French in French in French in French in French by overthrowing me you only cut the trunk of the tree of Liberty it will spring up again because its roots are deep and multiples one of the roots was surely this was the guy that Toussaint was seeing in his dream Desaline will pursue the independence war and then brutally chase out of Haiti that was one the second legacy I usually like to mention is Haiti and the Louisiana purchase of the U.S back in the 1803 so by then Toussaint Louverture was dead it will be on April 7th, 1803 and Toussaint Desaline was pursuing the independence war in the meantime Napoleon Bonaparte plan has been all the while to re-enslave the blacks in Saint-Domingue and then use Saint-Domingue as a stepping stone to amass his troops and then get into the U.S. and reclaim Louisiana and its territories so Louisiana was officially in French territories and he hasn't been able to occupy Louisiana so the plan was to use Haiti and from there to invade into the U.S. so Napoleon set his 60,000 troops to re-establish slavery and they met with the fierce resistance, the very war of Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Desaline Henri-Christophe General Pétion they literally lost 60,000 troops and they lost 19 generals in Haiti as a result, Napoleon not being able to carry his plan had to give into a proposal by Jefferson to sell Louisiana now Louisiana and its surrounding territories was sold for about $15 million in today's money that's what it took and that was for the sale of 827,000 square miles in this famous purchase called the Louisiana Purchase the most lucrative listed bargain in history the size of the U.S. in 1803 literally literally doubled from the Midwest all the way into the western part of the U.S. so these are the type of information and facts that we in Haiti wouldn't know about since our books are written in French and we don't have access to books in English and that also don't make it into the educational curricula here in the U.S. since there is no appetite there is no interest into propagating this type of history remember again right after the 1804 independence of Haiti was subjected to an embargo by the U.S. and by countries in South America which it has helped but also by the entire European countries because they didn't want it to be known that the Negro of Haiti Jean-Jacques Desalines have organized that their slaves to inflict the most painful defeat to one of the most powerful armies of that time the army of Napoleon so we can certainly tell more about Toussaint-Vertier here but I will end with a few with one short stories the last battle and we are now on November 18 1803 Rochambeau the French general has gathered the remaining troops of the French army on top of Vertier where he was hoping that by then Napoleon would be sending more troops from the 60,000 troops already dead or that potentially the British will dispatch some French some warships from Jamaica to help support the white men no it didn't happen that way Desalines gathered his general he called a mountaineer he called Capois Desalines by this afternoon I hear that Rochambeau is holding on top of the Vertier hill by this afternoon I want you to take your men and to give a frontal assault charge to the hill I don't care how many horses that you leave on the field I don't care how many dead bodies you leave on the field I don't care how many bullets but by the end of this afternoon I want to see Rochambeau his troops his officers and his attack dogs all buried under the hill when Desalines spoke you obey and that's how Capois found himself on his horse yelling at his African troops forward forward his troops followed from the top of the hill they literally started to rain cannonballs and bullets on the Haitian troops since they were in an open field there were men on the ground horses on the ground there was black blood red blood spilled all over at some point when bullet pierced the heart of Capois Lamo he touched his head he was still alive he raised his sword forward by then the cannonballs were directed directly toward him from the top of Vertier at some point the cannonball hit his horse and the men and the horses both fell on the floor in a bloody mass by then the French officers were already screaming and yelling in joy we got him on this cannonball we got him the negro no they were sorely mistaken from under the bloody mass of the horse suddenly rose a bloody Francois Capois with his sword up and yelling again to his men forward forward in an extraordinary turn of event Russian body French general got the drums beat had a white flag up they wanted to send emissaries to present their compliment and admiration to the black general who had just covered himself with glory who had just showed what bravery was all about we heard from history that those emissaries went down trembling and shaking because they expected to be eaten by those black cannibals no they opened ranks they were allowed to express the so-called admiration and they went back to the fortress on top of Vertier and the combat and the fight resumed luckily Washambo was able to manage to escape down the hill and found some British warships waiting on the coast of Haiti that took him back to Jamaica on this day the French lost battle that was going to finally confirm the upcoming independence of the island of Haiti and Capois Lamo gained a Francois Capois gained a new name who was no longer Francois Capois he became Capois Lamo meaning Capois to death so with this story my friend Joe I think that I would leave it here and would be happy to share with my other colleagues panelists thank you very much wow thank you so much that was beautiful I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say what an amazing bonus to listen to you yeah in fact next our next person to speak is Charles for us there Charles are you ready to speak now I'm ready well in that case our hands straight over to you great thank you very much Joe and thank you Charlotte it was absolutely fantastic and brought that history really alive it's probably worth saying that I first came across Charleau's work not as a storyteller but as an artist and the painting I first discovered of his was actually behind his head while he was talking the magnificently atmospheric image of Toussaint Louverture in his cell cashier l'histoire hidden from history so it's a real pleasure to speak on this panel it's a real pleasure to follow Charleau I want to begin with that passage that Charleau shared with us in in Haitian Creole translation which I thought was particularly apt and that's the text from the London annual register in 1802 which as we've heard described Toussaint Louverture as the major public figure of the year and a great man it's a remarkable text and we can speculate on the reasons for it by that stage as Charleau said Louverture had been arrested he'd been whisked away to France where he would die the following year at the Chateau de Joux but that was counter-intuitively in some ways a moment of great visibility of Toussaint Louverture in Britain and that's a visibility epitomised by words with sonnet that some of you will know the sonnet to Toussaint Louverture written in the same year 1802 where he describes Toussaint the most unhappy of men alone in some deep dungeons earless den and he goes on to say nevertheless man's unconquerable mind now I think we can speculate about the interest of the annual register in Toussaint Louverture let's not forget