Bataille, Haiti and Vodou

Lecture discussing the influence of Haitian Vodou on the development of social psychopathology in Europe during the 19th century, from the theoretical legacy of Anton Mesmer, through Le Bon, Charcot and Freud, to the Revolutionary Surrealism of Georges Bataille and the Acephale group in the 1930s. The presentation addresses the mythopoeic role of the Bois-Caïman ceremony in the story of Haitian Revoltion, its influence on sociological imagination of Europe in the forthcoming century, and the subsequent racialisation of the collective, revolutionary unconscious.