Trouillot's Silencing the Past

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.