Britain was still five years away from abolishing the slave trade itself and I think that that interest is possibly more in a character who had challenged the authority of Napoleon who had so riled the French that Napoleon had sent this army to to crush him and Charleau referred there to Louverture's martial prowess and we know that in the 1790s he held at bay at various times the French, the Spanish and the British he engaged with the US on a diplomatic front all in the cause of universal emancipation his aim was to push liberty, equality and fraternity to limits that were largely unimagined in France itself in its own revolutionary moment and were certainly not imagined in the United States what interests me though to start with are these links between Britain and Haiti which have been largely forgotten and I'm really grateful to this panel for bringing them to the fore we forget for example that between 1793 and 1798 there was a British expeditionary force that occupied parts of Saint-Domingue it suffered as did Napoleon's troops substantial losses as a result of disease and warfare it was forced to abandon its plans to colonise Haiti for the British now these are as we know events that are rarely mentioned in British history books but that entanglement of Britain and Haiti continued especially in the reign of Henri Christophe so 1811 to 1820 when the two courts, Haitian and British were closely linked and in recent years it's only been occasionally that Haiti has been referred to in a British contest so if you think back to 2007 the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade Haiti only very rarely came up and it's as if in that year there was more of an interest in the end of slavery as a sort of philanthropic legislative process not seen as the result of years of resistance on the part of the enslaved the Haitian-American anthropologist Michel Rolf Trouillot wrote in the context of Haiti about the silencing of the past and I think we see systematic evidence of this as if Haiti and its revolution so troubled the order of the late 19th and early 20th centuries so troubles the contemporary world order that there's a need to disavow or deny their impact so what was so incendiary about Haiti and its revolution the Martinican Emma Césaire said Haiti is the country where black people stood up for the first time affirming their determination to shape a world free world and I think it's important to remember that that process was a dual revolution it was an assertion of the agency of the enslaved to seize emancipation from those who would deny their freedom and humanity and as Charleau has demonstrated as such it was a major inspiration globally not least in the US in the 19th century at the same time though that the revolution was an anti-colonial struggle it was a war of independence and decolonization so what we see in the events in Haiti at the end of the 18th century is this entanglement of enslavement and empire and we also see a post-revolutionary reality which is a deeply complex one Haiti is arguably the first example of a nation state that is both post-colonial and neocolonial at the same time neocolonial in the sense that France the former colonizer imposed on the country a crippling debt in 1825 in return for recognition of independence a debt that it took over a century to reimburse and a debt that contributed to the systematic underdevelopment of Haiti in the 19th century so Haiti is post-colonial and neocolonial it's an inspiration and a warning and it's no surprise as Charleau has demonstrated that it became such a major model for anti-colonial struggles in the 20th century with Toussaint Louverture as the key anti-colonial icon within those processes now when we talk about Toussaint Louverture and Charleau has just perfectly demonstrated this we're drawn into a complex set of circumstances and details we're drawn into the area of myth and legend as much as we are drawn into the area of traditional history and anybody who wants to understand Louverture has to navigate that terrain to grasp his historical impact he is a deeply complex figure not least in his attitudes towards governance in Haiti during the time of the revolution Louverture imagined universal emancipation he imagined the end of enslavement but his view was and this is at least until the end of the 1790s that Saint-Domingue or Haiti should be part of a francophone commonwealth a network of sister republics equal in status so he wasn't firmly an independentist until perhaps the end of his life the impossibility of that sort of relationship seems to have dawned on him by 1801 in his constitution when he names himself Gavner general for life setting himself on that collision course with Napoleon that Charle has so eloquently described let's not forget though that Louverture's principal aim was to defend the gains of the revolution and protect those gains against external progression now here we get into another complexity part of his solution was the establishment of a plantation system with the movement of the formerly enslaved closely controlled this was resisted his nephew Moise led an uprising against him in 1801 and Louverture executed his own nephew some people see him as the black Robespierre now C.L.R. James in the black Jacobins describes Louverture's flaw his fatal flaw as that inability to articulate his aims to the people and he certainly was this man of great contradictions who wrestled with complex impulses throughout his life now I mentioned James because he saw Louverture as the subject almost of a Shakespearean tragedy and this is where I want to finish because we're reminded as Charle has shown us that Tucson Louverture's afterlives depend on processes of storytelling they allow new perspectives on the revolution they allow us crucially to integrate the Haitian revolution into debates in the present and I think it's been fascinating over the past few months to see how Haiti and its history have been revisited in the context of the global Black Lives Matter movement so memory is crucial here and what we see is Tucson Louverture represented across languages across cultures, across media, across genres and that there's this remarkable corpus Charle referred to it of material that re-figures Tucson Louverture and his fellow revolutionaries in a whole range of contexts beginning in Haiti itself going via abolitionism in the US via the Harlem Renaissance Negritude, Pan-Africanism, the anti-colonial struggles of the post-war period through Black Power to the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement now I think it's really appropriate that Louverture should feature in that way across languages and cultures Charle has reminded us that he was multilingual, he drew together traditions he blended Catholicism with Vaudu, he was a medic who combined African and Caribbean and European forms of medical knowledge and crucially I'm a modern linguist and I always remember that Louverture spoke French and Creole he read Latin he was taught by the Jesuits he was taught the phon language by his father, he was this incredible shape-shifter and they say he had a magical capacity and Charle has demonstrated this to move around the island to appear in unexpected settings in Haiti today there's still this belief in his supernatural qualities so what I wanted to share with you and I shall finish here Joe is that idea of Tucson Louverture as this man of contradictions a translatable figure into multiple contexts open to multiple interpretations often contradictory ones and what fascinates me with him is that the afterlives of this character Tucson Louverture are still very far from over thank you thank you so much Charle also a very beautiful discussion I almost want to call for questions guys we please feel free to place any observations interrogation recommendations or questions into the Q&A function I have about a hundred already but it's my turn to go on and speak my own participation in the evening so in the course of my research on the English works of the Rev. