In my opinion, Trouillot’s
approach to untold history is to rebel against Western orthodoxy in historical
research (p.66 and 105). He readily
admits to using only secondary sources when relating the history of Jean
Baptiste Sans Souci (p. 54), laments that white contemporaries of the colonel
ignored his achievements (pp. 47-48), and presumes that because white participants
did not record facts that he has disproven the theories of other historians (p.
64). While that is his prerogative, I
cannot take his methods seriously as it appears to me that he wants to create a
history that may not exist.
From my reading of
Townsend, he was concerned about history’s silences but in a different way. For Townsend, it was more of an accounting of
the interest of historians in studying neglected topics or fields throughout
the period he was covering. After all,
his book is a comprehensive accounting of the American Historical Association.
In regards to a comparison
to Trouillot’s work, I think that one needs to look at the intent of each as
they wrote their various works. Townsend
is an employee of the AHA and his task was to write a history of that
organization. Conversely, Trouillot had
an agenda intent on disproving the prevailing orthodoxies.
Overall, I thought that
Trouillot came off as arrogant, which I perceived he used as a means to produce
a shock affect. While he correctly
pointed out that there are indeed many silences in history, he failed to
convince me that he was writing for purely altruistic reasons. To me, he let his own biases dictate his
research at the expense of truly discovering the untold histories.
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