Trouillot notes
(1). Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes in the introduction to his 1995 text Silencing the Past: Power and the Introduction of History that “the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production” and that history “is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots” (xxiii). To paraphrase, Trouillot contends that historical narratives are the product of predominant social, political, and socio-economic conditions that pervade a society in any given time. The way we view the past is a direct reflection of how we view ourselves in the present, and the narratives in which we choose to believe and purport mirror the powered dynamics of belonging that define present conditions. For instance, Trouillot examines the historical silence imposed upon Colonel San Souci, an African-born Haitian military leader of rebellious slaves who was murdered by Afro-Creole Haitian King Henri Christophe. Trouillot writes that a mere “fleeting” picture was left in the historiographical record of San Souci, whereas Henri Christophe has since been ingrained in Haitian history as a highly recognizable figure revered by some and detested by others but always belonging “to the same elites that must control and normalize the aspirations of the barbarians,” reflecting what Trouillot aptly describes as “an unequal frequency of retrieval, unequal (factual) weight, [and] unequal degrees of factualness” (46, 53-5, 69). History and perceptions of history are reflective of the biases, the sensibilities, and the values of a given society, and history as both a social process and an academic field of study does not exist by itself. Rather, as Trouillot notes, history “is always produced in a specific historical context” and “changes with time and place or, better said, history reveals itself only through the production of specific narratives” (22-5).
Trouillot writes that historical production is an uneven process, and this unevenness is further perpetuated through archives and silences embedded in historical sources (44, 47). He states that “inequalities experienced by the actors lead to uneven historical power in the inscription of traces,” and “the very mechanisms that make any historical recording possible also ensure that historical facts are not created equal” (48-9). These silences, then, are further purported in the assembly of archives, as this work “is an active act of production that prepares facts for historical intelligibility” (52). According to Trouillot, archives “convey authority and set the rules for credibility and interdependence” and “help select the stories that matter,” and the “making of archives involves a number of selective operations” that entails the inclusion of some narratives and sources (52-3).
Trouillot’s theorization of historical production as an exclusive process that reflects the experiences, biases, and mores of those who produce historical narratives and the societal conditions in which these narratives are produced particularly reminded me of Harris’s article “Coming of Age.” Discussing the transformation of African American historiography, Harris notes that contemporary African American historiography is “conducted as a distinct area of inquiry, within the discipline of history, with black people as its primary focus to reveal their thought and activities over time” (Harris 118). This emphasis on Black people as discernible historical actors that was inspired by dialogues initiated by the mid-twentieth century civil rights movement is evocative of the “overlap between history as a social process and history as knowledge” and selectivity Trouillot attributes to the process in creating historical narratives, in which “any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operation to deconstruct these silences [within traditional historical narratives and the historical record] will vary accordingly” (26-7). Given his emphasis on the correlation between historical silences and socio-political power, I am inclined to believe that Trouillot would be rather favorable to Gomez’s Reversing Sail and Berlin’s Many Thousands Gone, as Gomez’s text acknowledges the historical silences imposed upon the historical narratives of the Black diaspora and endeavors to fill these silences by examining the extensive and far-reaching history of this diaspora from antiquity to the present and Berlin’s monograph explores the evolution of Black identity relative to geo-economic, political, and historical circumstances in colonial and Early Republic histories of the United States.
Overall, I enjoyed reading Trouillot’s Silencing the Past and I find it to be an insightful text on historical production. My primary criticism is that Trouillot’s language makes it difficult to discern what he is saying at times. For instance, I found his sentence “To state that a particular narrative legitimates particular policies is to refer implcitly to a ‘true’ account of these policies through time, an account which itself can take the form of another narrative” to be a bit awkward and difficult to follow (13). While I believe Trouillot excels at incorporating academic language to articulate his information, I feel that incorporating clearer and more concise language at these points would better serve to express and piece together his overall argument.