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. who did not actually propose independent African colonies but preferred to remain in America, but was engaged in discourse with these gentlemen throughout his entire life on the subject. So I was interested in finding out what Reverend Sorge knew about these men, because my hunch was that Sorge was himself a proponent of independent African colonies. And as I shifted through archives, so-called nascent pan-Africanist discourses of solidarity grinted through the 19th and 18th century as intermittently did Toussaint-le-Verture. It soon became clear that racial solidarity was inherent in the global philosophy of the culture of that time and even from earlier. A solidarity between workers and slaves broke the declaration of the vice of man, Liberté et Valité, fraternité, which extended to all men, black and white. And in an 1840 speech, the Reverend Dr Henry Hyland Garnett, famous not least for his entreaty to slaves to rise now and fly to arms, recognized new virtue of significance in this counterculture and teleogy and highlighted Francis' need to atone for the murder of La Auverture, as he calls them, him. Moreover, Garnett named La Auverture with his co-strategist. Men whose faces in a global network of anti-racist philosophy must be acknowledged. Now, I had never heard the name of Toussaint-le-Verture in South Africa under apartheid, as indeed for many other countries, knowledge of black precedence or excellence, especially military precedence and excellence, was excluded from normal experience. Words worth a poem which Charles has just mentioned was not in Toussaint-le-Verture, was not in any anthology I read, and nor that of John A. Gard, who responded. However, Le Verture was brought directly to bear on the philosophy of South African liberation movement as we learn in C. L. R. James' forward to the 1980 edition of his book The Haitian Revolution, The Black Jackabins. James relates one of the most remarkable experiences of the book which occurred in Ghana in the celebrations of 1957, when some South African pan-Africanists explained that the book and this edition they had had been of great service to them. A white professor alerted him to this copy in the university library suggesting that they may find it useful, they told James. They expressed it took from his book Toussaint-le-Verture's handling of the mixed race identity and affiliation. The class affiliations of differently raised people constituted a significant issue in South African decolonization because the apartheid system actually legislated rewards and rights according to likeness of skin tone in what was called a tricameral parliament or three tiers of race entitlements which needed to be dismantled most carefully. So that tools experience became the South African experience and benefit. What is striking is that in this context, when no black and proud section in library where scholars could seek out such text existed, where a book like Black Muti was banned for the radical challenge the diaconic meaning of its title posed to the race depends the status quo, not understanding that its subject matter was in fact a horse. The book still worked. The Black Jackabins were fought, catalogued, shelved, read and passed to the right hand. Copies were made and shared, discussions held and meaning construed which spurred the development of liberty in South Africa. Equally striking is that the relevance of the outcome in Haiti is intertwined and twinned to the rest of the colonized territory because repression, colonial repression was replicated almost exactly in different parts of the world and liberation strategists in those countries faced the same ruinous walls, inclusion and torture with no regard for life or physiological and bodily integrity, sociology, history, culture, religion, economy as had those in Haiti. To face this terror and went through with words is what I quickly discovered about the genius of Toussaint de Verture. His tactic was to trade in words, words in his arsenal are commodities stacked in an order purchasable in life and physiological sanctity in longevity. He used language to accomplish his objectives, even in the face of thunderous armies renowned for mercilessness. This strategy was to build power, not to estimate others. He gave speeches, wrote letters exploiting every available persuasive opportunity in language to its fullest extent. This strategy outmaneuvered his opponents time and again in negotiating for arms, men, horses, shelter, safe passage. Each time the offer of having an ear bent was extended and if taken up a simple exchange of loyalty enabled the opponent to swallow the ranks of his army. This is the statesman Toussaint de Verture was, statesman and military strategist. He was so vehement a brinkman, laying his life and heart at the forefront of any ultimatum. He would die sooner than be slaves once more, he implores everyone. He had the courage of his conviction. He would call a bluff even with the lives of his sons, who were in French Guardian leadership and it appears once were used to try to seduce him. Toussaint de Verture faced all this and he prevailed. On behalf of millions and many times it was his verbal acumen and his strength, which others had lost or forgotten, which carried the motion. Later, he reminded people who were already free, defending their freedom to the death after it was attained. He implored them and swore that he and every soldier with him would fight to the death of their continued freedom and sovereignty, never one without the other. Valar and his might were incendiary and infectious. He had the courage of his conviction and it worked. He did not look to see it, but he did achieve his objective and also the greater objective in which personal ambitions outside of the realm of the racialized context zone, unseen by the national narrative to do with love, movement, entrepreneurship, life were allowed to flourish. Of course, the words did not always work. And once he had threatened to fight to the death, he had to be prepared to do it. Which meant a total devastation laying waste to all the means of production and any option of survival. Crops, livestock, humans, let's be forget the context of war is terrible. Violence and mayhem accompanied this conviction actually lasting 15 years. It must have been exhausting. Indeed, here we are some three centuries later. Respondency may have begun to set in both Adama summer circle in 2013 and Wally Schoenke in 2014, lamented in public vectors, the unpredictable religious wars which disrupted and threatened to derail the gains made by transnational pan African anti colonial I was shocked. But they're wary fears are well funded. Others accused the AU are failing its citizens, especially in maternity care where the MMR is still sky high and women's safety not guaranteed safety is paramount. In the paper I heard that the cof 2018 