a1564: Corbett replies to Simidor on Hoffmann's analysis of Bois Caiman

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Reference:
"The Ceremony at Bois Caiman"  by Leon-Francois
	Hoffmann.   Originally published in a French version in Etudes
Creole (Ottawa), 	XIII, no. 1, 1990.   Published in English in
Haitian Fiction Revisited by
	Leon-Francois Hoffmann.  Pueblo, Colorado:  Passeggiata Press,
2000.

Bob  Corbett
April 2002

Early on in Leon-Francois Hoffmann's essay on Bois Caiman he states his
thesis in unmistakenable language:  " research on the Bois Caiman ceremony
leads to the almost certain conclusion that we are dealing here not with a
historical event but with a legend, who origins can be traced to the
malevolent imagination of a French planter."  (p. 159)

The strategy which Hoffmann uses to support his claim is go back to the
earliest known version of the story in print, that of Antoine Dalmas in
Histoire de la revolution de Saint-Domingue, which, while published in
1814 was claimed to have been written in 1793.

Hoffmann makes case that there was likely to be an ulterior motive in
Dalmas' version and thus distrusts it:  "Of all the authors who have
written on the Bois Caiman ceremony he alone was in the area when the
revolt broke out, and his testimony would therefore seem trustworthy.  It
is, in point of fact, highly questionable:  a White (sic)settler would
obviously not have been invited or permitted to attend a conspiratorial
meeting.  Dalmas does not in fact claim to have been an eyewitness, but
asserts that his information comes from the interrogation of prisoners
conducted a few days later.  However the manuscript minutes of these
interrogations have survived in the French National Archives and make no
mention of this or any other vodun ceremony.  Neither do the very numerous
and minutely detailed accounts of the events that were gathered by French
investigative commissions and published between 1791 and, say, 1825 when
the French government finally recognized Haitian independence.  The
likelihood is that the whole episode was invented by Dalmas."  (p. 160)

Hoffmann then quotes a passage from the Dalmas book which describes the
ceremony, ending with "That such an ignorant and besotted caste would make
the superstitious rituals of an absurd and sanguinary religion serve as a
prelude to the most frightful crimes was to be expected."  (161).

This leads Hoffmann to conclude: "The last sentence of Dalmas' account is
clear proof that his intention was in fact to denigrate the slaves."
(161).

Daniel Simidor, responding to my mention of this essay in my review of the
Hoffmann book says:

"In his review of Leon-Francois Hoffmann's book on Haitian fiction, Bob
Corbett repeats Hoffmann's claim that the Bois Caiman ceremony was a myth,
without looking at the evidence, historical and otherwise, in favor of a
factual Bois Caiman.  That the August 1791 General Uprising was an orgy of
blood sums it up quite nicely for Hoffmann; the blood spilled in that case
was French after all.

"That the rebel slaves abhorred the culture of their oppressors, or that
they as a class held a separate agenda independent of all other classes in
the colony, is too much for Hoffmann to contemplate."

However, this critique is manifestly unfair to the Hoffmann text.  This
essay is not an analysis of the question of Bois Caiman itself, it is a
review and analysis of the written records of it.  From this first known
source (Hoffmann's claim), he then analyzes later Haitian texts on this
event and tries to show that they are indebted to the Dalmas version and
have gone beyond it without further evidence to elaborate the more common
version which is repeated in much of Haitian history, the version which
Hoffmann regards as a myth.

If Hoffmann has any bias it is toward written sources of history as the
most authoritative and reliable.  He does rest his case of the likelihood
that the Bois Caiman story is a myth on both the originative historical
product of Dalmas and the following Haitian literature which flows from it
and embellishes it.

The rest is not at all in Hoffmann - Simidor's charges that:

"That the rebel slaves abhorred the culture of their oppressors, or that
they as a class held a separate agenda independent of all other classes in
the colony, is too much for Hoffmann to contemplate.  Indeed, his work is
part of a French revisionist tradition that looks upon the Haitian
revolution as a by-product of the French revolution.  It is consistent
with that claim to downplay the Bois Caiman ceremony or to deny that it
ever took place (and then to neatly label Toussaint as a French General)."

Hoffmann claims none of this and the only part that stands at all is
Simidor's claim that the Hoffmann account "is consistent" with these
various historical causal claims.  Yet Hoffmann neither makes such claims
nor suggests them in the slightest.

In rejecting Hoffmann's claims Simidor suggests an enormous power for "
Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique's experiment in local history in the Morne Rouge
area (which) proves how strong that memory remains within the Vodou
tradition.  The more one thinks about it, the clearer it becomes that
Hoffmann proved nothing if not his own bias."

Daniel Simidor
From: karioka9@cs.com

I find myself puzzled and troubled by Simdor's argument, especially since
in most cases I am persuaded by Simidor's historical analyses as I was
recently by a different post on the Bois Caiman ceremony in which he
mentions the Hoffmann thesis in conjunction with a different analysis
which Hoffmann has offered for the same thesis.

The conclusions of why Hoffmann's argument is weak seem to me to rely on
the highly speculative notion of :  here is a theory, and the theory is
not impossible, thus Hoffmann is refuted.  Hoffmann certainly has not
"proved" his position in the sense that a scientific experiement is said
to prove an hypothesis.  Yet the carefully considered analysis of the
existing historical and literary literature which Hoffmann presents seems
much more persuasive, likely and solid that the mere speculations Simidor
offers which are, as he
points out, not logically impossible, yet for which virtually no reasons
are given for why one would choose these speculations over the carefully
argued case which Hoffmann makes.  I am truly puzzled.  This seems a case
of wishing something were true and grasping at straws to make it seem so.

Bob Corbett