The first thing that struck me, even just as I was reading the preface, was Trouillot’s eloquent narrative (I’m not sure if that’s the right word) style. There’s a natural flow and a certain amount of grace in his writing that extremely captivating. I find that he’s a lot easier to follow than Hobbes, Plato or even Rousseau, but perhaps that’s simply because this was written in 1996.
According to Trouillot, “at best, history is a story about power, a story about those who won” (Trouillot 5), and his ultimate goal is to expose the “many ways in which the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production” (Trouillot xix). While I completely agree with Trouillot’s argument, I wonder if it’s applicable in a more modern context. For example, although Darren Wilson (the police officer who shot Michael Brown) not being sentenced for murder came as a huge loss for any minority (and arguably anyone) in the United States, Darren Wilson will not be the one writing this piece of history; instead, it will be written by the protestors, the demonstrators, the underdogs.
