Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, 20th Anniversary Edition - Softcover

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807080535 ISBN 13: 9780807080535

Publisher: Beacon Press, 2015

Foreword by Hazel V. Carby
 
A modern classic about power and the making of history, with a new foreword by a prominent scholar
 
Placing the West’s failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debates over the Alamo and Christopher Columbus, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history. Presented here with a new foreword by renowned scholar Hazel V. Carby, Silencing the Past is an indispensable analysis of the silences in our historical narratives, of what is omitted and what is recorded, what is remembered and what is forgotten, and what these silences reveal about inequalities of power.

About the Author:

Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949–2012) was one of the most prominent Haitian scholars working in the United States. He was the director of the Institute for Global Studies in Culture, Power, and History and Krieger/Eisenhower Distinguished Professor in anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Hazel V. Carby is the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies, professor of American studies, and director of the Initiative on Race, Gender and Globalization at Yale University.

Review:

“Now that so many grand projects of the past are up for reappraisal, Michel-Rolph Trouillot interrogates history, to ask how histories are, in fact, produced. . . . A beautifully written book, exciting in its challenges.”
—Eric. R. Wolf

“An accessible book filled with wisdom and humanity.”
—Bernard Mergen, American Studies International

“Aphoristic and witty, [Silencing the Past] shows that the two senses in which history is made, by doers and by tellers, meet in moments of evidentiary silence. . . . A hard-nosed look at the soft edges of public discourse about the past.”
—Arjun Appadurai

“Written with clarity, wit, and style throughout, this book is for everyone interested in historical culture.”
—American Historical Review

“[Trouillot was] a transformative presence in multiple fields [who] redefined the meaning of scholarship. . . . Trouillot taught us all how to read carefully, argue passionately, and write responsibly.”
—Colin Dayan, Boston Review

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0807080535
• ISBN 13: 9780807080535
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 216