insist that the actual building of the AU was to blame funded and erected foreign money to look inspiring. It lacks African myth. It lacks bone to me. The citizens are removed from the local of the people. The recognition of land from colonial rule does not lead to change on the scale which the bang god prefers. In conclusion. I would like to consider what to say the virtual means to me now in 2020. And it must be first and foremost to have the courage of my conviction to remain steadfast, the bold of demand and daring to name my problem directly unequivocally and to use words to achieve my true objective, not the derivative or cousin. Secondly, to constantly question who is I'm free. How so even should the answer be myself. Then I would remember to strategize strategize that into something better to invest in and invent the future. And finally, never ever to give up. But even after death, true commitment will be held up and cause inspiration for others. And that is the end of me was now like to invite Gabriella to present her. Hi, thank you so much and good evening everyone or good morning good afternoon wherever you are. Thank you for having me here to participate in this wonderful event. And I must first give a disclaimer I'm in no way an expert on to some of the two. But there's a certain serendipity about this moment because the first Caribbean history book I read was the black Jackabins. And that story remains an important source of inspiration and the struggle for intersectional justice. And so I come to this space to explore the power of storytelling as a liberatory tool. And actually, I was intending to be all very academic and talk about the relationship between storytelling and black feminist theory. But yesterday I watched the address of Bayesian Prime Minister Mia Motley delivered a pivot event. And although the use of technology is at the heart of this initiative, Motley emphasized the importance of what she described as cultural confidence of valuing our rich cultural heritage and the assets we have as both a source of the big ideas the moon shots as she described them needing needed but also as the disruptive force necessary to overcome the historic and current legacies of slavery and colonialism. Motley articulated the process of developing cultural confidence in both structural and familial terms, and I'm paraphrasing slightly but she puts it like this. It's part of our development part of our growing up as adults we make choices that are consequence and there are consequences to those choices. And to that extent, our family, our parents are extended family and our community helped nurture us in the choices we have to make close quote. I related with my own work on home which argues that home is a site of freedom and resistance personally and politically. And so it's in this dual sense that I wish to frame my remarks about the power of Caribbean storytelling today. Because storytelling is one of the fundamental ways in which we nurture our children to prepare them for adulthood. Storytelling is the vehicle through which our values and more is a transmitted storytelling will be our children's first exposure to language to literature to cultural expression. And as such the stories we tell our children or fail to tell them in the context of our homes will be the first line of resistance to systematic domination and also the first introduction to the kind of cultural confidence Prime Minister Motley referred to. So here I'm using the term storytelling in its broadest sense the production and dissemination of the stories narratives myths and legends that give meaning to human life. Thus storytelling for the purposes of this talk just includes everything from anecdotes shared around the kitchen table to epic visions of Africa futurism. And again the formal mode of transmission is understood broadly here encompassing oral written and digital formats and the curation of cultural artifacts and museum galleries and on Instagram and Facebook and other platforms that shape our narratives and storytelling. So storytelling of the as the groundwork of freedom I want to invoke and at least three ways epistemological cultural and spiritual. And I want to do so from the perspective as an academic parent and burgeoning children's book writer. So let me begin with a begin with a brief story. When I had my own children my mother was clearing out some stuff and gave me a couple of children's books that she discovered from when I was a child. It was called Going Swimming by Jill Smith published in 1980. The second was called The Present by Beryl Gilroy published in 1975. The juxtaposition of these two strikingly encapsulated the importance of storytelling and children's books for people of the Caribbean diaspora. Going Swimming is one of those children's books designed to help children cope with common. What was striking however the illustrations. They were dated obviously but I was taken aback to see that the African Caribbean and Asian people in the story drawing gray. At one level given the aesthetic of the illustrations it's understandable as the use of color lack sophistication and the European people are literally white. However to see us grayed out like that made me think of what impact that might have on my own self image my own interest in books, my understanding of the world I live in. And I want to just hold up the picture to see if you can I don't know if you can see it well but in the corner here that's a Caribbean person just in gray I don't know if that translates over. But anyway, so Gilroy's book was clearly a sweeping attempt to address any and all of these questions and to give voice to a different social and cultural sensibility. In the 24 pages she covers themes of race class gender family breakdown bullying and more and the illustrations are deliberately lifelike depicting us with a rich color palette. But I'm conscious that she was a lone voice in the literary landscape of my childhood. This little walk down memory lane was brought into sharp relief the few years later when my son brought home a book from school in which the illustrious illustrations mirrored those in the book going swimming. Painted in watercolors the people of color although not literally black and white had an eerily gray washed out tone that gave a similar impression of them being less significant. The subject of a kind of cultural erasure present in the going swimming but I had read as a child almost 40 years prior. What was equally disturbing was the realization that the range of counterfactuals children's books like Gilroy's with depictions of us are almost as rare now as they were back then. The 2018 survey of ethnic representation in UK children's books by the Center for Literacy and Primary Education found that of the 9,115 children's books published in the UK the previous year, only 391 just 4% featured a black Asian or ethnic character. And in only 1% was that main was that a main character. So most books with a BAME character and pardon that phrase because I don't like to use it but that's from the study featured them only in the background. So like groundbreaking barrel Gilroy and pioneering children's book writer and publisher Verna Wilkins and many other black mothers before me, I decided to write my own children's books. Unfortunately, my efforts won't be published before my own children are old enough to won't be published before my children are too old to read them. But what does this generational issue