Scan barcode
A review by silences
Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
every page is a banger. i can't believe this came in 1995--it feels like it should be decades older, not because it's dated but because it seems so obviously foundational. short and accessible but also rich enough to read over and over again. i'm not a historian, but trouillot reminds us that people and institutions other than historians can produce and use history. i found particularly useful:
1. the investigation into haiti's lost history, how the haitian revolution was literally unthinkable for most of the world, and therefore certain narratives about it were silenced even as the events unfolded and continued to be silenced after. this is obviously a loss, but i find it encouraging also, especially as an abolitionist--what is impossible and unthinkable today might not be that way tomorrow. also it's cool to imagine a world where columbus is forgotten and no longer useful for nationbuilding.
2. that a history can be "wrong," though "factual," because it is inauthentic and inadequate to the present moment. trouillot has a great critique of disney's planned plantation theme park that later thinkers have also extended to memorials, civil rights museums, etc. it also makes me wonder if u.s. left's defense to recent attacks on critical race theory and basic social studies curricula, which is often phrased as denying history or the past, is the right strategy... still working on that one.
1. the investigation into haiti's lost history, how the haitian revolution was literally unthinkable for most of the world, and therefore certain narratives about it were silenced even as the events unfolded and continued to be silenced after. this is obviously a loss, but i find it encouraging also, especially as an abolitionist--what is impossible and unthinkable today might not be that way tomorrow. also it's cool to imagine a world where columbus is forgotten and no longer useful for nationbuilding.
2. that a history can be "wrong," though "factual," because it is inauthentic and inadequate to the present moment. trouillot has a great critique of disney's planned plantation theme park that later thinkers have also extended to memorials, civil rights museums, etc. it also makes me wonder if u.s. left's defense to recent attacks on critical race theory and basic social studies curricula, which is often phrased as denying history or the past, is the right strategy... still working on that one.