The Soulouque paradox

To understand the Haitian emergence as a neo-African node of the West, it’s necessary to understand its context; as an area, in the triangle of the Greater Antilles, in which the modern concept of nation-state enters in crisis. This would be due to the expansive nature of the Americas in general, for the cultural structure of the West; although in an unequal solution, according to its ability to resolve that critical nature in its specific cases.

The economic and institutional density of the Spanish viceroyalties, for example, is not the same as that of their general captaincies; nor is the capitalist projection of the English colonies, with its dissipating effect on political contradictions. Not even the Brazilian singularity, which precisely exports that capitalist projection to the English colonies; when the expulsion of the Sephardim, who had brought the sugar machine from the Iberian Peninsula.

In this context, the second Haitian empire of Faustino I, is not a historical nor political continuity of that of Desalines; even if it is legitimized in the latter, precisely postulating that continuity, as an impossible restoration. The line of Desalines dies with Henry Christopher, and that of Soulouque is a contraction of Boyer's republic; failed in the positive rationality of its classical liberalism, imported with North American Freemasonry.

Soulouque's movement then directed towards the neo-African emergence, with that legitimacy in Desalines; who was also but a different emergency on its own, determined by its proper circumstances, not any historical continuity. The brevity of Soulouque empire conditions in this singularity all subsequent development on Haitian politics, as a culture; from the negrism of Prince-Mars —as a conceptualism— to the political negrism of Duvalier, as an existential scope. The movement is typical, and would be the effective link of the Haitian phenomenon to the Western structure, as dynamic; replicated, as a function of political axiality, in the Bourbon restoration and that of Napoleon, due to that said brevity.

It is in this that the context is important, because of the structural incapacity of the of the West to organize itself; which is projected in the tensions from the Westphalian pacts, to the false stability of modern capitalism. None of the Greater Antilles even achieves this political stability, but the Haitian case is also special; since in Haiti it is not a question of the number of contradictions that converge, as in Cuba and Puerto Rico; but of the suppression of all structural capacity, with the conditioning of the debt in which it is born, under Desalines.

Here Boyer's republic emerges as a negation of the Haitian emergency, with the transfer of that debt; which seems to guarantee the liberal positivism of the republic with North American capitalism, which is already political and not economic. This considers the double nature of modern capitalism, which goes from pragmatic and existential to political; when the ascension of the House of Orange incorporates it into the government, with its institutionalization in the banking network.

The empire of Faustino I thus functions as a contraction, to which Prince-Mars in fact points as Africanization; which is the proposal of Negrismo, although already vitiated in the same intellectualism he criticizes as Bovarism. This would be the contradiction, because Prince-Mars does not openly advocate for that authoritarianism, with its tribal basis; which still subsists, in the marginal institutionality of the bizangos, as a precedent of the Haitian parastates.

This would explain the Duvalier’s ascendancy in Haitian culture, as the link that Prince-Mars does not name; but that is there, contradicting all the tension of the West from Westphalia, together with Puerto Rico and Cuba. The Haitian reality is brutal only because of the scope of this contradiction, dissolved in the North American’s meta-stability; which nevertheless cannot be guaranteed outside of that massiveness of consumption, as the current European crisis seems to demonstrate.

This is interesting, because the European crisis would be the final systematization of the outbreak that gives rise to the Haitian crisis; when economic desystematization ceases to guarantee that meta-stability, as an appearance of order in the turbulence. Soulouque, the stone of Louverture, then smiles in the cynicism of Duvalier, with the nervous ambiguity of Prince-Mars; and the Haitian republic would have failed right there, leaving only an untenable appearance, which is what is dissolving now.

The big lie of the ideological switching in American liberalism

The big switch in de Democratic Party is one of the biggest myths distorting American politics, as a cultural framework; based on the belief that the party abandoned its roots in racial discrimination, for a more inclusive approach. The problem is that it fails to show its case beyond rhetoric, and the fact of white leaders exigences to black people; which paradoxically tends to confirm its classical rooting in political segregation and elitism, as normal.

