Session 6: Silencing the Past

In his book, Silencing the Past, Trouillot lists in detail the limitations of history as a discipline. He uses the example of factions between the Haitian revolutionaries who ousted the French. In the nationalist narrative of the Haitian revolution, this fratricidal struggle has not just been neglected, but effectively erased. He makes an important argument for the subjectivity of every historian. History works like a narrative. If you use the vantage point of a certain person, you automatically disclude everyone else. More problematically, when you look at an event through the lens of your purpose, e.g. look at the Haitian revolution to retrieve its glory for a nationalist discourse, you automatically disclude every detail that does not serve that purpose [“Narratives are necessarily emplotted in a way life is not. (pg. 6)”]. This is perhaps the greatest limitation of the discipline of History, in my opinion.

Another important point he makes is outlining the constructivist’s approach using the example of the Holocaust. He says there should be a distinction between your political and scholarly responsibility, however, because the stakes are often so high with political responsibility, authentic scholarship loses out.

On the matter of sources, he exposes the bias of the most innocent source. He claims that we all remember things in relative importance to the trajectory our life takes. This is an extremely important idea which alludes to an inherent bias in sources, that should be dealt-with with caution. And then, to retrieve a collective memory is even more problematic because it is weighed down by methodological individualism. In relevance to writing of the subaltern and its limitation he notes that a key pitfall is linking a consciousness to the subaltern that does not exist. He says: “a strike is a strike, only if the workers think they are striking.” Furthermore, the subaltern not only has a sense of time that does not comply with modern standards, but they do not base new facts, on previously held facts, a basis of the discipline of History, and so their ‘facts’ are considered invalid.

He then uses the example of Sans Souci to demonstrate the limitations of History. His methodology is simplistic. He makes a point and explains it with examples, thereby cautioning us against a limitation, never telling us a way to work over it, perhaps because there is no way. He does not reprimand long dead writers for their lack of political correctness that conforms to our times, but cautions us against it. Slavery, in their accounts, stands for everything but slavery. Thus, Trouillot’s book is a cautionary tale of the many pitfalls a historian can fall into.