Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History

By Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Book Overview

A deluxe hardcover edition of the pioneering classic that explores the contexts in which history is produced--now part of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck

A Beacon Classics edition, featuring a spot gloss cover and retro, classic palette

Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution--the most successful slave revolt in history--alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.

This modern classic resides at the intersection of history, anthropology, Caribbean, African-American, and post-colonial studies, and has become a staple in college classrooms around the country. Trouillot analyzes the silences in our historical narratives, what is left out and what is recorded, what is remembered and what is forgotten, and what these silences reveal about inequalities of power. With exacting precision, he exposes forces less visible--but no less powerful--than gunfire, property, and political crusades in shaping the production of history.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807024120
• ISBN13: 9780807024126
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and Well-Written

If you liked any of Howard Zinn's books, you'll like this. Trouillot's analysis of historiography goes far beyond "history is written by the victors" to talk about the deliberate and systematic way that some voices, events, and narratives are excluded from the dominant historical record. If the first section is a little too theoretical (and, for me, it was), the heart of the book is three examples, focussing on the Sans Souci, a Haitian revolutionary; the Haitian revolution itself; and Columbus' arrival on the shores of America. These sections themselves, apart from their theoretical buttressing, are fascinating studies of historiography. A wonderful book.

Public History distorted

Silencing the Past is an excellent account of how mistakes and mis-readings of history can contaminate the perspective an entire society's world view. Troulliot's book is very applicable to the realm public history. Monuments, museums, displays and the like are all examples of how history influences our every day lives. Altough, without realizing it, we assume the things that we read and see in such places are entirely true. This is a mistake, as Troulliot points out, because, the amount we do know about our history, is only a fragment of what we don't know...and that when historians create public history they can only use the information available, which is most often the product of a white, western mind, published and tagged as 'history-proper' Another factor in the use of history as a public tool is its tendency to be 'good' history. In that, all too often when history is presented to the public, it has a habit of being watered down, desanctified, and 'positively' presented. Only a curator with integrity and confidence would present a "full story," as more often than not, social taboos and political correctness prevent him from doing so. This is sad, as in the mean time, the historical process is damaged. What such a presenter of public history is doing when they present only favorable aspects of history is educating a public about half the story, which will then become part of a public world view, a world view, that is skewed in a way that will be very hard to correct. A public mind is hard to change, the more a public wants to believe something, the longer they do. Believing a positive is always easier than the alternative. This is the importance of creating a sound, fair and accurate archive of public historical knowledge.Troulliot's book serves a great purpose: it infects the reader with a historical vigilante syndrome. It tells the reader to be wary of history, but not to dismiss it. In so doing, he has created a masterpiece that informs, educates and calls the reader to act upon, and in many ways become, a vindicator of history and the historical process.