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post your columbus STP chapters here
By americanculturesbelow
November 12, 2006 at 7:12 am
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
11/11/06
STP Chapters
“Built in to any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy.” This is achieved by convincing the majority of the “rightness” of the action and showing the benefit to continue the action. We have seen President Bush do this with Iraq. He convinced Congress of his need for war and then went in to Iraq under the false tale of WMD. He has stopped talking about WMD and started talking about our patriotic duty to free the people of Iraq from their demon ruler. “Stay the Course”
Impossible history is history that the power would like to pretend did not happen or could not happen, because to believe the “unbelievable” would mean that you might have to look within and acknowledge the wrong in you doing>
Trouillots formula of erasure is to “erase directly the fact of revolution.” (94) The other theoretical formula is called banalization which is when the facts are “gnawed from all sides, becomes trivialized.” (94) A formula of erasure discredits or completely leaves out the fact of an event.
“The isolation of a single moment thus creates a historical “fact” on this day in 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the Bahamas. As a set event, void of context and marked by a fixed date, this chunk of history becomes much more manageable.” (114) By managing it we can silence the facts that we would rather not bring to light.
The naming of the “facts” is itself a narrative of power disguised as innocence. Would anyone care to celebrate “Castilian invasion of the
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
Pg. 2
STP Chapters
Bahamas?” (114) the fact is that Columbus and his buddies did not discover the Bahamas, the Bahamas and its people already existed and by “discovering” Columbus is put as more significant than the native people of the Bahamas. By His “discovery he opened the door for European migration.
It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power. (114) The changing of conquered to discovered gives the image that the people of the Bahamas needed discovery and some how benefited from discovery, instead of the reality that they were conquered and enslaved.
Trouillots term “sterile “says to me that the emotions are removed from the vent. By removing the emotion from past events we can go along with less guilt of ancestral misdeeds. With out emotion we can trivialize the event.
“The imposition of the new reading required the production of a number of silences. Since same traces could not be erased, their historical significance had to be reduced. They became inconsequential or significant only in light of the new interpretation. Thus, the official guide to the fair as meaningless the first 280 years of Euro-American history. The history of this hemisphere prior to 1776 was a mere “prepitory period” to the rise of the United States.” (130) By trivializing the Columbus Conquest we can then see ourselves in a better light. We can justify our position as discoverer instead of conqueror and not feel guilt.
“The relations debunk the myth of the past as a fixed reality and the related view of knowledge as a fixed content. They also force us to look at the purpose of this knowledge. What is scary about tourist attractions gain
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
Pg 3
STP Chapters
representing slavery in the United States is not so much that tourists will learn the wrong facts, but rather, that tourist representations of the facts would induce among them the wrong reaction.” (148) We trivialize to keep the silence so that we can forget about how “unsterile” and emotion packed are action were.
Goulds statement “Why, first of all should a scientist attach such importance to an evidently subject assessment; and why secondly, should an aesthetic criterion become the basis of a scientific judgment about place of origin?” (Gould 3) By appealing to a sense of vanity he can gain influence and his decision would less likely be challenged by the “Caucasian” people. Beauty is more valued than lack of beauty and by
using beauty as his criteria he has implied a higher ranking over those of lesser valued label
Kincaid says “I lived there, I was of the conquered class living in a conquered place; a principle of this condition is that nothing about you is of any interest unless the conqueror deems it so.” (Kincaid 3) Gives us another example of how trivializing events gives power and even the conquered will question their own validity.
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
Pg. 4
STP Chapters
In Charles Johnson’s lecture he say” When things can not be spoken they are repressed and often come out in other ways, as guilt. “ (Johnson 3) this statement corroborates the idea that normalizing, trivializing and silencing our past helps some people to cope with the fact of our history wit its events that we are not proud of.
November 12, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Page 1 of 2
Crystal Pardo
November 11, 2006
Jamaica Kincaid & SJ Gould
American Cultures 1395
Pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
The article titled “Flowers of Evil” by Jamaica Kincaid gave me an entirely different look at flowers and gardens because the author was descriptive on the different types of plants, what they can be used for or what they can represent and how different places have different types of plants. Before reading this article I could simply look at a flower and say whether it was pretty or not, but now I have looked and wondered more about them. I wonder if that flower can be used for more than just a decoration or if that flower grows in other parts of the world. I wonder though why the title is Flowers of Evil and not just Flowers or Gardens.
The author makes a good point when he says, “What is the relationship between gardening and conquest? Is the conqueror a gardener and the conquered the person who works in the field?” Even this statement relates to power. Caring for a garden takes time and lots of work, but if the care taker does not give the garden what it needs then the garden has over powered the care taker. In a weird sort of way it is a small battle between the two. The garden will not grow on its own; the person in charge of it is responsible for making sure the garden grows.
Flowers or other plants in certain places could be like a way of representing them. To those who are familiar with them will know more about where they are and for those who do not know about them will need to discover them. This also reflects what the author speaks about when he says, “This ignorance of the botany of the place I am from (and am of) really only reflects the fact that when I lived there, I was of the conquered class and living in a conquered place.” Also like the flower, where you are from should be something you know about and if you don’t know then you are considered conquered to those who are not from where you are and do know about it.
When the author spoke of how Vasco Nunez was within sight of the Pacific Ocean and how he made his army stay behind him so that he could be the first person to see this ocean, he wanted to see something that he knew nothing about but wanted to find out more about it. It had become a spiritual fixture to the people it belonged to. So if this ocean was to be moved away from the people it belonged to would they want it back? If so, would they really know why they wanted it back? Were these people considered conquered too? Here they had something with meaning to it that belonged to them, but they did not know the meaning of it.
These quotes and their meanings relate a lot to the old saying of how people do not realize what they have until it is taken from them. Most people do not realize the meaning of something or someone until they can’t see it or touch it ever again. This is so bad if us.
It is hard for people to realize this before hand, but it is something that we as humans need to do. So is this why the title has the word evil in it?
Page 2 of 2
Jamaica Kincaid & SJ Gould
American Cultures 1395
In the article titled “The Geometer of Race” by Stephen Jay Gould the author speaks of how interesting stories are encoded in names that are either capricious or misconstrued. Could it be that historians are not reading the messages of history correctly? Were these messages or notes that they get their information from written in such a way that the truth could not be revealed?
Scientists like Blumenbach researched such information and humans themselves. Blumenbach researched the science of human diversity also known as racial classification. His decision to call the European race Caucasian is an important part of history and for any current concerns.
Why is it though that people are classified? Yes we are all different colors and sizes and have many different features, but why do we have to be separate? We are all human and we all live on the same earth so why is it important to research the differences of all of us? Does this research and acknowledgment of our difference lead to racism? If it was never a concern about our differences would we ever care about the color of our skin or why we look different?
I have wonder about all of these questions before, but after reading this article and the work that Blumenbach does I wonder more now why his work is even important. I know that research of humans is important especially when it comes to medical and health reasons, but how we are classified does not matter. People live all over the world even if it is not where they are from. Diversity exists, but for everyone to accept it we need to not worry about our differences.
November 12, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Donna Blanchard
Silencing the Past, Part 3
November 12, 2006
moxiedonna@gmail.com
Human 6, Section 1395
Trouillot has given us many different concepts of history and the ways historical facts can be skewed for different purposes. As more time passes and historical events become more and more removed from present times, the more the history of the event is erased from our memories until all that is left is the facts recorded on paper or in the media. History can be altered when only certain facts about the historical event are recorded for posterity. Events that took place over 100 years ago no longer have any first-hand witnesses to account for the actual events that happened and future generations will accept the event as concrete fact, whether it is or not. It is up to each generation to ensure that historical events are correctly recorded without bias.
In regard to Trouillot’s quote on page 84, “built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy. To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system”, Trouillot is speaking of society’s refusal to believe that there is anything wrong with status quo. To admit that there could be a problem with the normal functioning of society is to admit that society is doing something wrong, that somewhere along the way the normal actions of society morphed into abnormality. No society wants to truly admit its mistakes and its own shortcomings because in doing so it will have to admit that there may be a better plan out there. Dominant societies will proclaim themselves to be normal or the standard. Leaders want their followers and other societies to believe that everything is fine and that the dominant society is perfect, even with its flaws. No dominant society or group wants to admit the there might be problems. Admitting a problem is to show weakness, to admit that the well-oiled machine is squeaky and defective. It is much easier to try to force the public to accept what it is told rather than to speak up and admit wrongness.
George W. Bush and his political advisors forced the concept of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” down the throats of the people in an effort to get the public to accept the invasion of Iraq and the eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan. Even when officials stepped forward saying there were no weapons, President Bush was reluctant to admit his mistakes and insisted that what he did was for the betterment of the American public.
