Argument
The key argument that Michel-Rolph Trouillot sets forward in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History is that history in itself is created by historians, while reality is what is produced by events and processes. History represents the human narration of reality that is viewed subjectively from the perspective of an individual who is compiling written accounts of specific events. In the author’s opinion, an honest and serious historian is the one who tells history as close to the real-life data as possible to ensure that the records that are left reflect the reality of events. However, Trouillot argues that much of the past, even such that is preserved accurately in historical records, gets “silenced” and pushed aside as insignificant or not valuable.
Support
Troillot provides four important points that support his argument about history being silenced. First, silencing occurs when sources are being made since not every event gets remembered to be recorded. Thus, there is a difference between the events that are remembered and described to transcend the present and those that are inevitably silenced. Second, silencing exists when archives are being created. Historians make active choices, make mistakes, and have their biases, which means that some parts of reality are silenced. Third, narrators purposefully silence history because of having the ability to make choices of some events over others, which leads to significant archival points being omitted. Fourth, there is a “corpus” that represents a commonly-accepted narrative that limits the inclusion of some events because of the difference of opinions between various groups. Only a certain set of past events gets transformed into history.
Evidence
As an illustration of the points of support of the argument, Troillot delves deep into the examples of the history of Columbus and related narratives, which become intertwined into the general thesis of the book of history being changed and produced. The example of Columbus’s discovery is an illustration of how the standard historic narrative differs from reality. Troillot writes, “to call “discovery” the first invasion of inhabited lands by Europeans is an exercise of Eurocentric power that already frames future narratives of the event so described. […] Once discovered by Europeans, the Other finally enters the human world” (Troillot 1995, 114). The author shows that the power that historians have to decide how events will be framed within the historic narrative silences the past, desensitizing the target audience to the damaging acts committed by their ancestors under the guise of discovery rather than a conquest.
Critique
The arguments and the examples that Troillot provides in Silencing the Past allow for developing the argument about the nature of historical writing and the narratives that are embedded into it. It is important to understand that history will never be perfect, but caution should be used when it comes to history as telling the past. The impact of different points of view, choices, and selective thinking will make history separate from the past. What is notable is that Troillot does not criticize historians per se but rather points out that it is human nature to make conscious and unconscious decisions on how history should be presented. Therefore, history should be used to shape current views and ideologies rather than perceived as the one and only tool of retelling the past.
References
Troillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.