History as the Fruit of Power to Silence Others

Shakespearean critic Philip C. McGuire once deconstructed some of the Bard’s plays in terms of the “open silences” on the stage: characters with no lines or blocking directions specifically noted in the playtext that nevertheless impact the plot depending on how a director (or an actor) interpretatively chooses to portray the character in the scene during these open silences. As McGuire stated, depending on the actor/director, “meanings and effects that differ, sometimes profoundly, yet remain compatible with the words that Shakespeare did pen”^[1] suddenly present significantly different performances—and different audience conclusions and impressions, changing some of the details in the narrative without altering the broad framework of the plot itself.

source: University of Chicago

Ten years later, Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot applied a similar principle to the art of the historical narrative in his book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. It is no coincidence both McGuire and Trouillot used the word “silence” in expressing their arguments, as the power in both situations resides with those who control the text itself. Merging Michel Foucault with Karl Marx, in fact, Trouillot argued the power in the historical narrative as a means of production for the narrative itself—and thus, history. As Trouillot stated in his Preface, “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.”^[2] The choices historians make shape their narratives, and thus history, for better or worse, while contributing to the power of that narrative overall, for the past, the present, and the future. The seeds, fruit and consumption of history are the power.

Trouillot made his point very clear as he related an anecdote from his childhood about his father and his uncle—along with their differing, albeit highly informed, views. As he stated, “The brothers disagreed more often than not, in part because they genuinely saw the world quite differently, in part because of the heat of their divergences, both political and philosophical, fueled their ceremonial of love.”^[3] The political and philosophical views of the trained historian help shape the narratives they tell, in return. Where there is silence in the record, historians often interject and interpret, usually with the best intentions. However, as Trouillot noted, “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.”^[4]

The mistake harms those without the power as the narrative is produced and imprinted upon readers’ minds, often forever—reflecting the Foucauldian influence on historicism. Trouillot also made the connection to what McGuire argued, too, however: “Human beings participate in history both as actors and narrators. The inherent ambivalence of the word ‘history’ in many modern languages, including English, suggests this dual participation. In vernacular use, history means both the facts of the matter and a narrative of those facts, both ‘what happened’ and ‘that which is said to have happened.’”^[5]

source: Encyclopedia Britannica

The latter phraseology is key, as any relation of “truth” via hearsay lends itself to interpretative alteration, depending on the filter(s) employed by those relaying the information to others. When Trouillot argued, “We all need histories that no history book can tell, but they are not in the classroom—not in the history classrooms, anyway. They are in the lessons we learn at home, in poetry and childhood games, in what is left of history when we close the history books with their verifiable facts”^[6], he was correct. The historian’s narrative has silenced too many over time, and often, those “silences” are anything but outside of academia. There are other valid sources to tell the stories of the past to the students in the present—and in the future.

The Marxist framework applied to the history profession itself is somewhat amusing and ironic—but only for a brief moment until we realize its true impact upon the narrative and posterity. The means of production have been controlled in the historical narrative by those with the power. Therefore, Trouillot was again accurate when he wrote, “The value of a historical product cannot be debated without taking into account both the context of its production and the context of its consumption.”^[7] Without any power in the above equation, those silenced by history may not find themselves in a narrative unless they interject themselves into it any way they can. Trouillot stated, “History is messy for the people who must live in it.”^[8] It’s even messier for those that do not get to participate in the writing of history they themselves experienced. That power is not often “given” to the silenced, and it is harder for the “silenced” to take it as well.

source: Marxist.com

When we as historians examine Trouillot’s theories in context of both Foucault and Marx, it is intriguing to see how all three connect naturally and seamlessly as we consider the “new history” side of the 1980s Culture Wars. Trouillot argued, “The play of power in the production of alternative narratives begins with the joint creation of facts and sources for at least two reasons. First, facts are never meaningless: indeed, they become facts only because they matter in some sense, however minimal. Second, facts are not created equal: the production of traces is always also the creation of silences.”^[9]

The “old history”—as a historian like John Lauck would define it—doesn’t value the homosexual culture in New York City, in effect silencing that culture and that narrative. But there are facts in the narrative focusing on the gays in New York, and they are not meaningless. Those facts matter, even if just to a minority of readers. They tell an important story about the past, for today and tomorrow. As Trouillot stated, “The forces I will expose are less visible than gunfire, class property, or political crusades. I want to argue that they are no less powerful.”^[10] The gays of New York have just as much power as the stakeholders in the Marshall Plan, much to Lauck’s discontent.

Trouillot recognized these challenges to the profession when he wrote his book in 1995. He argued, “... as various crises of our times impinge upon identities thought be long established or silent, we move closer to the era when professional historians will have to position themselves more clearly within the present, lest politicians, magnates, or ethnic leaders alone to write history for them.”^[11] Giving a voice to the silent, giving power to those actors on stage but out of the spotlight, is the historian’s job.

source: Alchetron.com

Consider Herlander Coimbra, an Angolan basketball player at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. He is known, if at all, for a brief scuffle with American basketball star Charles Barkley in a preliminary-round game the U.S. won, 116-48. Historians have told the story already of the American Dream Team and Barkley, ad nauseam. But Coimbra himself has been somewhat silenced by those with the power and the means of production to record historical facts. Coimbra may be a footnote in the marginalia of sports history, but he deserves his own voice, too—just like Barkley has been given over the years: “We know now that narratives are made of silences, not all of which are deliberate or even perceptible as such within the time of their production. We also know that the present is itself no clearer than the past.”^[12]

Philip C. McGuire found those open silences in Shakespeare’s writing that have allowed interpretation over the centuries on stage, giving meaning to the factual existence of characters in the playtext, and similarly, it is up to historians—as Trouillot noted—to give the fruit of power to those silenced by the past and its means of narrative production and “the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production.”^[13]

About the author: Sam Fleischer is a second-year doctoral student researching the modern Olympic Games in the twentieth century, under the guidance and supervision of Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton, Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor at Washington State University. Fleischer also holds an MA in English literature from Michigan State University and has taught Shakespeare courses at multiple campuses in the United States. He recently published a chapter in the WSU Press publication, Leading the Crimson and Gray.

[1] Philip C. McGuire, Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California, 1985), 17.

[2] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past : Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), xxiii.

[3] Ibid., xxii.

[4] Ibid., xxiii.

[5] Ibid., 2.

[6] Ibid., 71-72.

[7] Ibid., 146.

[8] Ibid., 110.

[9] Ibid., 29.

[10] Ibid., xxiii.

[11] Ibid., 152.

[12] Ibid., 152-153.

[13] Ibid., xxiii.