As in Trouillot’s comment on page 114 “it is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power”, I believe he is saying that by linking a certain date or time with an event that date loses all other significance. This is true of October 12th. Ask anyone the importance of that date and they will say it is when Columbus discovered the Americas. Anything else that happened on any other October 12th pales in comparison. Nothing has that great historical significance, that power over the people. Another example would be November 22nd because of November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was shot. Kennedy’s assassination affected so many people that the day has
Donna Blanchard
Silencing the Past, Part 3
been branded in our minds. People who were alive ten must carry their own memories, if they were old enough to have clear memories. People who were born after that day have to rely on earlier generations for first-hand accounts and historical facts. As the people who were alive when Kennedy was shot die, we will have to rely on what is written in the history books, filmed for documentaries, and even fictional accounts for our history.
As dates are claimed for historical events and more history is claimed, each date loses its significance and its originality. Trouillot states that “naming the fact thus already imposes a reading and many historical controversies boil down to who has the power to name what”. By labeling an event, we add significance to something that might not have been significant as it was happening. It is only as we look back upon a time that we can say whether or not it was significant to current times. Also, the way a historical event is labeled is determined again by the “winner”. As Trouillot said on page 5 (and I mentioned in my first paper), “history is a story about power, a story about those who won”. As this holds true, the people who win get to name the event something advantageous for them. As holds true with Columbus’ first trip to the Americas: it is called a “discovery”, an “invasion”, and a “conquest”. How self-centered is it to say that the winners choose how future generations will learn about the event!
Trouillot also speaks of the erasure of history: “at the level of generalities, some narratives cancel what happened through direct erasure of facts or their relevance”. I believe he is saying that some historical documents will deliberately mislead the reader by leaving out some of the most important facts of the event itself. For instance, take the current war in Iraq. The American public was mislead regarding weapons of mass destruction being hidden somewhere in Iraq for the simple reason that the Presidential administration wanted to invade the country for whatever reason. So instead of telling the truth to the American public (maybe because they knew we would not approve of entering Iraq to save our oil supplies or just because Saddam Hussein is a “bad guy”), President Bush and his advisors told us Iraq was building a cache of horrible weapons and there was the chance these weapons could be used against America. By deliberately misleading the American public, President Bush entered Iraq and made it what I like to call my generation’s Vietnam. Throughout the past 3 years, the Bush administration has been hiding certain facts from the public in an effort to keep the public’s support. But, as we all know, lying begets more lying until it’s too hard to keep the lies straight and they start to unravel.
Trouillot’s belief of “impossible history” is as simple as it sounds: history that is thought to be too unrealistic to happen. At each time in history, there are things that happen which no one thought would be possible: Kennedy’s assassination, the Holocaust, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Oklahoma City bombings. Each of these events changed how we thought about history and how we viewed the world. And each of these events altered our concept of impossible history – we allowed that horrible things like these can and will happen. They moved from the realm of impossible
Donna Blanchard
Silencing the Past, Part 3
to possible and probable and there they will stay until the next horrific event occurs. The thought of terrorist attacks against our country isn’t impossible because it has happened before, so a terrorist attack was inevitable. However, the magnitude of the attack on 9/11 was “impossible history” because we were naïve enough to believe that no one could kill a large group of people in such a cold and callous manner. 9/11 shocked not just the United States, but the world because of the cold nature of the attacks. We never thought of the possibility of a plane being hijacked and slammed into a building, even though buildings have been bombed and planes hijacked and blown up in previous terrorist attacks. It was turning a blind eye to all of these past attacks and not taking the time to link them together because the thought of it was just too horrific. But today we get to pay for not believing something like that could happen – we pay every time we go through airport security and every time we get on a plane.
In regard to Columbus “discovering” the Americas, as the years rolled on the world’s vision of Columbus was altered to fit different culture. The idea of Columbus became more Americanized as the 1893 World’s Fair approached in Chicago. America wanted to claim Columbus as one of their own and turned him into a “Yankee hero, the lone ranger of the western seas” (129). As the World’s Fair approached, Columbus took a back seat to the venture of making money. The United States wanted to take the world by storm and sought to conquer the world much as it had been conquered 400 years previous.
However, in its vanity the United States sought to have the world “forget” what it already know about Columbus and his voyage across the sea in favor of a history that favored the United States. So, the United States decided to silence history, to skew it away from what was normal and accepted. They wanted to make Columbus strictly an American icon, to “whiten” him. Thus, the United States decided to overlook the fact that Columbus had ties to Spain, Italy and Latin America. By creating a strictly “Americanized” idea of Columbus, the committee that ran the World’s Fair effectively denied the fact that Columbus was not American, nor did America as we know it exist when he sailed.
The ironic thing about history is that when something is happening, people aren’t aware that it will one day be considered historical. When Columbus first spotted land, he probably didn’t think “ah…one day everyone will look back on this very day and consider me a hero”. There is very little if any time to prepare for history, to make sure that everything is accurate and in its place. History happens when we aren’t looking and we aren’t prepared for it, just as it must have happened to Columbus.
In Jamaica Kincaid’s article “Flowers of Evil,” she speaks of the dahlia, or the cocoxochitl. After Spain invaded Mexico, they deemed it necessary to change the names of the flowers and fauna from names the Aztecs had meaning for to something new and foreign. Renaming these things strips away their former lives and lessens their spiritual meaning. The thing, such as the dahlia, becomes nothing more than a possession or a
Donna Blanchard
Silencing the Past, Part 3
trophy. There is no significance in the name, no special meaning. Kincaid says the dahlia and other trophies of conquest were so desperately coveted that the explorer had to make them his own. The dahlia “would have been one of the details, a small detail, of something large and grim: conquest”. To take the cocoxochitl and remove it from its native land and rename it is to ruin its meaning and lessen its beauty in the eyes of the Aztecs. Taking things simply to say that we have them makes a mockery of their significance to their native culture.
Kincaid says “at what moment does such ordinary, everyday beauty become a luxury, then something forgotten” when speaking of the novel Nervous Conditions. It is true that there are many ordinary things that we take for granted because we have them around all the time and are used to them being there. A garden for instance, is something of beauty and of necessity (if we are growing food) but if we are not the ones cultivating the garden and toiling in the earth to make it grow, we are taking it for granted that that garden will always be there and always be beautiful. If at some point the gardener falls ill or just decides to give up gardening, the beauty is diminished as the weeds and grass slowly overtake the flowers. Sometimes we start a garden with the best of intentions but then life slowly creeps its way back in and the garden is neglected. Maybe at first we are sorry for neglecting the garden, but as we become more and more involved in life outside of the plot of dirt the garden becomes forlorn and choked with weeds. This can be applied to so many things in our everyday lives. As students, we are responsible for classes and homework in addition to our everyday lives. I work at least 50 hours a week on top of my classes and I have a social life and friends to be with. Sometimes the juggling of responsibilities becomes too much and I will drop one on the ground for awhile. If I forget about it and don’t pick it back up, the weeds will overtake it and make it that much harder to take care of it in the future.
As I said in my last paper and want to touch on again, Kincaid’s quote “the naming of things is so crucial to possession that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that people have felt themselves prey to it, among their first acts of liberation is to change their names” is so simple, yet so deep. It is not surprising that people or nations will change their names as an act of liberation, a way of separating themselves from the bad parts of their past. By returning to original names or creating an entirely new name that is separate from before, we are able to separate ourselves from our past. We can erase or silence a part of our history and rise from the ashes to create something new.
Trouillot’s perception of impossible history is also present in Stephen Jay Gould’s article about the 18th Century’s classification of races and the man who fought to change it. Johann Blumenbach’s works eventually embraced five classifications of race instead of four. Blumenbach chose to change historical perceptions of race. At the time, Blumenbach’s theory was probably seen as something that people thought would never happen (thus, impossible history). Although Blumenbach’s theory changed the perception of historical fact, it was still done for the superficial reasons of beauty. Blumenbach
Donna Blanchard
Silencing the Past, Part 3
placed Caucasians in front of all other racial classifications because Caucasians are more aesthetically pleasing. So while Blumenbach challenged historical perceptions of the races, he was still racist against anyone other than Caucasians to the point of believing that the human skull is the color of the person’s skin but it turns white after death. Is this because he believed everyone wants to be white or “Caucasian”?
