Whitney Brown Brown 1

As We Redefine

I appreciate the way Neil Roberts Freedom as Marronage begins. He provides an outline

of concepts and intellectual work that he will be using. He then continues on to define the terms

and connect them so that readers gain a better understanding of the work that he is pursuing. He

takes Western theory and philosophy to show the intent to misconstrue the truth within the value

of freedom. He then goes on to support his meaning with historical anecdotes and linguistic

origins. Through all of the languages and influences the many cultures, from the “Age of the

Revolution” the word marron immersed. Of course through modern slavery, the need to define

freedom became a priority. It allotted slaves in research for freedom the opportunity to control

their own social space through speech, actions, and practices. This is basis of their power. Neil

Roberts does an excellent job bringing great thinkers into the conversation. From philosophy to

theaters arts, from literature on the topic of politics to poetry. The legacy of the Haitian

Revolution is found through the thoughts of Afro-Caribbean greats from the twentieth and

twenty-first century. Many of which are used in Roberts’ Freedom as Marronage. Though the

time of the revolution was set in the later nineteenth century, the global impact the culture made

was not yet seen.

In the midst of all that came with Chapter 2, the most astonishing point was when

Roberts uses Fredrick Douglass to show how even after he had escaped to the North and

obtained legal for of freedom he did not feel free. This goes to the point of Robert’s malleable

flight. Though you are free from the chins and the bound of slavery in your mind. The force of

slavery was not only an oppression against your body but also against your person. It is a force

that conspires to dissolve the want or need to be a person.

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“But, while attending an antislavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August,

1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by

Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people’s

meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was,

I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke

but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with

considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of

my brethren—with what success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with

my labors to decide”3.

-Fredrick Douglass,

The infamous Fredrick Douglass was called to speak, the act that we know him for and it is this

act that made him feel enslaved. To speak semi-freely to white people took him to the place of

which he fled from. A further example of the comparative freedom Roberts introduced.

During the Haitian Revolution, instead of building up leaders, Roberts found it more

effective to uphold the action and events of the people. This was explained in entirety in chapter

four. In these actions was the renaming of political language. This confiscated the external power

to internal power so that the people had a way to effectively profess what they need and wanted

as a collective people. Roberts shared with readers the time that Haiti declared “it’s entry into the

comity of states as the first ‘Black’ Republic of the New World,” the term ‘blackness’ was now

measured by their own means. It was the new native. This in turn begins their self-proclaimed

freedom. A blueprint of a sort. The ground work and forces they used to move within the

3
Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass (Boston, MA: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845) p. 100
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political system to create their own was seen by other enslaved people. To put Robert into

conversation with other great thinkers, they would all agree that the Haitian revolution was

definitely an influence to many anti-slavery movements.