Home > Author > Michel-Rolph Trouillot
1 " I find it hard to harness respect for those who genuinely believe that postmodernity, whatever it may be, allows us to claim no roots. "
― Michel-Rolph Trouillot , Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
2 " . . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15 ". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153 Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) "
3 " The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world. "
― Michel-Rolph Trouillot
4 " We are never as steeped in history as when we pretend not to be, but if we stop pretending we may gain in understanding what we lose in false innocence. Naiveté is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naiveté is always a mistake. "
5 " 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. "
6 " The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots. "
7 " Two professors run the course, one an anthropologist and the other a historian. Laura and I are regarded as cultural-studies types, so following the sessions “In the Field” and “ About the Archive,” Laura and I are responsible for the session entitled “With the Texts. "
8 " For Trouillot, history is always material; it begins with bodies and artifacts, agents, actors, and subjects. His emphasis on process, production, and narration looks to the many sites where history is produced: the academy, the media, and the mobilization of popular histories by a variety of participants. "
9 " …the burden of the past is alleviated when sociohistorical conditions…have changed so much that practitioners face a choice between complete oblivion and fundamental redirection…alchemists become chemists or cease to be… "
10 " ...Facts are not created equal: the production of traces is always also the creation of silences. "