Blumenbach believed that man was created in a single region, perhaps near Mount Caucasus “both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produced the most beautiful race of men,” and then as man moved around the earth, our bodies and skin colors adapted to the climate and topography of the region where we settled. Blumenbach stated that some of the changes were more aesthetic and as a part of cultural custom. But he also believed changing the shape of the head as an “art form” could later translate to something hereditary. Blumenbach was not touting the superiority of Caucasians, however. He was very forward thinking for his time, if not a little short-sighted by our standards. Blumenbach thought that skin color was influenced by the climate and if people moved to another region, their facial features and skin colored would be altered. Because Blumenbach was convinced that the differences between the races were just superficial and could be changed by climate, he was against the slavery of any people. Blumenbach campaigned to stop slavery and spoke highly of the people who were enslaved. But Blumenbach was short-sighted because he believed there was one great race of people and then variations of the race trickling downward. He placed Caucasians at the top of the pile and everyone else was lower. While his thinking isn’t perfect, it isn’t completely racist – just somewhat naïve and superficial.
November 13, 2006 at 12:16 am
Corinne Neuman
Geometry of A Race/Flowers of Evil
November 12, 2006
yourmomismad@yahoo.com
Humanities 6: Section 1395
In his article, Geometry of a Race, Stephen Gould attempts to teach us of the history of racial segregation and classifications of human kind. Gould holds Johann Friedrich Blumenbach responsible as a scientist who classified our species. I was disappointed in learning the history of segregation, because it discredited Edward James Olmos in his speech We are all from the same gang, on October 22, 2006. In his speech he pointed out that racial segregation was created in order to make it easier for one group of people to kill another. He gave his statement in a historical context building credibility and seeking people to understand. Now I can see it was to make his point, but was not the truth.
Just as we innocently classify breeds of dogs by their color, size, shape, and behavior; Blumenbach innocently attempted to do the same for humans. The difference was that Blumenbach classified “Caucasians as most beautiful,” with scientific reasoning that people “degenerate” to acclimate to their culture, climate, art and needs. He believed that the human species all came from the same place and the migrated to other places of the world. Since he believed that the place at where human kind began in a mountain range between Russia and Georgia, his theory recognized that the people around this region were most beautiful. In his theory, he contended that no-one is better than the other; however, I feel that this inevitably evolved throughout history. Since one group of people known as “Caucasian” became to believe that they were more beautiful than the other the believed they were superior. As time evolved it only made sense that people who were not Caucasian, became racially inferior.
The history of how racial classification is important to us now, because it helps us to see how racial indifference has evolved. By being aware of it and understanding it can help us see things in a different prospective. Important if we wish to change the way people see one another. It also brings to prospective the dangers of labeling. No matter how innocent Blumenbach had intended his theories, they inevitable created “a disastrous shift occurred in the way Westerners perceived races.” The same could occur in the way we label mentally ill, incarcerated, children, elders, etc. We are still labeling, and this is a perfect example of why not too. When we label an incarcerated person as “convict” they will be more acclimated to behave as convict. When we label a child “helpless” or “challenging” inevitably that is what they become.
I found it interesting that Blamenbach had classified people from the areas of South America as “Americanus.” How is it that the people of Southern America became known as “Americanus,” but now only residents of the United States become known as Americans? According to his theory, people changed their appearance based on where they lived and acclimated based on need and culture. If that were entirely true, how is it that Caucasians living in the United States are still of white color. Caucasians today live
Corinne Neuman
Geometry of A Race/Flowers of Evil Page 2
far from the mountain range between Georgia and Russia yet still have the “beautiful” characteristics of what Blamenbach had once described. He wrote, “Color, whatever be its cause, be it bile, or the influence of the sun, the air, the climate, is, at all events, an adventitious and easily changeable thing, and can never constitute a diversity of species.”
What I wonder is what were the intentions of these early scientists to classify the human species in the first place? Perhaps it was to study the differences of humankind, or perhaps it was to make it easier for one person to kill another as Olmos suggests. Either way, it is a history that leaves a powerful hold on our world in past, present and future. It was unintended and innocent. It serves as an important lesson of societies “unintentions” if people could take the time to learn.
While reading Flowers of Evil, by Jamaica Kincaid I was taken to a place of our own society. A place in which the rich are naïve and ignorant to their daily purchases, and the working poor and poor rummage and stress making a trip to the grocery store to buy milk. For example, each month and week I struggle to keep up with my families expenses which are pure basic necessities. I am not able to purchase pretty flowers for my table or go out for fancy dinners with my husband. Together my husband and I work hard, and take on extra “side jobs” as often as the opportunity arises. However, I work within an organization where my colleagues are wealthy. At each person’s birthday, we are expected to contribute $25-50.00 for an extravagant lunch and a gift for the birthday person. While my colleagues do not look twice at the expense, I risk hardship and sacrifices for my contribution. Meanwhile if I do not contribute I would be looked down upon.
In this article, Jamaica Kincaid compares how one person views a flower bed on a summer day joyous and gay while others who depend on flowers for medicinal purposes and everyday necessities have a different prospective. To me, I escape to natures beauties to escape from the everyday realities. While I may be looked down upon for not being able to contribute to birthday lunch, I can go for a walk on the beach or plant a bed of flowers and escape to find my own peace.
The statement, “What is the relationship between gardening and conquest? Is the conqueror a gardener and the conquered the person who works in the field?” really hit the home. Gardening is a process of hard, repetitive work and during a summer afternoon one can be renewed by its rewards. How can you be rewarded by a beautiful garden if you do not do the work? The person who provides the fruits of labor should be the one rewarded, but the person paying for the work may justify their own reward for their work in designing the garden or paying for the person providing the labor. But, by being the person who is providing the labor I would feel obligated to ensure the person paying me
Corinne Neuman
Geometry of A Race/Flowers of Evil Page 3
felt good about the garden to ensure my continued employment. In a sense the person paying for me, would hold power over me if they did not feel gratified by my labor.
This article paints the picture of perception beautifully. While one person may perceive flowers to be rejuvenating, peaceful, and beautiful another person may perceive flowers as labor, endless work and need. In history, people who did not tend to their gardens suffered. They did not have drugstores, or grocery stores for which they depended upon. People depended on their gardens for their needs, and without tending to them were left helpless. To these people gardens of lavishing beauty were not beauty; they were labor and a necessity to survival.
November 13, 2006 at 1:09 am
Page 1 of 4
Todd Eastman
STP Part 3 (Chapters 3 & 4)
11/12/06
todd.eastman@comcast.net
HUMAN 6 American Cultures, Section 1395
When I first began reading chapter 3, “An Unthinkable History”, Trouillot used the subtitle, “Unthinking a Chimera”. Having an interest in ancient mythologies myself, I struggled to understand Trouillot’s use of the “Chimera”, which was a mythological creature provided to us by the ancient Greeks. This creature was, like many other mythological creatures, a composite of other creatures, combining physical attributes, as well as human weaknesses and failings. Part of the mythology is that the Chimera’s downfall was due to its inability to react with unity and resolve when it was defeated by Bellerophon, with the assistance of Pegasus, the winged horse.
Trouillot quotes French colonist La Barre as having said, “The Negroes are very obedient and always will be. We sleep with doors and windows wide open. Freedom for Negroes is a chimera.” So my question is, was La Barre referring to “freedom” as a myth, one that the slaves could not even comprehend? Or was La Barre somehow creating his own “impossible history” and relegating “Freedom for Negroes” as nothing more than an outlandish concept (myth) with no basis in reality? Trouillot seems to suggest that La Barre and others had fallen for a myth of their own creation. The incongruity here is that the Chimera was defeated, whereas the revolution itself was a success.
Foucault’s views on hegemony suggest that in order for “self referential power” to function, it is necessary for the rest of society (those being dominated) to accept that such conformation in beliefs and actions is in its self, normal and expected.
Page 2 of 4
Todd Eastman
STP Part 3 (Chapters 3 & 4)
So when Trouillot says, “Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy”, I think he is saying that for a system of domination to continue its existence, that system must convince those being dominated that such domination is normal and expected; simply the way things are and have always been, with the expectation that they will continue to be.
In our modern world, let’s consider the current situation in Iraq. President Bush tells us that we are all patriots, and we should support his war efforts and strategy in order to continue being patriots. Throughout the war, our government has been forced to change tactics, admit to mistakes, and cover up actions deemed too secret for any of us to ever hear about. But lately fears have arisen that we are blindly giving up too many of our civil liberties. We are seeing things like prisoner torture; lack of due process, in some cases even the complete stripping of a person’s rights. Our government stoically attempts to shore up public opinion by suggesting that all these various issues are normal and acceptable during our war against terrorism. But now that statement of normalcy has lost its ring of truth. No longer accepting everything we are being told; the public has begun to open their eyes, and now we must concede that there is a possibility that something is wrong with the system. Let’s see if our government can acknowledge the possibility that their present “system of domination” is failing.
On page 96, Trouillot says “The first kind of tropes are formulas that tend to erase directly the fact of a revolution. I call them, for short, formulas of erasure. The second kind tends to empty a number of singular events of their
Page 3 of 4
Todd Eastman
STP Part 3 (Chapters 3 & 4)
revolutionary content so that the entire string of facts, gnawed from all sides, becomes trivialized.”