The so-called switch would be a development, started in the New Deal of Roosvelt, with government interventionism; and ended with the overwhelming vote of black people for John F Kennedy, after the incident with Martin Luther King. But none of both was really related to black people, nor to directly easy our burdens a specific social stratum; but rather —in the case of Roosvelt— to expand government interventionism, profiting from the economic disaster; and —in the case of Kennedy— as an effect of the very punctual circumstance of Luther King, not of his social stratum.

In the first case, the expansion of government interventionism inflates the intellectual elitism in the whole society; producing the originality of the cultural spectrum of black people, under the umbrella of financial stimulation. But this was mostly the inflation —and this artificially— of black intellectualism, with its natural tendencies to liberalism; which did not translate into the betterment of black population, but just a more visibility of its intellectual figures.

If that New Deal had produced any actual results, black people would not have been pushed to the unrest of the sixties; where were confronted by the same Democratic party, just more in the legislative area than the real violence. It was still violent, even if as a response to the violence that black unrest, as an actual war against this specific party; for which was so important the case of Luther King, with the intervention of Kennedy, then presidential candidate.

This last switch was the gratitude of Luther King’s father, not a social consequence of a social change on that party; and the ink between both cases is artificial, created and feed by the white liberal monopoly of the press… on their freedom. Besides that, and because of this virtual monopoly, the political leadership managed to hide the black conservatism; not enough to suffocate it, as it’s impossible due to its cultural nature, but to hide it under its moral narrative.

This is important, as that cultural nature of conservatism is not just black, but the property of any cultural development; aimed at preserving its existential resources —like family—, in the political precariousness of American blackness. Even liberalism is just a form of neo or function conservatism, based on morals as political determinations; just trying to be displacing the ontological functions of culture, since the only real switch we had, in western Modernity.

This is a problem, since relatively young generations has growth in this new epistemological framework of Modernity; and so are reduced to ideological confrontation, without a real philosophical scope on their thoughts. It is not that philosophy were never a popular but a special activity, for which it precisely creates this confrontation; but it’s definitely the only way to overcome its difficulties, as the true nature of the conflict, beyond its rhetorics; as shown in this false ideological switching claimed by American liberalism, just to hide its racism in black masks.

About the worries about Santa Muerte in Hoodoo

Khozmiq NeWaGe is one of the most know through persons in American Hoodoo, with deep roots in South Carolina; so we’re not talking about a com'ya but a real been’ya, a person from inside, with experience, not just abstract knowledge. But as anything real, his own evolution is naturally mixed and complex, coming from the black American evangelism; explaining his own efforts to understand Hoodoo as a mature religion, not just as a culture or a way of life.

That’s important, because it determines his perspective, to the point of explain Hoodoo practices in evangelical scripture; filling the ambiguity of black biblical references with his own theological projections, legitimate enough though. The problem may come from his antecedent as evangelist, because a religious person doesn’t normally recognize the cultural nature of religion; and this means that, as a self-taught scholar, he doesn’t recognize the ontological priority of culture over religion.

In this regard, Hoodoo is the proper religiosity of Gullah Geechee culture, not something apart or by its own; but it’s not still a practice doctrinally organized, and even mostly secular, without a regular priesthood.  It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a priesthood, or that it doesn’t recognize certain organized beliefs; but that all that is not yet organically structured in the political sense of an institution, beyond the private life of their communities.

In this contest, NeWaGe observes syncretism as something bizarre and rare, properly cultural rather than religious; as if Christian related Hoodoo were not a form of syncretism itself, in its African American interpretation of Bible. There are other interpretations of the Bible, like the Lutheran and Calvinist, which rely on its rationality rather than its magic; and are more aligned with the Catholic way —as the origin of modern Christianity—, and so more orthodox.

