Talk:Cécile Fatiman/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Grnrchst (talk · contribs) 10:02, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Caeciliusinhorto (talk · contribs) 21:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Looks interesting – marking my spot to review this. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I've read through the article a couple of times now. In two places, it's somewhat unclear to me what is individual historians' theories and what is Historical Consensus(tm).

1. Fatiman's early life. The section starts by telling us in Wikipedia's voice that she was the daughter of an African woman and a Corsican prince. Then we get told a bunch of different historians' theories. It's unclear to me whether these theories are all compatible with 1) each other or 2) the African slave/Corsican prince theory. Do e.g. Khan and Césaire agree with this theory? Where does the suggestion that she was Kongolese come from? Where does Salnave get the name Attiman from – not from King Theodore of Corsica, as far as I can work out?!
2. The ceremony at Bois Caïman. The section on §Revolution makes it seem as though this is the historical consensus, but §Historiography suggests that whether the ceremony happened at all has been disputed! It says that Carolyn Fick "was able to say with certainty" that it happened – but the source for that is Fick herself. Is her view the historical consensus? (And unmentioned in either section is that, from a quick look at Fick, while she believes that the ceremony definitely happened, she seems to cast doubt on whether the priestess at the ceremony actually was Fatiman...)

In both cases, ideally there would be a good recent source that explicitly says "most historians believe X" which could then be used the cite what the historical consensus actually is.

Other than this, there are a few places where the article could do with some work to make it clearer to the layperson. For instance: She saw the body itself as a form of praxis, through which knowledge could be interpreted by entering an altered state of consciousness. Or filling in the archival gaps with diaspora literacy, through a dialectical method.

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Aye, I think my trouble sorting through the conflicting narratives comes through in the text, thanks for bringing this up.

1. I think historical consensus does seem to accept the "African woman and Corsican prince" origin, as it comes up regularly and I haven't yet seen it challenged. The other hypotheses are almost certainly incompatible with each other, so I should probably make that clearer. Personally (so not adding this in) I think it's likely that these hypotheses are shaped by the individual biases of each claimant. Rodney Salnave has disagreed with the hypothesis that she was Muslim,[1] and the hypothesis that she was Kongolese was questioned by David Patrick Geggus. I didn't want to entirely exclude these hypotheses, but I definitely need to make it clearer that none of these are consensus. Any suggestions?
2. The factuality of the ceremony isn't disputed by historical consensus. Only Léon-François Hoffman and Franck Sylvain disputed it, and that was due to their own attempts to downplay the role of Vodou in the Haitian Revolution.

As for the clarity part, aye, Finch talks about some very deep concepts that are quite difficult to grasp at times. This is why I linked to the articles on diaspora literacy and praxis, as it would be too much of an aside to define each of these in the text. Happy to take suggestions on how to improve these. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

As for "Attiman", I've seen it written elsewhere that it might have come from Gregorio Attiman, who was (if I recall correctly) an adopted son of Theodore of Corsica. Finch didn't go much further into this, though. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:43, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto: Hey, it's been a week since this last comment. I've tried to clarify some of these points, but may need some additional pointers for further improvements. Is there anything else you could add for this review? Cheers. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:00, 21 June 2024 (UTC)