Trouillot suggests two main components of his formula of erasure. First is when an “unthinkable” or “impossible” historical event does in fact happen. By its very nature, these are the events that were not considered or evaluated before the events actually occurred. Then, even when the event happened, the event must be narrated. But who does the narration, and how are differences in outlook and perspective addressed? In short, an event can be erased by ignoring or not identifying the underlying factors that lead to the event. The event may also be trivialized based upon who has provided the narrative, and from what perspective and motivation the narration was provided. I think the entire concept of erasure and trivialization comes down to perspectives, motivations, and the value of the event itself. Given high enough credence, the event takes on some level of “importance”. Given too little credence, the “unimportance” of the event is then easily trivialized.
So what did Trouillot mean when he wrote, “Effective silencing does not require a conspiracy; not even a political consensus, its roots are structural?” One example he provided was the way in which the revolution, without outside influence, gradually fell to silencing based primarily on what did not happen after the revolution. No “Garden of Eden” was created, no political epiphanies occurred. This silencing was caused by the lack of present or future significance and importance to all but a few.
Page 4 of 4
Todd Eastman
STP Part 3 (Chapters 3 & 4)
When Trouillot wrote, “It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power,” I think he was referring to the practice of giving a name to a specific event that occurred in history. The event had sufficient power to evoke some form of social response or reaction. At some point, the specific name or date of an event eclipses the original event itself. The example used by Trouillot was the history of Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of America, resulting in Columbus Day instead of celebrating or acknowledging the specific date in 1492. At one time, we celebrated both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays. Now we lump them together and call it “President’s Day”. Recognition of two of our most revered and influential leaders, condensed into a major consumer shopping day.
November 13, 2006 at 1:09 am
Jade Dant
STP: III
11/12/06
italianbooty143@yahoo.com
Online 1395
Religion has been a powerful tool in controlling the masses and even leaders of countries. Each religion claimed its prophets and gods and each told the working class that it was okay to be poor and work hard because in the end heaven awaits those who listen to their religious systems. When Trouillot says, “Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy,” he means that to look into the problems of the system is to think that there is something wrong with the system. People want to believe that what they are doing is all right and by ignoring the existence of issues they don’t have to act upon them. For example the slave owners didn’t want to accept the mass phenomenon of slave revolution, they wanted to believe each case of resistance was an isolated incident that doesn’t concern them. When the power admits to faults in the system the system can crash and their power structure would crumble. How is this achieved? One can achieve this type of brainwash by with many ways. They could use: religion, telling people they will go to heaven and get 40 virgins if they follow along, through silencing the spread of stories about revolts or complaints. Trouillot says, “To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system.” That type of thought is alive today as well as in the past. Many prison revolts are great examples of resistance, but the power sources hide them from the news and twist the story to not accept the problems with the system. Bush doesn’t want to admit the protesting of the war of terror, because then he would have to face the facts of how wrong this war is.
Jade Dant
STP: III
To think something is impossible is to think that something could never happen. An impossible history, therefore; is a history that seems like it could never have happened. Trouillot uses the term of “impossible” history when he talks about the Haitian Revolution. The slave owners couldn’t admit to slaves taking over the superior power because that would crumple their racists beliefs about black inferiority. This means that even before the revoltution took place there was a denial of the problems at hand as if it was impossible for slaves to revolt. While the revolution took place many would blaim eachother for helping plan it out for the “not so bright” savages again saying it was impossible for there to be leadership. A person’s perception of the world is what many use to distinguish what is possible and impossible. This is all important because to have something you factually did, like revolt, be taken as impossible and therefore hidden and silenced in archival power. Many would say “I never would have dreamt of that happening, therefore; it must be a lie.” This is what can make or break history, and tell us what is important and what is impossible. In Gould’s The Geometer of Race, the example of impossible history is that of the lower races. Blumenbach created a hiearchy of races, where beauty was a desiding factor. It was considered unthinkable for a non-arian race to be at the top so the history of evolution was an impossible history because no matter what science says people wouldn’t believe an worse of their race. Reguardless of the history of each “race”, even though as scientifically defined humans are not diverse enough to have races, the whites had to be on top and the most perfect of all. In Kincaid’s article the impossible history is in the flowers. Linnaeus wanted to name and classify everything, and before he came along the flowers had a history of medicine long before used by the
Jade Dant
STP: III
indiginous culture. Linnaeus disreguarded that history because who would have thought these savages and flowers could have a history of their own so he renamed them classified them. For Kincaid names and identity go hand and hand, so when one is erased the other follows. What Kincaid is talkiing about when she says, “It is rape and an erasure, a spiritual padlock to which the key has been thrown irretrievably away.”All has to do with names and when many Africans came over to America they were given white names as if they never had names before or histories that go with them.
A formula of erasure for Trouillot is canceling out genralties, erasing directly the fact of revolution,or the relevance of facts. Trouillot says, “At the level of generaltites, some narratives cancel what happened through direct erasure of facts, or their relevance. ‘It’ did not really happen; it was not that bad, or that important.” What does Trouillot mean when he writes that, “Effective silencing does not require a conspiracy not even a political consensus its roots are structural.” My best interpretation is that the most effective silences don’t come out of mass government cover ups or even political aggrement of an event happening. The effective silences come from a structure formed erasure with slowly chipiing away clips of histroy through archival power. Each erasure or altercation is done precisely for a reason and they all add up. A good way of keeping silences silent is through celebrations. To back this up Trouillot says, “Successful celebrations decontextualize successfully the events they celebrate, but in so doing they open the door to competitive readings of these events. The richer the ritual, the easier it is for subsequent performers to change parts of the script to impose new interpretations.” It
Jade Dant
STP: III
is like a magic trick and poof before the eyes can blink history is rewritten while we are entertained.
When Trouillot writes, “It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power.” What he means is that history has become short blocks of information and facts all packadged together for consumer consumption, something we have come to expect in order for immediate cosumption. Archival power and others have created the new history with many silences as a product and its label hold no traces of this power because we desired to shortening of stories down into facts. Before this sentence Trouillot says, “The isolation of a single moment thus cretes a historiacal “fact”: on this day, in 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the Bahamas. As a set event, void of context and marked by a fixed date (114).” This fact, this date, is there to mark an event, labeled, but it has to evidence of power because it shows no detail and no story. Through media and advertising we don’t expect the whole story, just the action shots that capture our attention. The facts on the label are all manageble and we has humans like manageble things, we don’t like to dig deep anymore we just want things presented for quickness. Why is that? Why are humans so consumed by 10 sec images or stories? Our attention span has well beyond shortened to a point where we can recognized hundreds of brand names, but can’t describe facts from ten different historical events? Those shorten packages were never really ment for complete digestion, just for a snacking and to be forgotten about to be only retrieved in spurts of facts like, “Columbus discovered America, Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks, and my favorite Christmas is for presents.”
Jade Dant
STP: III
Trouillot presents many ideas for instance, “that once the event has lost its processual character it becomes a fact and becomes for want of a better word, sterile.” Trouillot is talking about history and its stories. Once the story has lost its processual character the series of actions that result in a end prodect. The loss of the content and
information that carry on a story, the main characters, it just becomes a fact, void of story, just sterile. Cleansed of informationn that is questionable.
Chapter four is based as we all know upon Columbus and his so called discovery of the Americas. Discovered was the key word used to insight assumptions, that the indigineous people of the America’s were discovered. Almost as if they were lost without discovery, void of any history until Columbus came along. The rememberance of this date was the key to political savy. Countries raced to claim Columbus’s heritage in order to be affiliated with the “Discoverer”. Celebrations were planed and Columbus became more famous beyond his dreams by accidently sailing the wrong way. The bloodshed was forgotten and the real story of the conquering of the America’s was lost in translation.
Chapter Five was about black slavery and its image in America as well as its importance to other countries in labor use. To Disneyland, who planned on an exibit of slavery would merely lapse time between the demise of slavery and the planning of the park were what they wanted to represent. The suffering with words that can’t begin to explain what happened were to be shortened and put on display in front of white middle americans. Trouillot says, “What is scary about toursit attractions representing slavery in the U.S is not so much that the tourists would learn the wrong facts, but rather, that touristic representations of the facts would induce among them the wrong reaction”(148). What would be their response??? Would it be untrue feelings, trivialization of slavery, what the tourists would experience would be horrible, but not real. Those fake statues of people in the slavery exhibit would have no name and no identity, they would be numbers. Statue one is picking cotton, statue two is fighting in the civil war, and statue three lives in Compton. Just numbers.
November 13, 2006 at 1:19 am
Sorry, I split my assignment into two seperate papers so this is the second piece….