We should remember that Biblical tradition started with the preaching of Saint Paul, over the legitimacy of Peter; so there is a line of orthodoxy, stablished by the rationality and not the magic tradition of the Jew culture. This is the originality of African American Christianity, bringing back this magic aspect, lost with west rationalism; but it’s just one among other traditions, and even as a link to Christian related Hoodoo and not Hoodoo itself.

This African American Christianity is of course a mature religiosity, which communicates to its Hoodoo expressions; but not to the whole Hoodoo phenomena, as a religion by its own, but specifically to this kind of practices. So the inclusion of mature figures as Santa Muerte, comes here as a disruption, rather than a simple instrumentality; which is interesting, since African American culture is not entirely African but American, to which Santa Muerte is only a recent acquisition.

That is due to the cultural mingling of Hispanic and African Americans, in the context of common economical tier; so it should not be a problem, except that it’s a problem, because the cultural ambiguities it reflects. This is about the Gullah Geechee culture, constructed retrospectively, from the intellectual approach to local linguistics; which makes sense, since it brings to Afro-Americans and identity, in the void of economic and political determinations; but makes also big problems for self-taught scholars like NeWaGe, recreating culture from scratch, as theologians.

This may be the problem for NeWaGe, as a theologian and not an anthropologist, in an anthropological situation; but it’s this kind of contradiction what brings consistency to any effective reality, as a form —or way— determined in this tension. And this is the case of the Gullah Geechee culture, as a New Africa emerging from the crumbles of the West one; and no matter how disappointing or promising, it looks like a deeply Christian culture, although painful of course.

So this Santa Muerte incorporation may be just another contradiction, shaping the way of this new African Americanity; mixing alien cults that nobody can totally understand yet, but as before happened with the natives, for example. Here, NeWaGe point to the ambiguity that mixes equivalence with convergence, about the figure of death; and that’s why it’s so important, even for brilliant self-taught scholars, to delimit those ambiguities obscuring their approach.

This is important for the world outside African American culture, reduced it to the glamor of the Spiritual tradition; but may be problematic for their own structure, on the understanding of their own nature and originality as Americans. This is also important on its political aspect, as it exposes the susceptibleness of Afro-American people to its manipulations; like its exposition to Hispanic culture, forcing them to identify as a working class, away from their natural conservatism.

 

Apotheosis of Fernando Ortiz and the alternative of Lachatañeré

Rómulo Lachatañeré's critique of Fernando Ortiz is usually understood as an adaptation of the latter's excesses; marking his progression, from legal positivism to a better understanding of Cuban culture. The rectification of his initial judgment on Santeria, and the adequacy of his criticisms on criminality, would confirm this; at least in a historically significant sequence, still insufficient to exhaust the scope of Lachatañeré.

In fact, and for whatever reason, this adaptation would have hidden the momentum of Cuban anthropology; settling it in Ortiz's positive conventionalism, even if due to an inability to do anything else and not ill will. The issue here is not the change of perspective imposed on Ortiz by the other, but what his own work establishes; with a first compilation on Afro-Cuban mythology, whose importance exceeds Ortiz's excess and arrogance.

In fact, the other apotheosis of Lachatañeré would not lie in postulating the religious maturity of the cult of Ocha or Santeria; accessing cultural determinations, which do not depend on their political, juridical or racial treatment. In this difference there is an anthropological tension, which rectification —even if authentic— does not manage to resolve; displacing the problem, from Ortiz's evolution to the very possibilities opened by Lachatañeré.

It is therefore not a question of a judgment on the black population, but of the emergence of a cultural configuration; capable of recognizing and elaborating itself from its own determinations, not in the conventionalism of national politics. There is a ontology extracted from this mythical tradition, which proposes black culture as an alternative, in its sufficiency; which in fact determines the Cuban culture in its popular base, with the progressive blackening of society.

Lachatañeré would not expressly formulate that ontology extracted from his compilations, but rather allows it; being in this that it is unnoticed by the special interests of that conventionalism, which are political. His work on folklore would then be a realism avant la lettre, in the adequacy of Feuerbach's negativism; and as part of the neo-African emergence in which the West is disorganized, which is critical and early.

