It is not only the death of the Haitian man that we are witnessing, but the programmed death of his thought, his imagination, his connection to himself. This is what O. Damus, in a lucid conceptual framework, calls an epistemicide, an assassination of knowledge, in three major forms:

1. Exo-epistemicide

This is the one imposed from the outside, through the cultural and ideological domination of foreign powers. It manifests itself through the imposition of economic, educational, and cultural models completely disconnected from our realities. The knowledge of “the Other” becomes the norm, while Haitian knowledge is relegated to folklore, superstition, and insignificance. Worse still, this exo-epistemicide is supported and perpetuated by a rootless local elite, which acts as a conduit for foreign values to the detriment of the people.

It is these "non-citizens" who participate, consciously or unconsciously, in the progressive erosion of national consciousness.

2. Endo-epistemicide

This one comes from within the social body itself. It reflects a collective self-hatred: the tendency of some Haitians to reject their own culture, their own history, their language, their heritage. The destruction of historical sites, the contempt for Vodou, the abandonment of our oral and artistic traditions are glaring manifestations of this. It is a form of mental colonization that pushes the country to seek its legitimacy in the eyes of others, instead of drawing it from its own roots.

3. Self-epistemicide

This is the most intimate and tragic form. It is the form in which the Haitian individual denies himself, devalues himself, and sees himself through the prism of rejection. This denial often occurs in the name of a poorly understood modernity, confused with the servile imitation of what comes from elsewhere.

We have thus produced generations who no longer know where they come from and who, consequently, no longer know where to go.

Towards a Haitian Knowledge: Return to the Sources and Critical Modernity

Faced with this threefold process of erasure, resistance must be intellectual, cultural, and political. We must rebuild a knowledge that is truly our own, rooted in our collective memory, our languages, our symbols, and our spirituality. But this return to our sources must not be a nostalgic retreat: it must be accompanied by an engagement with modernity, as Habermas suggests, in the sense of an ongoing project where critical reason and tradition engage in dialogue to establish a genuinely human progress.

Rebuilding Haiti is not just about rebuilding its roads and institutions:

It is about rehabilitating his spirit, re-anchoring his knowledge, reconciling the Haitian with himself.

Without this intellectual and cultural renaissance, any development project will remain an empty shell.

Auguste D'meza

Teacher