Page 1 of 2
Crystal Pardo
November 12, 2006
STP Chapter 4 – Columbus
American Cultures 1395
Pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
In chapter four of Silencing the Past Trouillot writes about Christopher Columbus and his discovery of America. This discovery has been known to us as taking place on October 12, 1492 because this is what history has told us. Trouillot also talks about how that same date consists of many other events in history and why we honor the date only for Columbus and not for the other events that happened.
Trouillot states, “Celebrations straddle the two sides of historicity. They impose a silence upon the events that they ignore and they fill that silence with narratives of power about the event they celebrate. “He also says that it does not mean history is not honest, but rather that it is always confusing because of its constituting mixes.
This day is still honored on our calendars in October as a day to remember Columbus and his discovery. (It is on the calendar this year as October 9th) Whether people actually celebrate it or just acknowledge it, the date is still there and how do we know if it is even right? People learn what they are taught, but how would we ever know that what we are learning is even the truth unless another person or even ourselves tried to find the truth in it. Trouillot is one of those people. He has obviously done some research on history to be able to provide certain information in his book.
Before reading this chapter I knew little about Columbus. I remember learning briefly about him and what he discovered in history class, but we never celebrated the date or made anything out of it. Again power plays a role in history in the way that what we are taught in school is what we have been lead to believe, but if what Trouillot writes about is true then we have been lead to believe something that is false. Why? Are we silencing the past for any specific reason or could it be that we really don’t know when Columbus made his discovery?
In chapter on page 140 Trouillot writes, “In Columbus’s travel journal, there is a description of the first sighting of land on Thursday, October 11, 1492. In his log entry for the day Columbus hints about the tense evening, the long night that followed and the first views of land at two in the morning. At two hours after midnight, land appeared, from which they were about two leagues distant. They hauled down the sails…. passing time until daylight Friday when they reached an islet and descended.”
This to me sounds like Columbus made his discovery on October 11th, but did not actually reach the land until the 12th. Therefore that could be the reason why history has honored his discovery on the 12th.
Page 2 of 2
STP Chapter 4 – Columbus
American Cultures 1395
Trouillot also talks about how it had become public knowledge that the Ohio town of Columbus was named after the discoverer. Columbus the man was not mentioned in the original bill or in the Journal of the House as the man responsible for the discovery when the bill was signed and sent to the Senate. And again when the bill was amended a few years later he was still not mentioned. How could a man who made such a huge discovery not receive credit for what he had done? Or for the people that worked with him in making the discovery, they were obviously less important because they were never mentioned.
This seems to still happen these days…. One person becomes famous or publicly known for something they do, but the people that helped them are rarely recognized. And sometimes it’s the people that help who do most of the work while the person who takes the credit does nothing. Not to say that this is what happened with Columbus, but in other situations history could be repeating itself.
November 13, 2006 at 1:26 am
Jade – I agree with your statement about how religion has been a powerful tool in controlling the leaders of countries. Once someone has believed a certain religion and began following their beliefs they are capable of doing anything in order to dedicate themself to that religion or leader. And sometimes unthinkable things that we could never understand because we do not have the same beliefs. But then again other people could wonder why we do certain things when we believe that what we do is o.k. Who really knows what is wrong or right. Only god can judge our actions, but then I wonder about the people that don’t believe in God. Who will judge their actions when their time is up? Maybe their higher power or other form of God?
November 13, 2006 at 5:44 am
Corinne Neuman
Silencing the Past, Part III
November 12, 2006
yourmomismad@yahoo.com
Humanities 6: Section 1395
Throughout Elementary School, during the month of October without a doubt we studied Columbus. October 12, 1492 the day that Columbus discovered America. In reality, he really had discovered the Bahamas. As I grew older, I also became more aware of the falsies behind Columbus.
1992 has historically become one of the moments in time, when a new definition of “what happened” has taken its place in our history books. In 1992, preempting to a major anniversary of Columbus advocates for the Native Americans and “others” began to speak up. They protested that “others” were in the America’s long before Columbus came. They also led our history to a new direction, a direction in which the consequences of Columbus became very clear. Some referred to these times as the Columbus Holocaust or conquer of America. According to Trouillot, “Once discovered by Europeans, the Other finally enters the human world.” I think that this statement is incredibly true, and demonstrates the arrogance of the European America and that of our society today. The America that became a place in which Caucasian’s held the highest importance of the nation that had long existed.
Who was it that decided Columbus’s discovery was valued as such an important event in history? Although the discovery had occurred in 1492, the day was not first celebrated until 1792. (History Channel, the History of Columbus). More importantly who was it that decided what had actually happened? In Spain, the most important event of the century was the fall of Granada; however, the focus continues to remain on Columbus. Trouillot makes it evident that the power of the Catholic church had a very influential role. While in these times, the church was just involved in politics as the Congress is today.
Chapter 4 in Silencing the Past was a powerful one, and although it was about Columbus – it seemed to be something more than Columbus. It talked a lot about Celebrations, and about many of the celebrations that were held for Columbus. The anniversaries of October 12, 1492 seemed to take on meaningless celebrations. The celebrations are one of which that creates a lot of our history. How about the celebrations that the “others” had before they came? It was a world in which they did not understand, so how could they attempt to retell? Since the explorers with Columbus did not seek to understand the others they approached they had no understanding in which to help others understand as well. The “others” taught the value of farming to the pilgrims and how to survive off of the land, taking only what one needed (and using all of it). Think of how our society today would be different today, if the Europeans had incorporated some of these ideas into society?
Corinne Neuman
Silencing the Past, Part III Page II
On pg 114 he writes, “It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power.” To me I interpret this statement as a warning, a warning to look hard at our normalties of society and question them. Question where they came from, and how they evolved. A product is the output of something, and power submissively and secretly takes its place. Once the product has been produced, it exists. Power is held within, and is takes great caution to not be seen. Once it exists it becomes “normal” and hardly questioned. Therefore, the obvious traces of power become blind.
Trouillot refers to Eurocentric Power, also on page 114. “Naming the fact thus already imposes a reading and many historical controversies boil down to who has the power to name what.” People refer to Columbus as “discovering America” and the word “discover” takes considerate power in its terminology. According to Trouillot, “terms ensure that by just mentioning the event one enters a predetermined lexical field of clichés and predictable categories that foreclose a redefinition of the political and intellectual stakes.” As Trouillot elaborates, Europe becomes the center of the “discovery.” Others, such as the Native Americans simply become part of the discovery.
Silencing again, occurs when people decide what is trivial information and meticulous detail because it becomes an interpretation of “what happened.” I can not agree more with this statement. In interest, compare the story of Columbus that you might hear from a Native American to that of a European. What information about the discovery would be considered trivial to each group of people? To a Native American, Columbus marks the time of a new era – white man. However, to a European it may be interpreted as the beginning of a new era – new land. A land where the rejects of Europe where allowed to escape.
Today consider the similarities of the illegal immigration debate. To me the arguments of both sides seem remarkably similar to that in the era of Columbus. Today the “name” is not discovered but immigrants. However, instead of Hispanics murdering thousands of “our” people they are merely making their way into America through our labor system. Seeking the best that they can with what they have. Our greed and forgetfulness of our ancestors fails to recognize that we migrated in an entirely different fashion. We just killed off those that were here before us.
“To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system.” We all know that our system is corrupt, and ineffective. However, the system as a whole seems so powerful that as individuals we feel helpless. Weaknesses in our society is seen as failure, so rather than admit our own weakness and challenge our system we pretend that it doesn’t exist. Our prison systems are a perfect example. They are bulging at the seams with resistance; each decade follows with a reform. The prison acts as its own society, and is completely hidden from public
Corinne Neuman
Silencing the Past, Part III Page 3
eye. While all along, prison Administration tells us through their “public affairs” all the good that they are doing for our inmates.
History attempts to tell us the stories in chronological order. However, Trouillot illustrates how far from chronological order history truly is. I turn to my resume as an example; each time I apply for a job I neatly arrange in chronological order my job experiences. This is far from the truth of how I have grown, and learned as a person. It just doesn’t happen from 1992-1996, as providing A,B, and C job responsibilities. My maturity as a person is more valuable through more of the struggles that I have overcome, new skills that I have learned, and more patience that I have grown to understand. It is learning to overcome communication problems with co-workers, problem solve when you don’t know what to do, and ask for help when you need it. These are the things that have built a person, and have led them to become more valuable. In a sense, these are the silences that Trouillot speaks of. The untold that everyone knows exists, as you would not be were you are if you did not experience them.