Ortiz's apotheosis in his conventionalism does nothing but exacerbate the country's problems, which are cultural; posing them as political in their determinism, and therefore as an ideological solution rather than an existential one. Lachatañeré's alternative pointed to the ontological function of culture, from this religious maturity; which is nevertheless pushed to the margins, feeding the dialectical loop of modern historical confrontation.

Curiously, Lachatañeré would participate more radically than Ortiz in this historical confrontation, in his communism; but unlike Ortiz, he is black —of Haitian descent as well— and settled in the other capitality of the East. His case then, like that of Du Bois in the United States, Fanon in the Caribbean and Senghor in Africa, is one of contradiction; but as a triangular tension, which pushes the potential emergence of the neo-African, in its evolution.

In Ortiz's apotheosis, Cuban racism becomes surreptitious and even spoils the blackening of its popular culture; everything was agreed upon in a convention of miscegenation, which nevertheless prevents the effective integration of the black. The latter is subtle and profound, since the black is exhibited in Cuba as an integral part of its folkloric expression; but denaturalized in the ontological function of that culture, by the determinism of the political expression in which it is realized.

This becomes critical, given the insufficiency of any other alternative, because of its intellectual but not existential excellence; such as the ontology of Lezama Lima —in its functional realism—, which still does not understand and incorporate the black. This is especially relevant, precisely because of the excellence of Lezama's realism, in the limitations of its Catholicism; only understandable in the practicality in which culture exceeds its intellectualization, because of functionalism.

Gramsci's mistake

The current political crisis in the West would not originate in Marxist populism, but in its correction by Gramsci; who, observing the deficiencies of Marx's economic determinism, recognized that of his own cultural determination. That is no small thing, Marxism limited itself to recognizing the superstructural function of religion, taken from Feuerbach; but Gramsci identified its simple instrumentality, recognizing the superstructure in culture itself.

In reality, Gramsci also erred by excess, attributing substantive value to the superstructural function of culture; whose determination did not come from the economic power of capitalism, but from its function as ontological. This is the problem with the dialectic of history, starting from history itself as a total reality and not its expression; which would be determined in the transhistoricity of culture, as a function of reality in its specialization as human.

Because of that, the political problem is not exactly ideological but epistemological, given in this ideological reduction; which comes from political determinism, as a hermeneutic —in epistemological function— already given of the real. In this sense, for example, the worker does not vote against his interests, which are in capitalist realization; but against those of the intellectual middle class, which is the one in conflict with the bourgeoisie, because of its unproductivity.

The latter is understood from the very anthropological nature of culture, whose ultimate expression is politic; which is organized in a social structure, in which relations are capitalist, as the power (potency) of realization. The question is anthropological, because it resides in the codification of capital as a set of resources, which are existential; and that only because of this existential function —in its potentiation of culture— does it become political, not the other way around.

It is in this that the interests of the workers —as human beings— are in social realization, which is thus capitalist; just like that of the middle class and the bourgeoisie itself, as classes only because of their political and not ethical specialization. The contradiction is then always between opposing and not continuous interests, such as those of the productive process; but of the conception of capital as economic or political, respectively by the bourgeoisie or the intellectual elite.

However, given its own political determinism rather than cultural existentialism, Marxism does not understand it; assuming its capitalization of culture as legitimate, within the framework of Kantian categorical transcendentalism. It is not then that culture fulfills this superstructural function, without the fact that it is not a given superstructure; nor that it is not resolved in religion, as Feuerbach had already intuited from Kantian negativism itself; but that all this would be the way in which the real organizes itself as human, in capitalist relations as functionals.

The proof would be in this same ideological reduction of dialectical materialism, as capitalization of politics; which is an economic order, although now —thanks to Feuerbach's inversion— against reality itself. This would be due to this determinism, which would attack this specialization of the real as human, in the political; which, displacing culture in its determination of society, distorts it in its economic relations as political functions.

