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Extracts concerning Stephan Palmié:
Having consulted only a small portion of the published trial transcript of the Aponte Rebellion, and none of the archival sources, Stephan Palmié somewhat naively suggests by deduction that ‘‘a quest for truths’’ by his interrogators may have resulted in them concluding that the facts ‘‘could only be gained from the man [Aponte] if they preserved his bodily and psychological integrity.’’ p37
Stephan Palmié’s detailed examination of Aponte’s book of drawings relies
exclusively on Franco’s printed testimony and raises new and important
questions, but he consciously avoids making any conclusion and even states that
‘‘such an answer to the question, What in the world is Palmié trying to argue?
is not just unproductive, but ultimately arrogant.’’ Consequently, Palmié
purposely offers a series of deductive speculations
that focus on Aponte the artist, and not the rebellion that bears his name. p77
Stephan Palmié’s revisionist interpretation minimizes Aponte’s role and incorrectly claims ‘‘all Aponte himself ever admitted was having had some knowledge of potentially seditious plans that some men with whom he was closely associated were hatching." p184 Aponte’s house served as one of the key conspiratorial centers for planning and organizing the rebellion.
Chapter 1 Note 3 Stephan Palmié’s consultation of only select printed primary sources causes him to fail to mention Barbier’s time in Saint Domingue. Moreover, his revisionist interpretation results in him downplaying the revolutionary intentions of the movement and direct association or possible inspiration from Saint Domingue. For reasons that remain unclear, Palmié incorrectly spells Juan Barbier’s name throughout the book as ‘‘Juán Barbier,’’ which does not reflects orthography particular to the primary sources, the secondary sources, or early nineteenth century Spanish. Wizards and Scientists, p132.
Chapter 3 Note 25 Stephan Palmié’s analysis of Aponte’s militia service explores the issues of pride and self-esteem, but since his reading of Aponte’s book ahistorically divorces the document from the movement that bears Aponte’s name, Palmié only naturally cautions against regarding these images as signs of insurrection. Palmié, Wizards and Scientists, pp100–103.
Chapter 3 Note 155 Scholar Stephan Palmié hastily concluded, with only consulting a handful of published sources, that for Ternero ‘‘we will, of course, never know what precisely these ostensibly ethnic identity referents mean in the historical context in which these men deployed them.’’ Historians interested in Ternero’s own words, however, can certainly gain critical insights into his own ideas behind such terms, how he created degrees of Mina Guagni ethnicity depending on African or Cuban birth, and the historical setting in which he used these terms by consulting the sources. Palmié, Wizards and Scientists, p143.
Chapter 5 Note 12 The original proclamation nailed to the captain
general’s residence can be found in ANC-AP, leg. 12, no. 14, fol. 35. For
reasons the remain unclear, Stephan Palmié did not consult Franco’s more widely
known book on the Aponte Rebellion that would have qualified some of his
conclusions about the historiography. Instead, Palmié consulted Franco’s Las
conspiraciones de 1810 y 1812, a very brief twenty-four-page introduction to the
document collection that only has two footnotes, as it was intended for a
general and not a scholarly audience. Palmié writes: ‘‘Franco makes rather vague
references to what he thinks may have been prior seditious activities on the
part of Aponte. He thus claims that Aponte dictated an inflammatory proclamation
that was posted in Havana in early March 1812 but fails to cite any evidence.’’
Wizards and Scientists, 80–81. Had Palmié consulted the more detailed 1963
study, he would have found that not only did Franco cite evidence of the
proclamation for the rebellion, he also provided a facsimile of the document
that Aponte dictated. See Franco, La conspiración de Aponte, between pp. 20–21.
anthropology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty_member/stephan_palmie
csrpc.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/stephan_palmie/
The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion, Google Books
Wednesday
Lunch at the Divinity School with Stephan Palmie, 12/12/13
Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74, NYT, 10/10/2004
"Mr. Derrida was known as the father of deconstruction, the method of inquiry
that asserted that all writing was full of confusion and contradiction, and that
the author's intent could not overcome the inherent contradictions of language
itself, robbing texts -- whether literature, history or philosophy -- of
truthfulness, absolute meaning and permanence....
Racism and Post-modernist Theory - a critique, Stop Racism and Hate Collective
Modern and Postmodern Racism in Europe, Harvard Educational Review, Summer
1999
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Stephan Palmié