of our marginalization in children's literature mean for storytelling more broadly. The issues here are multiple and complex obviously. So I use the time to highlight a few that immediately spring to mind. So first, it underscores the epistemic challenge before us. I immediately think of not just the question of representation or the epistemic or the epistemic violence of silencing an erasure of philosopher Christy Dawson calls our attention to. But the necessity of an intersectional analysis as it pertains to our epistemological value systems that we must resist the exclusion of a dominating paradigm that privileges the written word over oral traditions that we must grapple with the epistemic dynamics of exclusion that are an inevitable feature of most of the mechanisms that enable stories to be told that we must consider the ways in which women's voices and stories are marginalized, even within the context of our own historical and cultural traditions. We create a space for the culture of a Nancy, for example, modern life where our time and emotional resources are stretched beyond breaking point on a daily basis. Where do we find a space for storytelling of any kind. I'm particularly conscious of the damage as a parent now as a conscious of the damage being done to my children as together we navigate the British education system and the need to amplify our own cultural heritage. But skilled storytelling is not easy, not all of us have the gifts and talents of Charlotte has shared with us today. And I can honestly say you will never see me performing a story of any kind hence choosing to write instead, but I recognize that luxury is that writing is a luxury of my own professional background I'm a person engaged with other kinds of writing. So how else can we shape the epistemological landscape our children encounter. Well, as you can imagine I immediately wrote in my son's reading record instruct in the teacher to more carefully consider the cultural racial and gender narratives in the literature sent home. There are more structural things that parents can do to disrupt the system that marginalizes and erases our stories, pressuring schools to include a more diverse range of literature, extending our inclusion beyond black history month and pressuring publishers to print and distribute the work of African Caribbean authors. We can also focus our energies towards the life with legacies of freedom figures like to St. Libertier and Nanny of the maroons inspire through our toilet through our telling of these Caribbean stories and indeed global stories. We can define epistemic and cultural value in our own terms by prioritizing storytelling as a valuable and enriching cultural practice of freedom for to give voice to one's own stories as a fundamental active agency. Such as part of what Suzanne Scaife and Lee Dunn articulate as a post diaspora subjectivity. This post diaspora sensibility speaks to that as they call it the rhizomatic construction of our own subjectivity, recognizing the power of feminist African Caribbean women's agency. The rhizomatic rejection of hierarchical approaches storytelling then need not be about the great his or her historical figures of our past. One of the ways in which we could invoke the power of storytelling is by sharing our own experiences current and past with our own children just as conversation. We are our cultural heritage and the authors of our own his and her historical narratives. And third, we can move beyond resistance to freedom and creativity, such that the power of storytelling is embraced as an extension of our spiritual expression of joy for even as our stories will and must include the trials and tribulations of our past and present storytelling, I think is an act of love. I think it requires that both speaker and listener be fully engaged in the moment, if not something fundamental to the process of storytelling is lost. That kind of engagement moves beyond whatever particular storytelling talents we might individually possess to the essence of what it means to meet another person with all of your being mind body and soul in a moment of deep connection. Although such connection need not be familial as we as as we have experienced here this evening. I discovered that one of my husband's tales about his childhood in Trinidad brings my more joy to our children and anything that have ever watched on screen or read in a book, partly because my husband's a good storyteller but don't tell him I said that. But more so because it's rooted in the kind of love I'm suggesting here. It is a way of as he would put it making the mundane miraculous. And ultimately what I want to convey is that such love transmitted through storytelling is itself both an act of resistance, but also a way in which we can show our children the joy and power of storytelling on our own terms in the spirit of storytelling. Thank you. Hi, sorry about that. I always get confused with the buttons. Thank you so much Gabrielle. That was a very interesting addition to our discussions this evening. And I actually have no questions in the question and the Q&A box. I'd like to invite all of the participants this evening to reveal themselves and to put their videos on so we can see all of ourselves in each other. I have to start leading a question with something which to me is very interesting which is the notion of disruption, which Gabrielle just mentioned disrupting the storytelling received master narratives in order to pose the equivalent value of our own. Would anybody like to comment on that. Well, Joe, Joe, I'm happy to go right ahead. And I think all three of you have talked about the disruptive power of storytelling disruption of master narratives, a disruption of dominant historiography and I think that's what we see with the story of the Haitian revolution silence disavowed, which which when recounted becomes this this major challenge to to even accounts of world history, particularly in the age of revolutions that the point I wanted to make about disruption is that but even with to some of the tour. There are there are alternative stories which disrupt the hagiography that emerges about him and there are three three forms of disruption really interest me one of them is focus on the other heroes of the revolution. I've always thought that there's sort of an acceptability to to some of the tour, which is not there with this and this is more disruptive in this sense, his story is more disruptive than that a little bit to the other disruptions I suppose around different different ways of recounting the Haitian Revolution, particularly the Haitian Revolution from below and CLR James in 1971 at the Institute of the black world said that if he were to rewrite the story of the black world, he'd probably just have a walk on part. So the other forms of disruption and the other aspect that really interests me particularly triggered by Gabrielle's intervention. It's thinking about gender here. A lot of the Haitian Revolution or about the male heroes. We don't talk about Cecil Fatimou, who was the voodoo princess the Mambo at the but the boy came we don't talk about Catherine Flon, who was the seamstress who so the first Haitian flag. So I think we can see a storytelling as this form of disruption, but often we need to disrupt that storytelling from different perspectives as well. I had Mr. I'm sorry, I'm getting it now. One quick comment that I have again, it's that the story what people assimilate is