Here, Feuerbach's inversion would not overcome the epistemological problem of German philosophy, as an ideology; but would displace it towards religious representation, just as Marx would preserve its hermeneutical structure. German ideology would therefore not be about a doctrinal continuity, but about a common epistemological organization; which, from this idealism, tends to reduce the real by reducing it to its representation, giving it as substantive. In this sense, the critique of ideology would not be solely or mainly political, but above all epistemological; in its conversion of particular determinations of knowledge, into universal principles of interpretation of the real.

This is the value of Transcendental Realism, in its observation of culture as an ontological function, proper to the real; which therefore superimposes itself on the political expression in which it is realized, in its transhistoricity. In short, it is this transhistoricity what gives it its superstructural value, in the concrete functions in which it is realized; traditionally solved in religiosity, by the axial property of the cultural function, in its reflexivity.

Senghor, Negritude and Transcendental Realism

Senghor's choice for Tempels' Bantu ontology would not have been gratuitous, but based on his aesthetic interest; pointing to the reflective capacity of art, just in a political sense —as ideological— rather than a cultural one. That would not be gratuitous either, but would respond to his own determination in that sense, as in Du Bois's error; which is not surprising, if it epistemologically solves the understanding of reality as nature, in culture.

This is the innate property of art, in its own formal condition, from the archaic era to Modernity in the West itself; but it is also a current phenomenon and common to all culture, in their mythological traditions, as representations of that reality. Only here would there be a couple of fallacies, for which this is not fulfilled, although it does point to that intuition; since as a postmodern, his case has already passed the distortion of Modernity, in its structural dysfunction.

As a principle, however, and as formal in its own character, art would retain this reflective capacity; but for that same reason, not in conceptualism, which make it dysfunctional, depriving it of that representational capacity. This formal representation would occur by sympathetic analogy, referring to the structure of the phenomenon represented; distorted in the convention of the right sense, presuming the understanding of the phenomenon, due to its rationality.

This is what delegitimizes postmodern conceptualism, although it understands it in its desystematization of modernity; which would not be in the formal apotheosis with which it is fulfilled in the Baroque —as classical—, but in this contradiction. The problem is then not of art, as a practice of craftsmanship, but in its displacement through philosophy; with its professional specialization, in modern intellectualism, which is what establishes it as such, and not postmodern.

That is to say, modern art responds to its classical formal nature, but is displaced in that same modernity; giving rise to the postmodern crisis, which is of its own modernity, and not of its classical and formal tradition. In fact, and returning to Senghor, the art he postulated was not the formalist of popular traditions; but the conceptual one of this intellectualist conventionalisms, as can be seen in his wonderfully solved poetry.

It is therefore a poetics or aesthetic philosophy rather than art, with its object in a political, not aesthetic concept; legitimized in the historical transcendentalism of its political determination, not in its formal properties. That is why Senghor has to resort to a conventional ontology, without resting on the very property of poetry; which is counterproductive, reducing it to the ideological value that it intended to overcome, as a mere alternative.

This is the contradiction marked by Sartre in its critical essay (Black Orfeo), and what defines Negritude as romanticism; highlighting the ambiguity of its object, as political and not properly aesthetic, and therefore without an existential function. For this reason, he is not interested in an ontology proper to these cultures, and which he would find in their popular traditions; with which he would have avoided the criticism – also excessive – of Franz Fanon, with an ontological sufficiency of culture.

The conflict of Negritude is thus resolved, as the very extension of that of the West, in its internal contradiction; reproducing the same excesses that it criticizes, and for the same reasons that it criticizes in them, in its determinism. This limits its scope, since Negritude does not manage to constitute itself as an alternative postulation; although it still evidences the insufficiency of this Western tradition, in that modern stage as its apotheosis.

That would be the value of Negritude, as of postmodern criticism, not the critique of the West, but of its modernity; understood as a contraction to the functional principles of the tradition that culminates in that stage, not its alternative. Of course, none of this is perceptible from the very parameters of that contradiction, determined by it; but only from an instance capable of reconciling its terms, which is precisely the meaning of Transcendental Realism.