(2). Trouillot’s description of his approach to history was super interesting, yet a bit confusing to me. I interpreted a part of Trouillot’s approach to studying history as navigating an accurate historical narrative that includes everyone’s perspective. This is my interpretation because he spoke about one sided historical narratives and how if historians focus on actors other than professional historians, then “we gain a more complex view of academic history itself, since we do not consider professional historians the sole participants in its production.” (25) Trouillot also demonstrated this notion of not leaving a narrative behind while discussing Sans Souci. Trouillot stated, “Almost every mention of Sans Souci, the palace, the very resilience of the physical structure itself, effectively silences San Souci, the man, his political goals, his military genius.” (48) revealing how aspects of historical narratives are left behind and how these aspects are important in gaining a better understanding and a more accurate historical narrative. Trouillot’s discussion of how power is connected to the construction of historical narratives also corresponds with the analysis of San Souci. Since San Souci was a palace built by a rich king, the societal and class inequalities between San Souci (the man, not the palace) and Henry I reveals an aspect of why San Souci’s history was ignored.
Trouillot’s examination of the Haitian Revolution was fascinating to read, specifically when Trouillot stated, “The events that shook up Saint-Domingue from 1791 to 1804 constituted a sequence for which not even the extreme political left in France or in England had a conceptual frame of reference. They were “unthinkable” facts in the framework of Western thought.” (82) Western thought consisted of placing non white people below white people on the social hierarchy, consistently referring to pure white people as “men” and asking the question “what is man?” (78) Trouillot expanded on this idea to suggest that the Haitian Revolution did more than bring Haiti freedom and establishing the first successful slave revolt in history, but challenged Western ideologies of the question, what is man? Gomez and Berlin both expanded on this idea of challenging Western thought by specifically listing ways in which enslaved people and free black people fought for a sense of humanity, while challenging the societal, political, and economic factors of slave societies. Trouillot detailed the evolution of Westerners’ reactions post revolution where Westerners ignored the revolution and instead came up with excuses on why and how the revolution occurred in order to preserve Western ideology that non-whites were inferior and incapable of leading the revolution.
Additionally, I found Trouillot’s analysis of dating history to be fascinating. Trouillot stated that, “they impose a silence upon the events that they ignore, and they fill that silence with narratives of power about the event they celebrate.” (118) Columbus day is typically celebrated by Americans and Europeans in recognition of the discovery of the Americas, but it diminishes the horrors that Native Americans along with other people of color experienced. By labeling this day with a specific date (one that wasn’t marked as a special date in Columbus’s notes), Trouillot suggests that Americans and Europeans concealed the true history behind the discovery of the Americas. Along with silencing the true histories of the discovery of the Americas, Trouillot demonstrated how nations across the world represented Columbus in different forms in order to influence the public’s view on Columbus. For example, in Spain, Columbus Day reinforced “Spain’s presence west of the Atlantic and—to a lesser extent—in Europe.” (127) and to increase Spain’s national pride. Whereas the United States painted Columbus as a “Yankee hero” (129) to initiate national pride. I thought this was an interesting analysis made by Trouillot that revealed the strategy of instilling nationalism into the public to control historical narratives.
(3). “Silencing the Past: Power and the production of History” by Michel-Rolph Trouillot has been my favorite read this far in the semester because of the enlgihtenign perspectives displayed in terms of how history works and how the complexity of the creation of narratives and popular peceptions have driven particular narratives forward and left significant silences for others. Through three examples with the whitening of Christopher Columbus and the popular addition of his achievements into the mind of peoples personal histories being my favorite, displays the arguments between positivists and constructionists who create and drive narrative based upon different philosophies. Trouillot instead refocuses his work around the middle of these two styles of historical writing to bring to the forfront the historians job to complicate the narrative with the silences of the past. The silences of the past refers to those narratives, people, and events that have consequently recieved little coverage or have been altered by popular perceptions and the continued perpetuation of tropes and misnomers.