usually what you get from the perspective of who wrote the story or fed the story to your Haitian scholars who are going in good fifth to try to present pieces of information pieces of data, or who are going to interpret history. So in that vein, again, what Charles just mentioned is true in a way that Desaline as one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution has been left beside or in the dark, until we start nerthing information about what he did. One of his famous proclamation in 1806 was called a proclamation Liberté Egalité, and a famous sentence is when Desaline he says, we give them back blow for blow outrage for outrage. I've avenged America and I have to respond to nobody but to myself and to my conscience. I was responding to a certain narrative that was being propagated in the US and in Europe that Desaline, whom I called earlier the tiger was a blood thirsty tyrant. And as a result, whatever cruelty outrage in human treatments that have been inflicted upon the slaves upon the Haitian troops. But there was no comparison when you looked at what he was doing himself. So the narrative was clearly created to destroy the reputation of Desaline and to make Europeans being the nice folks that were just to help. I also share Charles views here. And one of the things that I try to do now with my own storytelling is to unhurt information about Cecil Fatima, about Marie-Jeanne Lamontiniere, who was one of the sheers at the Battle of the Cretapyrus, of so many others so I can actually bring them upon. Storytelling is also for me, by the way, about also painting, because the painting that I create of the three on name elements of the Haitian revolution, the cultural part, the dream. The religious and spiritual parts represented by the Serpent Damballa, which is revealed in Africa. And finally, the silhouette of an unnamed woman. So I gathered all of those pieces together in one painting and got them to actually present the oath to freedom. So, yes, it's about deconstructing established marketing and creating new narratives to share as storytelling with new audiences. And thank you for that. And I'll just chip in a couple of comments. I think one of the things that we need to think about when we're talking about this disruption is also this other term that we've kind of used a lot this evening is that really appreciating complexity. And one of my concerns, in particular, with the kinds of relationship between power and narrative and storytelling is that when we're in a kind of antagonistic position or a position where liberation is the aim and freedom is the aim. We're in a political climate where there is a reductionist approach to narrative and storytelling such that the stories and the ideas and the kind of way in which we're interpreting the world around us is reduced to various kind of simplistic stories and that there's really really part of this resistance is the need to be able to grapple with the complexities as Charles kind of rightly pointed out. And for me, part of that happens through that process of storytelling and really getting our children and indeed ourselves accustomed to accepting and being willing to sit with complex stories and complex characters characters that for which there isn't a simple answer to who's right and who's wrong and an obvious villain. And when we really look at what in a way what makes Liberty's story so fascinating but also so relevant today is really holding on to that complexity and seeing him and those around him as figures who encapsulate our human realities as multifaceted beings who aren't as simple as good and bad and right and wrong and evil and that we encourage through our storytelling, you know that that willingness to hear that life isn't as simple as our politics often times might suggest that it is. I couldn't agree with you more Gabriella and I was really distressed also to when you were talking to imagine the picture, the grain of your of the characters you were talking about. And I actually have experienced critiquing exactly the kind of children's literature and books that that you're talking about. But I've never looked at pictures. I'm a word person so actually I hadn't noticed that great issue. I'm going to go back and have a look myself and that needs to be addressed instantaneously yesterday. There's, there's a question in the in the question box for you Gabriella. Would you like to go ahead and answer straight away. Thanks everyone for enriching presentations. Gabriella I really enjoyed your presentation and I agree with you about the importance of stories and storytelling to our children. What do you think about today's news that the government is effectively criminalizing discussion of white privilege in schools at a time when the black lives matter is making, I think I mean movement is making inequality more visible. Would you like to answer that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah and it's such an important question. I think one of the things that it's important for us to appreciate is that the media that has been able to amplify the black lives matter movement today. And by these concerns that we have, I think there's a kind of narrative building that somehow we're in a fundamentally different moment than we have been at other historical moments in history. And I'm concerned about that narrative because I think that whilst, like I say these moments are amplified the suggestion that somehow fundamentally the nature of what we're dealing with is different is problematic. And the criminalization essentially of these kinds of discussions that we're seeing through the school system is an example of that because what we see actually through the arc of history is that when you have these phases of liberatory thrust, there's always a backlash that comes off on the back of that, and you always have to be prepared for that sustained effort. And so I think storytelling for me, both in terms of the narrow sense in terms of the kinds of literature that we share with our children and the stories we tell but also in terms of these political narratives, we must disrupt or that disruptive force that we've talked about, and that part of how we garner the kind of momentum that we've seen in the black lives matter movement is precisely by underpinning the political efforts and structural efforts for change with the kind of narratives that's that enable us to sustain those efforts. And I think although we're in this very visible moment there are, like I said before kind of complexities to these stories that need to be revealed, such as the relationship between kind of interracial alliances, such as also the kind of impetus for a sustained struggle, even when the media attention isn't on and so although we're talking about black lives matter now, we're talking about a movement that has a long history and that the struggle for liberation and for racial freedom and racial equality is an ongoing as Angela Davis says it, you know, it's a constant struggle. So I think we have to continue the pressure we have to resist any of these attempts to force us into a kind of autocratic, you know that really the erosion of our democracy really that we see these kinds of policies being implemented in the school system and we saw the same thing with the prevent strategy you know this again is not a new phenomenon here. I think what's different is perhaps more people are aware of these things but the pushback that all of us must be active in