Senghor, la Negritud y Realismo Trascendental

La opción de Senghor por la ontología bantú de Tempels no habría sido gratuita, sino basada en su interés estético; apuntando a la capacidad reflexiva del arte, sólo que en sentido político —como ideológico— en vez de cultural. Eso tampoco sería gratuito, sino que respondería a su propia determinación en ese sentido, como en el error de Du Bois; lo que no es extraño, soluciona epistemológicamente la comprensión de lo real como naturaleza, en la cultura.

Esta es la propiedad innata al arte, en su propia condición formal, ya desde la era arcaica en el mismo Occidente; pero es de hecho un fenómeno actual y común a toda cultura, en su tradición mitológica, como representación de eso real. Sólo que aquí habría un par de falacias, por las que eso no se cumple, aunque el esfuerzo sí apunta a esa intuición; ya que en tanto postmoderno, su caso ya ha pasado la distorsión de la Modernidad, en su disfunción estructural.

Como principio no obstante, y en tanto formal en su propio carácter, el arte sí retendría esta capacidad reflexiva; pero por lo mismo no en el conceptualismo, que lo haría disfuncional, privándolo de esa capacidad representacional. Esta representación formal se daría por analogía simpática, referida a la estructura del fenómeno representado; distorsionada en la convención del sentido recto, presumiendo la comprensión del fenómeno, por su racionalidad.

Esto es lo que deslegitima al conceptualismo postmoderno, aunque lo comprenda en su desistematización de lo moderno; que no estaría en la apoteosis formal con que se cumple en el Barroco —como clásico—, sino en esta contradicción. El problema no es entonces del arte, como práctica de suyo artesanal, sino en su desplazamiento por la filosofía; con su especialización profesional, en el intelectualismo moderno, que es lo que lo establece como tal, y no postmoderno.

Es decir, el arte moderno responde a su naturaleza formal clásica, pero es desplazado en esa misma modernidad; dando lugar a la crisis postmoderna, que es de su misma modernidad, y no de su tradición clásica y formal. De hecho, y volviendo a Senghor, el arte que postulaba no era el formalista de las tradiciones populares; sino el conceptual de este convencionalismo intelectualista, como se observa en su maravillosamente resuelta poesía.

Se trata por tanto de una poética o filosofía estética antes que arte, y con su objeto en un concepto político, no estético; legitimado en el trascendentalismo histórico de su determinación política, no en sus propiedades formales. Por eso Senghor tiene que acudir a una ontología convencional, sin descansar en la propiedad misma de la poesía; lo que resulta contraproducente, reduciéndola al valor ideológico que pretendía superar, como mera alternativa.

Esto es lo que sitúa al fenómeno de la Negritud en el espectro del romanticismo típico, como reacción al racionalismo; resaltando la ambigüedad de su objeto, en tanto político y no propiamente estético, y por ello sin función existencial. Por ello no se interesa en una ontología propia de esas culturas, y que encontraría en sus tradiciones populares; con lo que habría esquivado la crítica —también excesiva— de Franz Fanon, con una suficiencia ontológica de la cultura.

El conflicto de la Negritud se resuelve así como extensión misma del de Occidente, en su contradicción interna; reproduciendo los mismos excesos que critica, y por las mismas razones que critica en ellos, en su determinismo. Esto sería lo que limite su alcance, pues la Negritud no alcanza a constituirse como una postulación alternativa; aunque todavía evidencia la insuficiencia de esta tradición occidental, en la de ese estadio moderno como apoteosis.

Ese sería el valor de la Negritud, como de la crítica postmoderna, no la crítica de Occidente, sino de su modernidad; entendida como contracción a los principios funcionales de la tradición que culmina en ese estadio, no su alternativa. Por supuesto, nada de eso es perceptible desde los mismos parámetros de la contradicción, determinados por ella; sino sólo desde una instancia capaz de conciliar sus términos, que es precisamente el sentido del Realismo Trascendental.