His example of Christopher Columbus focuses around American perceptions of Columbus as a focal point in the history of American colonization and the world’s fairs adaptation of him to meet the “whiteness” standard of the time as anti-Italian sentiment was high. In reality, the actions of Columbus across Latin America was only a small part in the larger history and beyond United States borders is not a focal point. The popular perceptions and adaptations by individuals drawing on his narrative into a unifying popular history that people identify with displays a silence in the history and ultimately ignores other historical actors and the larger picture that displays more complicated events that influence the development of history.
This may be off topic but I thought I would share as it relates back to Trouillot. Throughout my academic career, works like Trouillot’s have been the ones that have stuck out to me the most. Understanding the ways in which historians, the acadmeic community, and the wider public have influenced the coverage of historical topics is fascinating to me and has been a main point in many of my own works. For example, I am currently working on my thesis proposal and my topic relates to the Cold War, Soviet Hockey, and the Migration of athletes. I have noticed a historiographic trend in the end of the Cold War that displays agency being assigned to large historical actors and governmental administrations (in particular to Reagan and Gorbachev) during the period of major social and economic change leading up to the disollution of the USSR. The reality of my research and claim has shown that the agency of historical actors and the ability of those actors to take advantage of social change goes deeper into the public and is often displayed as the government reacting to public changes rather than influencing change. It appears that the majority of historiographic writings on the topic are silencing and simplifying the history to include a small array of historical actors when the reality shows that there were significant factions of groups within the USSR dictating and evolving the system in which they lived despite the governments stance and with personal agendas driving decision making. If Trouillot looked at the historiographic works of the end of the Cold War, I wonder what his position would be.
Relating back to our readings for this course, I think Trouillot would agree and align most with Berlin as the main focus of his work is the differentiation of peoples experiences within colonial America. Berlin uncovers the complexities of the slave experience depending on time and space in a way that I think Trouillot would appreciate and push with the narrative of uncovering silences as Berlin pushes to create local histories and tie them back to a more complicated historical narrative. In relation to Gomez, I think Gomez gives more emphasizes uncovering a hidden past in terms of creating an African American culture and bringing it to the forefront of society but I think his focus is less on uncovering silences and more on larger connections. Trouillot recognizes these connections as shown through his connection between the Haitian Revolution, the end of American slavery, and the French policies following the revolution in a way that is similar to Gomez creating a longer history but, I would argue that their aims are different. Gomez is attempting to create and craft the history of a culture while Trouillot is attempting to reorganize the thought process around historical study to emphasize the connections between events.
(4). Silencing The Past is a book I’ve been looking forward to discussing since I saw it on the syllabus at the beginning of the semester. This is my second time going through the book, and it’s one that I’m always happy to come back to. I haven’t come across many other books that make such a bold attempt at providing theories about history as a concept (outside of 19th century literature, anyway), and I think for that reason I think this might end up being my favorite reading from the semester. I’ll try to keep my comments relatively brief, but there is so much that could be said in commentary and conversation with Trouillot’s work that it would take multiple volumes to really communicate it all.
For starters, this work seems to me exactly what I would expect someone who is trained as an athropologist to come up with. I appreciated the focus on exactly how history is produced from beginning to end, starting with how sources come about, which ones are ignored or enshrined, and then later on how the past is remembered in different contexts. It’s exceptionally informative methodologically, and I haven’t come across another work of historical scholarship quite like it. Especially of note for me was Trouillot’s attention to agency of historical actors not simply to act in their own historical context, but also to function as the initiators of historical production by creating the archive from which professional historians draw. However, as he highlights repeatedly throughout the book, there are certainly disparities resulting from inequalities that determine whose perspective is privileged enough to be retold, and which ones are forgotten entirely. He highlights this process perfectly when he provides his account of Sans Souci: the writers of the material Trouillot used to recreate his life only mentioned what they thought important to the narrative as they saw it, and in so doing influenced how those sources were used in the future. Further inequalities, such as a disparity in language and literacy led to a disproportianately lower number of Haitians than, say, French scholars writing aboutn the Haitian Revolution, influencing the story even more. As Trouillot observes, these silences are a necessary part of the production of history, describing them as part of the ‘dialectic’ of history (Trouillot, 48). This is where Trouillot’s training as an anthropologist (and , perhaps, his background in theater) really shines: he is keenly aware that, psychologically, humans have to construct narrative frameworks to make sense of any sequence of events. However, even when dealing with a narrator who can be said to act entirely in good faith and with exceptional attention to detail, some things have to be left out. Many details of the events described are simply omitted by necessity because they are not viewed as relevant. And this is before conscious ideology even enters into the picture.