these storytellers not just parents but across the whole gambit, you know, all of us having agency which is really that kind of post diasporic subject sensibility that I talked about that regardless as our power position within this these kind of systemic issues that we really must cultivate narratives that disavow this kind of totalitarian approach to education and politics more broadly. Yes, I can help with that. There was a question here in Haiti how much of Haiti's history is taught in schools, and from what the perspective is that history thought. It's an easy question for me because I can first say that he wrote in a sense that we memorize a lot of Asian history, we learn about the heroes, all of them the male heroes. We have holidays that celebrate to celebrate to celebrate to celebrate to celebrate to celebrate, and this year they are at time reenactments of some of the famous battles of Beatee. So that's my first line of response. And the storyteller in me can tell you, I can illustrate that by telling you that I once went to a local ethnic grocery store where two Haitians were having some bad words. And one of them retaliated by daring the other guy if he could tell him about a famous quote of Tucson, Virginia, what page you would find this quote. So that's how deeply some of them have memorized their history books. Daring the other one, do you know on what page you will find that Christoph actually defied Napoleon or Béclair? So that's my first response. However, how well it is thought is something else because a lot of our historians wrote from the perspectives of sources who either felt themselves victims of the Haitian revolutions or witnesses who have no interest into the abolition of slavery. They actually bought into some of those academic distortions when it comes to writing history. I can think of four of them. One could be the omission at time of significant historical facts or of significant contributions by some quarters of the Haitian slaves, of the slaves actually who were part of it, or by certain sub-groups. I can think of the fact that there are instances where some of those authors in the past have tended to pitch some heroes against each other. That's the same history of pitching Malcolm X against Martin Luther King, pitching Tucson University against the saline, and you found yourself involved into unnecessary academic discussions that takes away from the fundamental question that they were both one side of the same point. We also found that there is a revisionism that happens in our history. One example would be there are books that make the case that the Haitian revolution was actually just a sheer luck because yellow fever was decimating the British and the French tropes. This is total revisionism when you look at how Tucson University and this saline masterminded strategies to defeat those tropes. And I can also think about a lack of access to resources of information that will further solidify the teaching of Haitian history. So it was the wrong answer to say, yes, but we are not there yet, given the amount of distortions or do you need to get more resources to teach Haitian history? Joe, can I feel slightly hesitant to answer this on after Sharlou, but just to amplify in some ways what he was saying. I think a lot of the work on, for example, representations of Tucson de Verchure looks frustratingly outside Haiti and doesn't ask the question we've got there and the question that Sharlou has just answered. And I think that the key issue is that the heroes of the revolution are not abstractions in Haiti. They are not dead. They're around you in the statuary. They're around you in murals. They're around you on paintings on the tap-tap, the sort of the communal taxis that go around. And they are crucially, as Sharlou has said, that they're part of sort of the conversation. But they're still politically. There are still Louverturians and desalines and who are still arguing the toss of these different approaches. So I think that that's what fascinates me with the question and Sharlou's answer. What's really interesting is that there is, again, largely ignored, a strong Haitian historiographic tradition, which goes back to the 1850s when in terms of constructing the nation state, these major histories of Haiti begin to be written. As Sharlou says, a lot of them are ideological and they're freighted through French historiographic traditions. But there's a need for them to be taken on board. And I just wanted to pick up on Sharlou's final point. Yes, there is. And I think this links in some ways to the previous question. We're seeing the emergence of a revisionist sort of conservative historiography of the revolution. And there was a biography of Louverture, which came out a couple of years ago, which basically made the point that he was out for his own personal ambition. And that there's an attempt to blunt the revolutionary impact of Louverture in the way we've been describing this evening. The biography that's just come out, Black Spartacus, and I mention it because it echoes with Sharlou's marvelous story around Louverture and Spartacus by Sudhir Hazarasingh is very much a response to that sort of revisionist conservative historiography. It tries to maintain the complexity that Gabriella referred to, but to re-inject sort of the radicalism to this story and to challenge that revisionism. It's interesting that you mentioned that, Sharlou, because I was recently participating in an online conference at Bristol University called the Multiversity Conference, in which one of the participants stressed over and over again the need to be bold in our requirements here and the need to be absolutely bold about the histories that we are seeing being revised in front of our very eyes and never, ever to be quiet about it. And I really salute that at the moment. Any other questions from the panel? Would anybody like to mention anything or to...? I've got Amina saying thanks, which that's good, Sergio Amina. Any other questions or would anybody like to make any other observations at this point, Gabriella? Yeah, can I just make one brief comment that came to mind as Sharlou and Charles were speaking and just from some of the other information that's come through your fantastic presentations today is for me and back to this kind of question about what is allowed to be said and spoken of in the context of the schools. And one of the very specific shifts I think we need to see within the context of the British school system is the idea that British history is British as in confined to the island itself as opposed to a global history and that we need to shift that understanding of a global context, a global telling of history so that we can precisely make these links between historical figures such as Toussaint Louverture or Frederick Douglass and that historical discussion of not just abolition obviously and slavery and colonialism but the global linkages that they have always been and the work you're talking about, Joanne, in terms of the links to South Africa and so on and that when we speak of history that we need to disrupt this notion of national history and really begin to think about, begin to talk about transnational history as it's taught in schools so that we can include these multiple voices, include these multiple perspectives and begin to make the kind of international links we need to get an accurate and radical history. So yeah, a plug for the global I guess. Ironman, sorry, Carlos. Oh, I