Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History

 Trouillot contrasts the Mexican military victory at the Alamo with the Texan rallying cry at San Jacinto. How is this case study useful in revealing how narratives are recast in history?

Trouillot observes that slavery occupies a far more prominent symbolic role in the United States than in Brazil or the Caribbean. How does he use this geographical contrast to critique the storage model of historical memory?

Historian Beaubrun Ardouin framed the conflict between Henry Christophe and Colonel Jean-Baptiste Sans Souci as a clash between civilization and barbarism. How does Trouillot’s analysis of this framing expose the tensions in Haitian history?

Compare Trouillot’s discussion of the colonist La Barre’s letters with his analysis of Enlightenment thinkers. What shared assumptions does Trouillot locate across these seemingly opposing perspectives?

How does Trouillot distinguish between formulas of erasure and formulas of banalization in his account of the Haitian Revolution? What distinct narrative strategies does each employ to minimize the revolution’s significance?

Trouillot contrasts the contemporary reaction to the fall of Granada with the indifference toward Christopher Columbus’s landfall in the Bahamas. What does this juxtaposition show about the retrospective significance that is assigned to historical events?

Compare Spain’s quadricentennial celebration with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. How did each event adapt the figure of Christopher Columbus to serve distinct national agendas?

What consequences does Trouillot attribute to the professional historian’s fetishism of the facts? How does this critique reshape his definition of historical authenticity?