Quotes from Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Any historical narrative is a bundle of silences.

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.

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.

I find it hard to harness respect for those who genuinely believe that postmodernity, whatever it may be, allows us to claim no roots.

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.

Facts are not created equal: the production of traces is always also the creation of silences.

The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.

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.

French Caribbean island of Martinique, a tiny territory less than one-fourth the size of Long Island, imported more slaves than all the U.S. states combined.

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…