was going to make a quick notes about Gabriela's earlier presentation and the way to use a storytelling to help to open up youth and children into cultural confidence and cultural resistance because on one hand, given the assault of technology on some youth interest into understanding their background, I had to literally use storytelling to transform Haitian history into a product that I could deliver to my kids. So when Sebastian is telling me, the black, you know, the black guy, was he shooting? So he was describing enthusiastically how Capuala Moore was able to avoid those bullets and so now he is into expressing the action and he's into drawing the action. So I feel that it has been for me a tricky and interesting and fascinating journey taking pieces of Haitian history, making them into stories in a way now that get actually the kids or the youth to be interested into it. So this is doing it fully support what you were saying earlier about the power of storytelling into making inroads, making more of our children into the minds of our youth. What an amazing point. Thank you so much for that, Charles. I actually remember being a child and being in my last year of junior school. Our teacher played us the 1812 overture and asked us to write about whatever came into our heads and those kinds of classes actually were hugely formative. So transposing different kinds of storytelling techniques will disrupt and will bring forth new. That's really amazing. On a point of order, Chavalor, I just remembered that you were going to give a closing up and a wrapping up. Is that still, are you still happy to go ahead with that? We have a couple of minutes left before then and I have no further questions in the chat line or whatever. So is it possible, would you mind if I just give one for the anecdotes? When I was at the University of Cape Town as a tutor working in the industry department there a very few years ago, we had a budget cut situation going down and all in a staff meeting, the entire West Indian English core courses were chopped in one fell swoop and I was disrupting even then demanding to know how it is possible to kind of just knock off DLR James and all the other participants, Marie's Condé for example, who's often translated into English and talks wind with heights alongside weathering heights and so on. And it worries me how easily it is possible to cut those stories off from each other in the name of saving something. And I really feel that this is the relationship between liberation in the West Indian situation, the location and I like to call it Central Africa because West Indian bothers me, but that Central African basin is so important because of the way it mirrors the struggles that happened 50, 70, 100, 200 years later across the race of the planet. I really, really hope we can somehow move against this. I don't know how other than to just keep on having the courage of our conviction. Thank you. Can I share two weeks slide to end this? So two things came to mind. I was processing what Charles mentioned earlier about some revisionist of publication that have been released over the past few years or the past two years more precisely. And I'm very mindful of such publications because in the very context that we are living in this very experimenting, experimentation that we are observing here in the US, it's worth being mindful about not letting the persona, the charisma, the character of Tussana Virtue being used. It's easy to claim Tussana Virtue was a revolutionary and those can actually find pieces of his policies to claim to say as someone who would be on a particular side. That would be an insult. It was given the complexity and the mind fields that Tussana had to navigate to pursue this abolition of slavery. You cannot actually get into Tussana was a conservative or he would have been on the side of a particular political orientation had it been alive today. So this is again to point out that intellectual honesty calls for people to be vigilant about false interpretations and false narrative on Tussana Virtue. And finally, without elaborating I would quickly put that Tussana Virtue when I think about him is a clear evidence of the universality and the modernity of what he did. He is a claim as well by progressives or by conservatives. He actually has an impact on the US abolitionist movement that is still being researched. He can also be studied in the context or in the context of the history of women's right. I will claim that he is also an inspiration because takes off at least the pieces and bits of educational opportunities that he had he was able to master mine or to educate himself to become this brilliant general. I also think that he offered a framework for the integration of progressive and conservatives into the quest for racial emancipation. So in this case, the black matter movement may have to learn a bit more about what he was doing in order to get all those folks who have the same mindset to allow for progress to take this. And to me, the statutes I think someone mentioned it before was it maybe Charles that we see all over the place now are going to contribute to bring more awareness about who he was. And I think I'll see maybe to get all those countries to incorporate into that curricula the study of the first black abolitionist to some of that text. Thank you so much, Charles. You're welcome. And thank you to all of our panelists for your time and for your energy for this wonderful, highly enjoyable session. And thanks also to Abnina Yakin and Stephanie Griron for their fantastic and tireless efforts in organizing the Festival of Ideas and this panel. And thanks to everyone who has joined us for all your questions and your observations. This has been a brilliant evening and I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to have been part of this. Before I close, I always like to call for voices. Are there any voices present? Thank you very much, Stephanie Griron. I just said thank you for Stephanie for not forgetting trains from the USCF. Well, in that case, it only falls to me to say please continue to join us for the Festival of Ideas. This is our next event. Ude Shaka and Anna Pavlova from Screening and Panel Discussion. Go well and stay safe all. Merci. Thank you again, Charles. Thank you. Thanks. It's wonderful to meet you, everybody. Wonderful to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you. I'll be traveling to London with my wife next year. This is a definite yes. Wonderful. We should definitely have coffee or even a meal if we're allowed. Malaiikah. And it's your son, Bastion. Yes, my son is Bastion. My daughter is Malaiikah. My son is Bastion. Bastion. My daughter is Malaiikah. And my daughter is Malaiikah. See this? That is weird, dude. Ha ha ha ha. Thank you, Stephanie. So, Bastion is Malaiikah. That's just very weird. Yeah. Let me know when you're coming. When are you coming? Oh, I have to negotiate that at home. We know that this is going to happen since it was planned for May. So we made research that this fixation that is going to happen back in May so that it has to happen next year. Okay, all right. Well, keep me posted and let me know what's happening. I'll be home next summer. I have to do, I'm doing field work, but I'm here until I leave. Well, our friends over there now. Yeah, yeah, look at your old group over here. All right, thank you all. Have a good one. Thank you. Thank you so much. Au revoir. Au revoir. A tu. A tu.