Haitians Are Not Divided; They Are Alone

For several years now, Haiti has faced a persistent difficulty in thinking of itself as a society. Not an absence of society, which would be absurd. Rather, a difficulty in naming itself as such, in recognizing itself within the same movement, in projecting itself into a history that would belong to everyone. This difficulty is generally diagnosed as an excess of division. I believe it must be read differently.

The vocabulary of “division” and “cleavages” has become so embedded in public discourse that it is