Session 6

       I really enjoyed this week’s text by Trouillot as a healthy critique/analysis of “history” as a discipline, as practice and as a process. I refer to it as a healthy critique because although the author highlights that silencing is an inherent part of history – both as a process and narrative - he does so in a manner that doesn’t leave the reader with a sense that nothing can be said at all, or worse that there is no point in speaking. In our previous classes, we repeatedly discussed how silences are inevitable, however Trouillot demonstrates that silencing is not an inherently negative process. If we understand silencing as a relational concept, then complete unsilencing would simultaneously destroy the possibility of speaking/comprehensive as well – speaking and silences are flip sides of the same coin. Given this fact, I find that it is more important to be aware of the silences that we are creating, and the limitations of our stories than to present those narrations as a self-evident/given/truth. Acknowledging our silences means that we acknowledge the process of selection that we engage in as historians. It does however beg the question - to what extent can we be aware of our limitation/silences at any given time. 

                Building upon the previous point, Trouillot’s text is also important because it expands our understanding of the process of silencing. Trouillot highlights that silencing is not simply a one-dimensional passive act of absence. Trouillot explains that it is an “an active and transitive process” – the very speaking of one thing silences another. Furthermore, although we have dealt with the layers of silencing in class, as well as the fact that not all silences are equal, Trouillot’s text has much to offer analytically regarding the various stages at which it happens. I found it interesting how he moves beyond the silencing of the archives, and beings with the silencing that exists in the very facts that we deal with, and how they too have their inborn silences. This is important because it implies that greater empirical knowledge/uncovering will not ultimately lead to a more truthful history.

               Although, silencing is a major theme in this text, Trouillot touches upon a lot of other important points. Firstly, throughout the text he emphasizes that our practice of history is based on a number philosophical presuppositions regarding time, knowledge, memory, and even man that we need to be aware of. These presuppositions create certain possibilities/limitations in the present and the future. Trouillot’s discussion on the unthinkable/irrational/impossible in history indeed leads us to perhaps a new way of understanding who is the subaltern – as may be that which stands outside current possibility. As that which doesn’t fit in our current categories, and hence lies within the unknown. Indeed, this is precisely why in Colonial India and in Haiti, the revolution/insurgency was either denied, or regarded as being pushed by outsiders - the unknown/impossible had to immediately fit in the world of the known/possible.  Secondly, it also begs the question of whether certain events can also be subaltern in nature  - the Haiti Revolution - and lastly how subalternity is not static, but part of a process that changes as the world of possibilities expands.  

                 

              Lastly, I would like delve into Trouillot's methodology. It is clearly evident that he is trying to move beyond dominant trends/dichotomies. He is attempting to move beyond the agency/structure divide, the symbolic/practical divide, the objective/subjective divide and is attempting to develop relational logic. I think the importance of this text lies in a simple shift in focus from what history is, to how it works. In this way, may be we too could ask how subalternity works, rather than what is.