November 13, 2006 at 5:45 am
Sorry for splitting my assignments
November 13, 2006 at 5:47 am
Missy Cook p.1
STP, Jamaica Kincaid, SJ Gould
Nov 12, 2006
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Sect 1395
“Built into any system if domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy” What this statement means to me is in order to have domination over anything or anybody requires structure and order and therefore there can be a person in power and dominating everyone else. An example of this is someone joining the Navy. For instance, my little brother just joined the Navy and is close to finishing up boot camp training. The difference form talking to him at the beginning to almost the end is amazing. He did not know what to expect going in, so he was over whelmed and missed home very much. Now that boot camp is almost over he is still looking forward to boot camp ending but he is used to the routine and likes it. He is talking about serving 20 years and then retiring. He has accepted his new life style. This new life of dominating routine and senior officers has become his routine and is normal to him now. I believe this was achieved through strict structure of routine, daily physical training, and daily education.
“To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system.” This can be applied to many things of today, one of them being out judicial system. It is based on everyone getting a fair trail but as we have seen in this class that is not always the case. If the powers that be were to acknowledge that something was wrong with the system, how would they start changing it? The task seems too large and almost impossible.
Trouillot talks about the idea of an impossible history. This to me has to do a lot about silencing the past. We do not want to think about the negative events of history. If
Missy Cook p.2
STP, Jamaica Kincaid, SJ Gould
Nov 12, 2006
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Sect 1395
we had to look at all the bad things that out ancestors did in the past then we could possible be held accountable today. So instead of acknowledging the sordid past we choose to not think about and maybe even think that is was impossible. This can even be applied to what we have learned about the treatment of prisoners in the present. The injustices and mistreatment of prisoners is something that I did not think about at all until this class. Before I would say that they deserved it and asked for it by simply being in prison. Now that I know a little about the mistreatment of prisoners my first thought is that it is impossible, and how can this continue? Again no one wants to think about the negatives of society because then something would have to change to the status quos.
“Effective silencing does not require a conspiracy not even a political consensus its roots are structural” When Trouillot writes this to me it means, that silencing does not happen as a conspiracy or a cover up it happens because the victor wants to get his point across his story told. Then his story becomes the bases of what society is structured after.
I have already discussed the article “Flowers of Evil” by Jamacia Kincaid but I have thought a little more about her article. In her article she states “This naming of things is so crucial to possession-a spiritual padlock with the key thrown away-that it is a murder, an erasing, and it is not surprising that when people have felt themselves prey to it (conquest), among their first acts if liberation is to change names” This reminds me of getting married. You change your last name and belong to each other. In a way you are a possession of each other. When I got divorced the first thing that I did was go back to my
Missy Cook p.3
STP, Jamaica Kincaid, SJ Gould
Nov 12, 2006
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Sect 1395
maiden name. I did not want to be connected to my ex-husband in any way shape or form.
The article “The Geometer of Race” written by Stephen Jay Gould was interesting. The article talks about how the word Caucasian came about. “By moving form the Linnaean four-race system to his own five-race scheme, Bleumenbach radically changed the geometry of human order from geographically based model without explicit ranking to a hierarchy of worth, oddly based upon perceived beauty, and fanning out in two directions from a Caucasian ideal.” It seems as if this Bleumenbach is the one who first believed that the European race was the best and should be the highest ranking and therefore be in power over all. It’s hard to believe this all had to do originally with perceived beauty. I guess we see this in everyday life. The actors are one of the wealthiest class in America and the reason most of them are considered stars has to do with their beauty and everyone wanting to look like them. They are then in television or in movies and are paid a lot of money. The money comes from us who pay for cable or pay to go to the movies, so in a way we are buying into this beauty having power and a higher raking in society.
November 13, 2006 at 5:51 am
Jereme Robinson Page 1
Silencing the Past, Part 3
November 12th, 2006
Preludekid212@aol.com
Human 6 – Section 1395
In Chapter 4 of Silencing the Past Trouillot spends most of his time talking about Christopher Columbus and his discover of America. I found it very interesting in this chapter how Trouillot talks about the day we know celebrate, “Columbus Day”. He talks a give us example of other special events that occurred on the same day but ask us why the only Celebrate this history today and not celebrate the other history that was made on the day. It is a funny question because we you think about it and ask why at least for me I say “yeah why don’t we celebrate other events”. The answer is simple and that is for many years our schools have been thought that this is the only event that occurred on this day. I see this as archive power, the history book only want us to know what they want us to know and that is that Columbus Day was the only event we will honor on October 12th. I think a Quote that Trouillot say in Chapter for give his filling on archive power, he says, “Celebrations straddle the two sides of historicity. They impose a silence upon the events that they ignore and they fill that silence with narratives of power about the event they celebrate”.
Trouillot goes into talking about while events occur people take in those events but once they are gone and have base the memorable events just turns into a fact that we just celebrate. Trouillot says on page 114, “The isolation of a single moment thus creates a historical “fact”: on this day, in 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the Bahamas. As a set event, void of context and marked by a fixed date”. Then trouillot goes into later saying, “that once the event has lost its processual character it becomes a fact and
Jereme Robinson Page 2
Silencing the Past, Part 3
becomes for want of a better word, sterile.” I mean when you really think about it make total sense. A historic even occurs but once it is forgotten about people just look back at it as a fact that happened in history, whether that fact is presented accurate or not. We today just except Columbus Day as a day where we don’t have to go to school or get paid holiday pay at work because this event is forgotten and just remembered as a “fact”.
In chapter five it really changed gears and talked about black slavery and how important it was to American history. Trouillot goes on to talk about the image that Slavery left behind in the minds of the American people.
On page 84 when Trouillot says, “Built in to any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy,” means that people will not look into the system if there is something wrong because they believe that the system is the truth. This Quote goes along with archive power in the people will believe what they hear and what they hear is controlled by the systems. This is screen with President Bush and the War in Iraq. President Bush was told he believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because his system made him believe that it was true. After he found that wasn’t true to turned his attention on relieving a horrible man from power and freeing the Iraq people. During this war the government and there system control what we knew to make us people believe this war was in the best interest of our country. You know the question of how this is archived is a good question. One really can only know how people control the minds and brainwash other people. I look at the terrorist and wonder how people can convince this people that if they kill themselves by flying a plane into the World Trade Center and
Jereme Robinson Page 3
Silencing the Past, Part 3
killing American that they will go to heaven with 40 virgins. I really just don’t understand it!
In the article titled “The Geometer of Race” by Stephen Jay Gould, it talks about racism and a man that fought to change it. Johann Blumenbach’s idea was to change Americans thought of four races into five races. Blumenbach’s had a very different view on how races where established by man. He believed that man was created in one region, and then man moved around from that region where there skin adapted to the environment of there surroundings which changed there skin color. Blumenbach was convinced that the differences between the races were just superficial and could be changed by climate; which made him a firm supporter against the slavery of any people, not just blacks. Blumenback went on to stop slavery of all men which was stopped short of course because slavery went on for many years to follow. He crated a diagram of races which I found very weird because he had the white man on top of the food chain and very other race below that. Blumenbach classified “Caucasians as most beautiful”.
In the Article by Jamaica Kincaid, he looks into the relationship that people put between a flower garden that they just can go into on a summer day and a flower garden that one person relies on to survive in life. I thought this was a very weird comparison but I understand it more as I read on. Jamaica said, “What is the relationship between gardening and conquest? Is the conqueror a gardener and the conquered the person who works in the field?” I believe he is tried to paint a picture that the garden that we admire could only be that garden with the people who worked hard in the field to create that
Jereme Robinson Page 4
Silencing the Past, Part 3
garden. He is trying to point that the people who really deserve the create for the creating and beauty of that garden never gain or get the appreciation that they really deserve. This reading was hard to understand and learn because it was my last reading and it was a different change in direction that I wasn’t ready for. I really had a hard time relating this to trouillot.
November 13, 2006 at 6:08 am
Dawn Rash
STP & The Geometer of Race
November 11, 2006
dawnkrash@hotmail.com
Humanities 6 online
I am starting with The Geometer of Race, by Stephen Jay Gould because this article had the most impact on me this week. It amazes me that a man that who was considered to be one of the least racist thinkers of his time ironically develops the system that places one single race on the top propped by two lines of departure from the ideal toward greater degeneration. Blumenbach’s use of the word “degeneration” did not have the modern sense of deterioration, but the literal meaning, “departure from an initial form of humanity at the creation” isn’t all that less offensive or even close to the statement made in his third edition, “No doubt can any longer remain but that we are with great probability right in referring all varieties of man to one and the same species.” Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it seem strange to me that a man of science would use his own sense of aesthetics to build any theory, much less the comparative supposed worth of whole races of people. I don’t understand what possible scientific reasoning could prompt Blumenbach to conclude that Mount Cascasus produced the most beautiful people and therefore was the greatest probability to place the original forms of mankind. Even if the theory began with his mentor Linnaean, Blumenbach used this as his basis for creating his own theory.
