Trouillot: Overly Reliant on Historical Narrative

    In Silencing the Past, Trouillot approaches untold histories by positing that those who exact power also manipulate, if not determine, the production of history, and thereby effectively shape not only historical interpretation, but history itself, by exclusion.  Comparing the two writers, I am not sure Townsend is as concerned with historical "silences," at least not as explicitly as Trouillot seems to be.  In my view, Townsend actually seems to create silences by leaving certain marginalized groups out of his narrative.  Both writers do, however, comment on the role and responsibility (perhaps importance) of professional historians, and both recognize the public as significant actors in historical interpretation and as history workers.  Alike, again, both Townsend and Trouillot are very personally connected to their work: On one hand an institutional history of the AHA, and on the other, what seems to be a very personal interpretation of the history of Haiti (among other things).  The scope of Trouillot is, like Townsend, broad, however it is evident that Silencing the Past is a collection of essays, and at times feels contrived.

    Although both books are topically broad, both works feel like their authors have chosen selective, perhaps even limited, and narrow sources in support of their hypotheses.  Further, with Trouillot, it's really hard to determine who he intended his audience to be.  He has written an epistemological book which is, at once, part history and part autobiography.  The book jumps around a bit seeming to use history, as I think he maybe sees it - as the arbiter between truth and fiction.  Actually, I'm not sure Trouillot defines history as clearly or definitively as he might have.  He cites a duality in the meaning of history - the continual struggle between "the facts that matter," and "a narrative of those facts," presenting simultaneously the problem of "what happened" and "that which is said to have happened." (p.2)  And, ultimately, although Trouillot distinguishes between "the ways in which what happened and that which is said to have happened are and are not the same," (p.4) pointing to the interpretive confusion and controversies which ensue, I don't feel like he critically examines the disparate events he discusses in his book using an appropriate range of sources.  Instead, and the main problem of the book, Trouillot employs seemingly selective sources and is over reliant on historical narrative.