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• Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race and Popular Performance by Peter P. Reed
• Guo Shuyu

Peter P. Reed's new and prodigious volume, Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race, and Popular Performance, offers a comprehensive [End Page 411] overview of the impact of the Haitian Revolution, particularly its manifestations in nineteenth-century US performance by generations of French colonial refugees, abolitionists, writers, students, and Black celebrities in distinctive ways. Through insightful analysis of performances, supported by extensive historically visual and printed archives, Reed traces the evolution of "staging Haiti" from the 1790s Haitian Revolution in the 1790s to the 1860s US Civil War. Throughout this nearly century-long transatlantic engagement, Reed dissects how Haiti redefined US popular culture, reshaping the country's fundamental views on race, power, identity, and freedom through the interaction between actor-audience. Remarkable in its breadth and depth, Staging Haiti also fills a significant gap in theatre and performance studies, which has not attended fully to the island nation's cultural and political influences.

Reed divides his book into six chronological chapters. Each contains several sections providing complementary analysis to its given topic. The book is structured around a central dialectic: white Americans' mixed feelings toward slave insurrection—fear and loathing of its horror and aftermaths, but curiosity and even obsession with it. Reed reveals these central dialectical ambiguities, as he understands them, through detailing "the horrors of Saint Domingue" in the introduction (14). In the way of Brechtian "historification," by which Reed traces the origins of those mixed feelings through the original Haitian revolution, he unravels to readers the deep-seated paradox toward enslavement in their own culture. More of an emotional analysis, it adds factual and historical explanation to Reed's larger argument as it demonstrates how the Haitian Revolution influenced racial and political debates in the United States. The many illustrations in the book from literature, theatre, and public speeches, among other performance forms, attest to Americans' fascination with the Haitian Revolution.

Chapter 1 delves into the initial theatre of the Haitian Revolution with John Murdock's 1795 play The Triumph of Love, or Happy Reconciliation. Although the play itself "foregrounded the experiences of the largely white [characters]" (179), Reed focuses his analysis on the script's Black characters and how they misbehave in ways inspired by French Revolutionary ideals. Reed traces ambivalences between refugees' (ex-colonizers') sentimentality toward the "Lost Cause" and slaves' comic rebelliousness and between the white populations' fear of Black revolution. Such tensions, Reed argues, reflect broader shifts in Americans' cultural perceptions of race and national belonging in the late eighteenth century.

While eyeing individual narratives of theatrical performances in the first chapter, in chapter 2 Reed turns to two college commencement performances in the early nineteenth century to underscore the intricate relationship between US culture, the politics of performance, and Haiti. Graduation performances, as a part of the pedagogical process, verified students' academic accomplishment. Both college performances represent Haiti as a rich site for social-political debates over enslavement and race, despite the United States' polarization around its own racial dynamics in that era. Across the two performances, Reed focuses on differences in portrayal and reception of Haiti's revolution and independence caused by the racial identities of the performers. The chapter reveals a duality embedded within these educational performances; while such performances could be a public platform for self-expression and social debates, they also served to credential power and identity.

In chapters 3 and 4, Reed analyzes reenactments of the Haitian revolution and independence movement within a broader Atlantic context, framing Haiti as a mediating force through which different cultures and institutions come into focus. Reed's argument is epitomized by Ira Aldridge, an African American actor who began his career performing as Haitian royalty in New York in 1820s. In addition to his virtuosity, Reed attributes Aldridge's success and celebrity to "Atlantic transit." Reed understands this term not only through its geographic registers but also as indicating a cultural shift to a more racially tolerant environment...

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  在 19 世纪的美国上演海地：革命、种族和大众表演 Peter P. Reed
•  郭淑玉

彼得·里德 （Peter P. Reed） 的新书《在十九世纪美国为海地上演：革命、种族和大众表演》（Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America： Revolution， Race， and Popular Performance） 全面 [结束第 411 页] 概述了海地革命的影响，特别是它在 19 世纪几代法国殖民难民、废奴主义者、作家、学生和黑人名人以独特的方式在美国表演中的表现。通过对表演的深刻分析，在广泛的历史视觉和印刷档案的支持下，里德追溯了从 1790 年代 1790 年代的海地革命到 1860 年代美国内战的“海地舞台”的演变。在这场长达近一个世纪的跨大西洋参与中，里德剖析了海地如何重新定义美国流行文化，重塑该国对种族、权力、 身份和自由。Staging Haiti 在广度和深度上都非常出色，它也填补了戏剧和表演研究的重大空白，这些研究没有充分关注这个岛国的文化和政治影响。

里德将他的书分为六个按时间顺序排列的章节。每个都包含几个部分，为其给定主题提供补充分析。这本书围绕着一个中心辩证法展开：美国白人对奴隶起义的复杂情感——对它的恐怖和后果感到恐惧和厌恶，但对它却充满好奇甚至痴迷。里德通过在引言中详细描述“圣多明戈的恐怖”来揭示这些他所理解的这些核心辩证法的歧义 （14）。里德以布莱希特式的“历史化”的方式，通过最初的海地革命追溯了这些复杂情感的根源，他向读者揭示了他们自己文化中对奴隶制的根深蒂固的悖论。它更像是一种情感分析，它为里德更大的论点增加了事实和历史解释，因为它展示了海地革命如何影响美国的种族和政治辩论。书中来自文学、戏剧和公开演讲以及其他表演形式的许多插图证明了美国人对海地革命的迷恋。

第 1 章通过约翰·默多克 （John Murdock） 1795 年的戏剧《爱的胜利》（The Triumph of Love） 或《幸福的和解》（The Triumph of Love， or Happy Reconciliation） 深入探讨了海地革命的最初戏剧。尽管该剧本身“突出了以白人为主的 [角色] 的经历”（179），但里德将分析重点放在剧本中的黑人角色以及他们如何以法国大革命理想的启发而做出不当行为。里德追溯了难民（前殖民者）对“失败的事业”的多愁善感与奴隶的滑稽叛逆之间，以及白人对黑人革命的恐惧之间的矛盾。里德认为，这种紧张关系反映了 18 世纪后期美国人对种族和国家归属感的文化观念的广泛转变。

在第一章中着眼于戏剧表演的个人叙述，在第二章中，里德转向 19 世纪初的两场大学毕业典礼表演，以强调美国文化、表演政治和海地之间的复杂关系。作为教学过程的一部分，毕业表演验证了学生的学术成就。这两场大学表演都代表了海地是关于奴隶制和种族的社会政治辩论的丰富场所，尽管美国在那个时代围绕自己的种族动态存在两极分化。在这两场表演中，里德专注于表演者的种族身份对海地革命和独立的描绘和接受的差异。本章揭示了这些教育表演中嵌入的二元性;虽然这样的表演可以成为自我表达和社会辩论的公共平台，但它们也有助于证明权力和身份。

在第 3 章和第 4 章中，里德在更广泛的大西洋背景下分析了海地革命和独立运动的重演，将海地视为一种中介力量，通过它，不同的文化和机构成为焦点。里德的论点以非裔美国演员艾拉·奥尔德里奇 （Ira Aldridge） 为代表，他于 1820 年代在纽约开始了他的职业生涯，作为海地皇室成员表演。除了他的精湛技艺之外，里德还将奥尔德里奇的成功和名气归功于“大西洋过境”。Reed 不仅通过其地理记录来理解这个词，而且还表示文化转变为更加种族宽容的环境......