Reviews for Social power and political freedom

The average rating for Social power and political freedom based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-07-22 00:00:00 Brandon Cassady If Marx, Foucault, and Howard Zinn wrote a book together, it would probably look something like Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past. This isn't a slur, though; as you can tell from my five-star rating, I obviously appreciated the book, its author's cobbled personal reflections plus broader historical claims, and its humanity. Part of me wonders why this book isn't as well known (at least in my literary circles) as, say, Foucault's Discipline and Punish or Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, but I guess I already know the answer: Usually when people want to learn about the nineteenth century and the consolidation of Althusserian "ideological apparatuses" like the school, the prison, the concept of nationality, or the field of history, they'd rather read about white American and European countries than about Haiti. I suppose it's true that in the fifteen years since this book's publication several of Trouillot's claims have become so mainstreamed they read a bit like clichés. You probably already know that Columbus Day celebrations vaunt a celebrity Columbus the 15th century wouldn't have recognized. You probably already know that comparatively enfranchised people are more likely to leave traces of their purchases, their properties, their marriages, etc., than their disenfranchised comrades, and thus the history of any society tends to be the history of that society's rich and educated. Still, you should read the book for its methodological framework, its author's diary-like chapter-starters, and plenty of other reasons. Very highly recommended.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-05-05 00:00:00 Cris Du While much of this book focuses on the history of his native country of Haiti, Trouillot's goal is broader: an epistemological re-evaluation of how our perceptions of history are formed. Of how we understand history to be true. Of how opinions come to be historical fact. It's not light reading, but easy enough to absorb when he moves from the theoretical to the specific. He goes beyond the commonplace "History is written by the victors" to demonstrate by example the four stages leading to this end result. Those four stages are the moments when decisions are made, intentionally or otherwise, that affect what we come to perceive as history: at the time original records are (or are not) created; at the time those records are selected for retention; at the time they are retrieved and put into a narrative; and at the time that narrative is evaluated for significance. Omissions ("silences") at any point can alter our interpretation of past events. Silences result not just from disdain or prejudice, but from the fact that the reality is "unthinkable" to the recorder/archiver/narrative developer/evaluator. The Haitian revolution of 1791-1804 provides a vivid example: that the slaves could have, on their own, desired, organized and successfully concluded their own revolutionary war was an idea inconceivable by the French or most others interpreting the record. This section brought to mind a book I read not long ago, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. The reality of how the South Pacific was colonized remained unknown (at least outside Polynesian oral history) for hundreds of years because Europeans simply couldn't accept that the Polynesian outriggers could have travelled the distances it has since been proved that they can. The book is a brilliant framework, illustrating the inherent reasons that the true histories of blacks, women, native populations, and others have been omitted from history. Since we continue to struggle with the ways in which these perceptions mold actions and opinions in the 21st century these are ideas that bear thinking about.