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A review by maestrotrevor
Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
5.0
If you have watched Raoul Peck’s historical documentary series “Exterminate All the Brutes” (if you have not, you should place it at the top of your list) you have been introduced to the ideas of Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot. He was a brilliant writer and thinker who focused not so much on the events of history (which are rarely ever agreed upon) but on the dynamics at play in the way history becomes narrative/s - and in how narrative/s cannot be understood absent of power.
From the erasure and “banalization” of the Haitian Revolution to the whitening and glorification of Christopher Columbus, Trouillot asserted, “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.”
His words could not be more urgent and elucidating in this moment of attempted erasure in our country. Books being burned because they threaten a narrative of exceptionalism. Curriculum being banned because it challenges a history that equates patriotism with white supremacy, while asserting the need to glorify this history. Effort towards justice being condemned because they make whiteness uncomfortable.
“The past does not exist independently from the present,” Trouillot declares “the past has no content. The past - or, more accurately, pastness - is a position.” This battle over the past being waged right now is really a battle over the present. It is a battle not just about the accuracy of the narrative that is shared about the fraught history of the US but, more critically, about whose humanity is valued in the communities, cities, neighborhoods, and schools everywhere in our nation.
Reading Silencing the Past is a powerful reminder that this is what’s at stake right now. When narratives are silenced and distorted, lives are silenced and damaged.
The roots are exposed. Rotten. Hateful. Racist.
We must not allow them to proliferate. History is an argument about the past - and it is one we need to win.
From the erasure and “banalization” of the Haitian Revolution to the whitening and glorification of Christopher Columbus, Trouillot asserted, “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.”
His words could not be more urgent and elucidating in this moment of attempted erasure in our country. Books being burned because they threaten a narrative of exceptionalism. Curriculum being banned because it challenges a history that equates patriotism with white supremacy, while asserting the need to glorify this history. Effort towards justice being condemned because they make whiteness uncomfortable.
“The past does not exist independently from the present,” Trouillot declares “the past has no content. The past - or, more accurately, pastness - is a position.” This battle over the past being waged right now is really a battle over the present. It is a battle not just about the accuracy of the narrative that is shared about the fraught history of the US but, more critically, about whose humanity is valued in the communities, cities, neighborhoods, and schools everywhere in our nation.
Reading Silencing the Past is a powerful reminder that this is what’s at stake right now. When narratives are silenced and distorted, lives are silenced and damaged.
The roots are exposed. Rotten. Hateful. Racist.
We must not allow them to proliferate. History is an argument about the past - and it is one we need to win.