I was also struck by Blumenbach’s theory on the color of skin, in that it could change color depending on climate. He said, “Color, whatever be its cause, be it bile, or the influence of the sun, the air or the climate, is at all events, an adventitious and easily changeable thing, and can never constitute a diversity of species.” He also went on to argue that most racial variations such as climate and custom, could be altered or reversed by moving to a new region or by adopting Dawn Rash-STP & Blumenbach
new behavior. Lastly on the subject of color, I was stunned by Blumenbach’s assumption that white was the primitive color of mankind because it is “easy for that to degenerate into brown, but very much more difficult for dark to become white.” We know today that these theories are impossible and ludicrous, but what on earth would make a scientist of that era believe these notions and publish them as fact? I realize that I am off the path of damage done to the construction of racism, but I was shocked by the scientific conclusions drawn by Blumenbach regarding diversity that affected his personal feelings about racial equality. Would he have felt differently if he had realized that color doesn’t change by changing one’s climate or customs? Would he have created a vertical line in his geometry of man or removed all non-white skinned people off the chart? What is ironic to me is that Blumenbach believed the right things for the wrong reasons, but the model that he set perpetuated oppression and racism.
“It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power” (114) refers to the passage in STP that discusses how the isolation of a single moment in history creates an historical fact. When that fact turns into an event that is celebrated in different ways by different people, it loses its context. What happened or what is said to have happened on that particular date may be celebrated, but the circumstances surrounding that event become less relevant or changed over time, depending on who is doing the narrating. To the public who is anxiously commemorating the marking of an historical event, the issue of whether the event was used to gain political, monetary, or social power is not in question, cleansing the traces of power that engineered the commemoration in the first place.
When Trouillot writes that the effective silencing does not require a conspiracy, not even a Dawn Rash-STP & Blumenbach
political consensus, its roots are structural, he means that society carries silences on it’s own. Many silences are structured in the value system in which we are raised. For instance, the public school system celebrated all European and Christian based holidays, but neglected to acknowledge any holidays or any other ethnic group the entire time that I was growing up. We had no Hanukkah or Kwanza vacations. This silenced entire cultures of people who were not of European or Christian heritage. I realize that recognition has become a little better in some school systems, but I notices that instead of celebrating the multi-cultural heritages that are enrolled in my children’s school system, we have eliminated different cultures altogether by using the terms, “winter break” and “spring break.” In the continuing effort to silence and oppress different cultures, we would rather celebrate nothing.
November 13, 2006 at 6:48 am
Jade-I really like the way you express you ideas, its very clear. Your explanation of the impossible history really solidified the concept for me. I now have a much clearer understanding of it. Also your example using the religion really made me think. That idea never occurred to me and I think it is a really good example to use in explaining the system on domination quote.
November 13, 2006 at 5:16 pm
David Bynum
Human 6 Online
Medic811@sbcglobal.net
11/11/06
STP – 3
Oscar Wilde states “any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it,” and a bigger genius to edit the narrative. History is dangerous and malleable and it doesn’t depend on the presence; the presence is about the past. Historical narratives change over time through erasures and silences and these silences occur to achieve a greater goal or purpose of the narrator. Narratives are written for an intended audience; however discourse is not just about written language, history occurs through oral communication as well. History can be a “confustion of tongues and cultures” (Trouillot 109).
As new facts and information are presented, history can be changed. Today’s biggest controversy is the war in Iraq. It was started because we were told Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and they were goin to use these weapons against us. The country was outraged and supported the war. As the war progressed, the weapons or mass destruction were never located. The original narrative was built or created into our system of domination to “proclaim is own normalcy” (Trouillot 84). Our government skirts around this issue whenever it is brought up because to acknowledge our mistake is to admit “something is wrong with the system” (Trouillot 84). The weapons of mass destruction are simply not acknowledged as they should be.
Each act of silencing exercises a form of power because “its roots are structural” (Trouillot 106). For silencing to be effective, it doesn’t take a conspiracy by groups of governments. Silences are inherent and structural by nature and they can occur in any situation. Haiti wrote about their revolution and the rest of the world wrote it their way; each group had a different political motive for the silences.
History is based on facts and sometimes the facts needs to be more manageable. Christopher Columbus’ “discoveries” were summed up in one day, October 12, 1492. This single fact replaces the process of history. Trouillot states that a manageable fact “is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power. The naming of the fact is itself a narrative of power disguised as innocence” (Trouillot 114). The ‘discovery’ of America was a process and it was summed up to one day and it becomes a single event “void of context” (Trouillot 114). A fact imposes power and this case it gave power to the Europeans; it was their discovery.
The bible and the birth of Jesus Christ is similar. We celebrate Jesus’ birth on a certain day yet the entire religious process before the birth is “void of context.”
David Bynum
STP – 3
page 2
This power is “a form of archival power” (Trouillot 116). History loses “what happened and what is said to have happened” to “who saw it happen [and] to whom it happened” (Trouillot 116). Trouillot refers to this exercise of power as “sanitizing” the fact (Trouillot 116). If we look at America’s celebration dates, we can see that a “sanitized fact” is not teh same as the process of history or an occurrence of the events. 9/11 is a good example of this but so is the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We acknowledge 12/7 as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the event that brought us into WWII. The events are trivialized into a single event. We were essentially in the war before this event but this event exercised a power for us. These specific dates silence the process and a new edited narrative carries on. The people at Pearl Harbor during this are the actors and our government the narrator.
History is about the past but also about the present because “all are reshaped by the same power plays and not all mean the same to new actors entering the stage and busily reformulating and appropriating the past” (Trouillot 118). Columbus Day, although it occured in 1492, was brought in the 1890’s as a “political and diplomatic crusade, an economic venture, a spectable to be consumed by Spain and the world for the sheer sake of its pageantry” (Trouillot 124). The power of the past was being used to influence the present. Slavery is another example of the past affecting the future. Although slavery was abolished, the black community struggled for years to receive freedom and it is questioned today whether blacks receive the same treatment as whites. Abraham Lincoln and the Martin Luther King were paramount figures involving the black community and their freedom. We celebrate both their birthdays yearly. The process of history for hundreds of years is lost in the single event of these birthdays; it becomes reduced. Each year the history is being brought back out to continue the ongoing narrative.
With each renewal, an opportunity of power and domination presents itself. Every time we celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, slavery is brought to the blank piece of paper. We all know that slavery is bad but it isn’t about slavery anymore. This factual celebration is now about racism in our country today. The past is also the present and “slavery here is a ghost, both the past and a living presence; and the problem of historical representation is how the represent that ghost, something that is and yet is not” (Trouillot 145). The narrative is still being written and the actors playing everyday.
To effectively represent slavery would not be in a Disneyland theme park. I have been to three Disneyland theme parks and each one of them are different. It’s a Small World in America represents cultures all over the world; however it doesn’t show the children in Africa dying of AIDS. Euro Disney’s It’s a Small World displays Americans and our culture. I can’t imagine a slavery theme with the happy tune of It’s a Small World playing in the background. Doing so would trivialize the impact of slavery and racism today. Unfortunately, historical tourist attractions can “denote inaccuracy” (Trouillot 148); however, “to restore authenticity is much less slavery than the racist present within which representations of slavery are produced” (Trouillot 148). It’s a Small World would have to include children wearing white hoods with KKK across their chest or a prison full of black men and very few whites. I do not see that scenario being popular anytime soon but at least it “would have not trivialized slavery” (Trouillot 148).
David Bynum
STP – 3
In Gould’s paper, Blumenbach classifies the races and by geography and appearance. He was of the “Caucasian” race and at that time considered the dominant race. What he didn’t realize is that he is “the inventor of the modern racial classification” (Gould). The past again is also about the present. His classification then promotes racism today.
Flowers of Evil by Jamaica Kincaid silences and alters the narrative. Her native flowers were removed and placed elsewhere. These flowers obtained a new history and meaning and the old ones were silenced. Once these flowers were possessed, a new history was given to them just like Columbus “discovering” the new lands. The flowers and races were “of a conquered class and living in a conquered place” (Kincaid) and the only things that matters is what is important to the conqueror (Kincaid).
Every year the “renewal should concern us most” (Trouillot 150). because “practices of power and domination [can] be renewed” (Trouillot 150). Each year on MLK’s birthday, black history is renewed and new powers are sought out depending on the interested party. The renewals are present da occurrences. Trouillot referred to history as messy; messy because neither the past nor the present are clear and silences are: erased, reduced, trivilized and rewritten.