His attention to the silences and gaps within history does call to mind Litwack’s article from earlier in the semester, albeit with a qualification. Litwack’s emphasis is primarily normative, a statement on the way history ought to be done. This makes perfect sense within Litwack’s wider understanding of history as an emancipatory tool which seems to have developed out of his own personal activism. Trouillot was certainly a political activist himself, and I don’t think he would be far off from holding a similar view of history as having emancipatory potential. But he is also careful throughout his work to note that what he is attempting is descriptive first and foremost. He is attempting to uncover the way in which historical memory is shaped and passed down, whether through scholarly work or popular imagination.
This brings me to another point, which is that Trouillot blurs the line between academic history and popular history, between professional and amateur work. I think he effectively demonstrates that they are not entirely as disconnected as historians might want to believe. Simply put, what is going on in the wider public absolutely has an influence on historical scholarship, and the ways in which both popular and academic history are produced are affected by the same forces. I could cite any number of examples explicitly given in the book, but I’ll choose to highlight instead the context in which Trouillot’s own work was produced. Throughout the book, Trouilot chose to include discussion of Holocaust denial. This is certainly an excellent topic to cover in regard to the point he is trying to make, but I believe it was included for another reason. Trouillot’s work was published in 1995. The past decade had seen an explosion of Holocaust denial into popular (and to some extent, academic) history. Trouillot is writing 2 years after Deborah Lipstadt published her study on Holocaust denial as a phenomenon and 1 year before David Irving initiated his libel suit against her for its contents. The Mermelstein-IHR controversy had only resolved a decade earlier. The mid to late 1980’s also saw the Zündel and Keegstra trials in which Holocaust denial was thrust into public view. This was also contemporaneous with Holocaust deniers organizing themselves into pseudo-historical institutes to try and achieve the veneer of academic respectability. And I can’t help but think that the ’empricist procedures’ (Trouillot, 12) he refers to might specifically be the Leuchter Report of 1988. This controversy is something that Trouillot is very much aware of and is using as an example of a major problem with constructivism, so I think it is safe to say that he is absolutely in conversation with the popular zeitgeist in the same manner that he asserts all historical works necessarily are. This point in particular is a reminiscent of how the scholarship of Kenneth Stammp, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Richard Hofstadter was very much in conversation with the prevalent societal ideas of their time.
As a final thought, I wanted to highlight how attentive Trouillot was to many of the assumptions that are generally taken for granted in the writing of history. Of particular note in this regard is when he analogizes language and historical narrative, and I thought the following quote was worth reproducing in its entirety: “The comparison [between the language of Westerners and the people they colonized] unfairly juxtaposed a discourse about language and linguistic practice: the metalanguage of grammarians proved the existence of grammar in European languages; spontaneous speech proved its absence elsewhere. Some Europeans and their colonized students saw in this alleged absence of rules the infantile freedomthat they came to associate with savagery, while others saw in it one more proof of the inferiority of non-whites. We know now that both sides were wrong; grammar functions in all languages. Could the same be said about history, or is history so infinitely malleable in all societies that it loses its differential claim to truth?” This attention to the relative truth value of stories and the language of how those stories are told would, I think, make Wittgenstein proud.