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Blacks who have descended from the nineteenth century Atlantic slave trade have historically debated and worked to claim a sense of cultural identity that reflects their African heritage and their identity as diasporic. Callaloo as an academic journal specifically emphasizes the investigation of both black diaspora and their cultural expression. I am particularly interested in how people of the black Atlantic claim their multiple identities since, for people of a diaspora, one main factor is the fact that they inhabit multiple spaces but cannot call any home. How does transnationalism become a better way to describe the cultural identity of those in the “black Atlantic” since these people have to create new or adapted identities as they move from place to place? For Paul Gilroy, the “black Atlantic” applies to people who descended from slaves forced to come to New World (19). In a sense, slavery is a major part of African diasporic history, but I would claim that as time has progressed and people of this lineage came to find homes in the Caribbean, America, and Europe and they have not lost their heritage. Instead, they have retained these identities in a transnational sense. Multiple cultural identities become integrated into each transnational individual, making each person unique to his or her culture without losing sight of his or her common heritage. I explore these identity formations through a close reading of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora (sic) in the United States (2001), a collection of short stories, poetry, and personal accounts from Haitian diaspora in the United States, whose stories delve into the issue of transnational identity. The idea of diaspora as read in the text of The Butterfly’s Way emphasizes that the more fluid and encompassing terms of hybridity and transnationalism more accurately describe the geographical movements and consequential amassing of black identification within Paul Gilroy’s concept of the “black Atlantic.” My analysis is supported by a survey of theoretical discourses, particularly those related to black identity. I utilize post-colonial theory while focusing particularly on transnationalism and diasporic studies through Stuart Hall, as well as W.E.B. Du Bois’s conception of “double consciousness” to support and develop my argument on how blacks negotiate multiple identities (11). To discuss the formation of a people, I use the work of political theorist Ernesto Laclau, in particular, his arguments in On Populist Reason (2007) on group identity and demand. Gilroy’s concept of the “black Atlantic” has many similarities to Laclau’s notion of the “empty signifier” as a way for people to form groups for collective action. I conclude that transnationalism works as better way to describe the black diaspora since black descendants of slaves have retained multiple identities as Africans as well as citizens of their current nations. My paper argues that transnationalism and hybridity function as better terms to describe people who have the Atlantic slave trade in their history. Debating Difference 1 Debating Difference: Investigating Haitian transnationalism in Paul Gilroy’s “black Atlantic” The history of the Atlantic slave trade with its massive transferal of blacks from Africa to the West and consequent erasure of cultural and genealogical identity has made the question of black identity a prevalent one, especially where many blacks are only known by the color of their skin and not the heritage they carry. These discussions emerge especially in post-colonial studies where practitioners trace the history of colonialism and work to find instances of resistance by the colonized and also identify where the colonizers exert their Imperial, ideological power. They also seek to emphasize the repositioning of the colonial subject as a free agent in a postcolonial world. Much of this repositioning becomes the recovery and reestablishment of lost culture over that of the dominant, colonial hegemony. In particular, black diaspora created through the Atlantic slave trade has attempted to reclaim their shared African identity across national borders. Since the abolition of slavery, black academics and writers particularly in the Western hemisphere have worked to reclaim their cultural identity. Paul Gilroy’s text The Black Atlantic fits into this narrative of diasporic, African identity since he tries to create a label for all blacks descended from the slave trade to gather under and claim a mutual identity. In Haiti, where blacks set a precedent by successfully resisting their slave masters, the narrative of identity takes a unique turn. Many Haitian transnationals remain true to their Haitian identity as political resistors and take this identity with them to other countries. In describing the global nature of Haitian political resistance through literature, Valerie Kaussen concludes that: Twentieth century Haitian literature thus forms an integral part of the constellation of anti-colonial discourses that developed globally in the twentieth century. Indeed, the universalist ideals of liberty and human rights that grounded Haiti’s eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization (which ended in 1804) persist into the twentieth century to inform an increasingly global movement of resistance to the continuing inequities of global capitalism (xiii). Debating Difference 2 Here, Kaussen makes the case that Haitian citizens carry their culture with them and use their history to assert political agency in a decolonizing world. In this sense, Haitian citizens also assert effective praxis within post-colonialism as a discipline. Edwidge Danticat, a prolific Haitian writer, editor, and political activist living in the United States, focuses on the literature of Haitian transnationals and the diaspora (Danticat 241; Mirabel 27). In particular, Danticat’s anthology The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora (sic) in the United States collects personal stories from Haitian immigrants whose lives express their Haitian transnational identity. Kaussen specifically defines Danticat in this way: “Danticat writes in English and her emphasis on testimony over history situates her within the literary context both of Francophone and Anglophone postcolonial literature as well as U.S. immigrant literatures” and later “her focus on the theme of diaspora replays her own position between the Haitian literary tradition and the burgeoning tradition of the American immigrant and postcolonial literatures” (187). In this way, Danticat emphasizes the transnational experience in her own writing. I use transnationalism to mean that while these Haitians hold onto their heritage as “black Atlantic,” they also maintain their Haitian heritage and other cultural identities as integral parts of their individual selves. Thus this paper analyzes how people define cultural identity, particularly transnationalism through the concept of diaspora for people of African descent whose history in the West, particularly in Haiti, began with the Atlantic slave trade. Today, many describe blacks as part of the African diaspora. In this way, descendants of the Atlantic slave trade who live in multiple countries are tied to the homeland of Africa to which they cannot ever truly return. Thus, blacks of this context experience a loss. Although these descendants of the colonized peoples have retained that history of slavery, they have gone on to recreate themselves as citizens or even doubly conscious citizens of their places of Debating Difference 3 residence. These doublings constitute the people of the “black Atlantic” as transnational hybrid citizens (Gilroy 19). Not only do these persons find themselves as citizens of a diasporic community of Africans but they also take on the histories of the countries that they inhabit, giving themselves more contexts in which to claim identity. Transnationalism becomes a better way to describe these people since, while the history of slavery need never be forgotten, blacks who have descended from the African slave trade have created more cultural contexts that builds on this identity, allowing them to move forward as a more hybrid, adapting people. Hybridity works then to show that these blacks have adapted and progressed from the past history of slavery and created a diverse, ever-changing, and ever-growing cultural identity. Thus, blacks of the diaspora can be seen as hybrid transnational people whose individual contexts serve to both unite and individualize them within the “black Atlantic.” This paper seeks to add to the current debate surrounding the construction of a black identity after colonialism and slavery. As post-colonial theory establishes itself as a discipline that focuses in part on recovering a cultural memory for previously colonized nations, the notion of how the people of these nations define identity become important. My paper comes as a response to discussions regarding the creation a black diasporic community. It responds specifically to Gilroy’s contribution by presenting a unique way in which a particular group of people define themselves within the black diaspora. The Haitian writers I analyze present unique arguments to the notion of diaspora, transnationalism, and identity formation within the diaspora and within themselves. These writers emphasize a cultural specificity to Gilroy’s “black Atlantic,” and are thus useful in nuancing Gilroy’s claims. Defining and maintaining a cultural group identity becomes useful for political praxis, and the stories in The Butterfly’s Way reflect the complexity within such a group identity. Debating Difference 4 For my project, I utilize post-colonial theory, and thus take specific terms from the discipline, namely: diaspora, transnationalism and hybridity, to guide my analysis. Post-colonial theory stems from the movement of previously colonized countries to reclaim identity and regain power as

Debating Difference: Haitian Transnationalism in Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic