Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past. Beacon Press, 1997.
Much as historical individuals in real space and time make claims about their own importance and their proposed role in the future, early on in his own text the historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot states that the prospective project of his book, Silencing the Past, is to tell a theoretical tale about the relationship between history and power. He attempts to analyze how historical narratives are produced. In other words, Trouillot sees history as a narrative, as a production, rather than as a series of factual, unbroken events. "Human beings participate in history both as participants and as narrators," says Trouillot. (2)
This point-of-view of history, because it employs a literary as well as a factual understanding of historical narrative, perhaps inevitably suggests that the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals. Individuals at specific historical moments in time will always have unequal access to the communicative means of historical production. This may be because of a lack of education, as the poor lack the literacy to record their historical views in a time and place that prioritizes written history over oral history. Or if not due to class, this lack of access may be due to politics, as a repressive regime attempts to destroy not only all voices of dissent, but attempts to create the illusion that no ideology contrary to the ruler's own ideology ever existed.
But Trouillot's text is not purely theoretical in nature. His text specifically discusses the differences between the Haitian Revolution and the colonialist implications of Columbus' exploration of the Americas in the form of the current debate over Columbus Day, as well as several other historical examples in lesser detail. But perhaps even more importantly than the specificity of these examples, the author...
Domestic Homicide in South Carolina The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread," wrote French intellectual and social critic Anatole France in The Red Lily in 1894 and in doing so he summarized the often great distance that exists between laws and people's concepts of justice and truth. Justice is a slippery
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now