November 14, 2006 at 12:00 am
Jana Churich
Humanities Sec 1395
Silencing The Past Pt 3
“ Bright and cheery they had been planted for joy. What a strange idea that was.” (Dangarembga). The Jamaica Kincaid material was very metaphorical for the way we perceive the conquered and the conqueror. I think this article is difficult for us to comprehend because we live in a modern, diverse, technologically dependent nation. Most of us, in this class at least for sure, have grown up with computers, radios, television, super markets and shopping malls. For the common college student the fact of the matter is we lack most skills for survival in “the real world.” Sure we will have the skills to analyze, comprehend, read and write so that we can grow up get jobs raise a family and retire; more aptly known as the American way but in one form or another, however, we lack the skills to garden, cook, sew, mend, create, invent, and fix. We are dependent on supermarkets and fast food chains to supply us with food, fruits and vegetables we need to survive; we buy bottled waters because we don’t like the taste from the tap. If we need a new pair of jeans or a winter coat we do not spool the cotton or sew the materials we simply purchase what we need to get buy. I think Jamaica Kincaid’s point is that it is amazing that planting flowers for some people actually brings them joy. Historically the planting and harvesting of flowers, crops, vegetables, or herbs is hard work. It is a labor required by humans in order to survive. Trouillot’s example of this is when he is describing the demands of the Haitian slaves. “ …the leaders of the rebellion did not ask for an abstractly couched freedom. Rather, their most sweeping demands included three days a week to work on their own gardens and the elimination of the whip.” (103)
As Americans we take for granted the fact that someone had to grow the produce we purchase to eat, and someone else had to pick, package, ship, and merchandise them in order for us to have access to them. In a way, this dependency makes us unique as we are the conquered and the conqueror. Our dependency makes us weak, yet our means of survival makes us stronger. People and cultures around the world do not have supermarkets to supply their food and water, and they are not picky about what color their jeans are. They learn the means of their culture’s survive, and they learn those techniques from generation to generation.
An unthinkable history is “ that for which one has no adequate instruments to conceptualize.” (82). On page 72, Trouillot also says, “ when reality does not coincide with deeply held beliefs, human beings tend to phrase interpretations that force reality within the scope of these beliefs. They devise formulas to repress the unthinkable and to bring it back withing the realm of accepted discourse.” In other words, it means that if you cannot even fathom something, as a human being, it cannot truly exist. We come up with reasons or versions to make it fit into our concept of what could and did happen. This is why truth, in speaking about history is so important.
I think the most interesting part of this assignment was the Blumenbach essay. I never questioned the originality of the term Caucasian. It never even occurred to me that it was a name created to define our species. Blumenbach considered the people that lived below Mt. Caucasus to be the most beautiful people in the world therefore that must have been where life was created. The argument that Gould makes in writing this essay about Blumenbach is that it is impossible to have genuine scientific theory based on subjective, or opinionative, materials. Just because Blumenbach believed that they were the most beautiful people in the world does not mean that everyone felt the same way. This theory that Blumenbach and his predecessor came up with helped fuel the ideology of race and racism.
In Silencing the Past there are many references to the ideology of white supremacy. On page eighty Trouillot quotes a French memoir that said, “ It is perhaps not impossible to civilize the Negro, to bring him to principles and make a man out of him: there would be more to gain than to buy and sell him.” African American slave trade was a practical cause and effect of the original ideology of Blumenbach’s era. People actually believed that the Creator, God or whomever, put Africans on the Earth to serve the white man. As the word spread that this race was composed of inferior, savage, non-humans Africa became the breeding ground for buying and selling people. The need for free labor in the Americas fueled this trade and ultimately set the stage for Europeans and Americans to have the same ideologies: that Africans “belonged to a different species, one culturally destined to be slaves.” (77) The importance of American Slavery when studying the history of the United States is outstanding. The reason for this is because we cannot define our current status of leaders in the social, economic or political race against the rest of the world without taking into consideration how we became so diverse, so wealthy, and so dominant compared to other governments. Our social status began because of the rich, white European ideologies. It was not so long ago that our country created an “African-American” race and by extension the ramifications of a diminished black culture. Euro-Americans prevented Africans from making wages, getting educations, or participating in any type of “white” culture like church, government, or paid labor. As a whole Blacks were segregated from Caucasians and put into densely Black populations where violence and illness spread like wildfire and again the perception of blacks as savages continued to be justified.
As we have been studying capital punishment and it’s affect on minorities such as Blacks, it is not surprising at this stage in the course to make the connection between why there are such high crime rates and low education for people of African descent. They are and were an affect of abuse and demorality that spans the last couple hundred years. In Silencing the Past now the connection to be made is how it came about. How true are the facts that have come from our history, including slavery, and do we understand why that history was told in the way we are accustomed to?
That brings me to the next question. On page 84 when Trouillot says “Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy”. An example of when this is true is the very creation of the United States government. Some might say that when the Declaration of Independence came out and the Constitution was under construction that it was the furthest leap into democracy than ever in history. It was a breakthrough in leadership, politics, and economics because no where in the world was there a government not ruled by tyranny or monarchy. In my opinion it was an act of genius by rich white elitists to gain in their own economic interests. They had a War for Independence and spouted freedom yet Blacks and Native Americans were not free. Women also were excluded from the rights and privileges that came from the Revolution. The ideology of the white elitists was to give more opportunities perhaps to the poorer of their own kind in order to fuel the economy but not to give them so much freedom as to overthrow their ideas. At the time, the demise of Native Americans, the need for free labor, the imports and export taxes from Britain, and the laws then created for equality were built on what those men believed was normal. They proclaimed that’s how life should or shouldn’t be and the citizens whether they agreed or not complied with that. Trouillot suggests that when you acknowledge the other side of what is right to the majority then there must be something inherently wrong with the system (84). After the creation of our own democracy, the founding fathers never admitted they were wrong but rather left open the opportunity to amend or change according to new systems of beliefs. For example, instead of acknowledging that slavery was wrong and immoral, they amended the Constitution to free blacks in the north. What you don’t read about is how the northerners sold off their slaves to plantation owners in the South. Unless the blacks could pay their own way to be free they were merely sent South to work. The “free blacks” were still not allowed at this time to participate any more than they already were but they could earn some wages and keep those wages for themselves. This is also an example of how we accept that the North was heroic for pioneering the “free states” but deny that their motives may have been less than heroic and more economic from a historical perspective.
The formulas of erasure are concurrent with the ideas of normalcy and an unthinkable history. Basically it means that when you have a set of beliefs that something is normal you neglect that any opposition exists because that would mean something is wrong with the system as a whole. That negligence, that unthinkable thing that could never exist in any one’s right mind, is erasure. Trouillot uses examples like slavery and the Holocaust as having formulas of erasure that existed. He is not suggesting they never happened rather implying that there are details that have been eliminated or glossed over. For example when he mentions, “ The Germans did not really build gas chambers; slavery also happened to non-blacks.” These two simple phrases are arguments that allow some justification for historical events without blaming a particular party. It helps ease the pain, so to speak, that the Jews weren’t tortured so bad or that there was some equality to slavery it wasn’t totally racist. The last line on page 97 when Trouillot says, “ Haiti mattered to all of them, but only as a pretext to talk about something else,” is a key statement to assist his point. The abolitionists, slave owners economists, and others whom he is referring to in that quote were all affected by the Haitian Revolution. However, when they retold their stories or felt the need to sell their personal causes, the details of the Revolution were not as important to keep straight. Thereby causing those details to be erased.
On pg 114 Trouillot writes, “It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power.” He is referring to the fact that we celebrate October 12, 1492 as Christopher Colombus Day. The day he discovered the Bahamas. The “product” in the quotes is the date and the fact that we celebrate it as such a historical event. The power is in reference to the Eurocentric ideology that sparked the need to make the event a European discovery rather than the “ Castilian invasion of the Bahamas.” This is significant for several reasons that we have already discussed. There is evidence of erasure because we celebrate the date as a linear function of a series rather than a process of events, behaviors, wars, and religious affiliations that caused the actual encounter of Columbus and the Native Americans. It is also important to recognize that the power behind discovery and the creation of the event’s “story” is that of rich Europeans. “ Europe becomes the center of ‘what happened’. Whatever else may have happened to other peoples in that process is already reduced to a natural fact: they were discovered.” Trouillot is implying that there is a vast history of the people of the Bahamas but we do not study them because according to the Europeans they did not exist until Columbus discovered them. Figuratively of course because we know now that they were there, but the powers that reside behind the curtains of history only date back to the conquest. As far as this quotes relevance to the text Trouillot uses it to show that there is a difference between what really happened and what was said to have happened. Was it a discovery or an encounter? By arguing the semantics of the words used to describe the event we prove that the meaning and validity of the truth changes subjectively.
November 14, 2006 at 1:31 am
Ben- When you brought up the concept of manageable facts, it really got me thinking about society today. Now that our society loves manageable things, like drive up starbucks, or microwave dinners, and even books on audiotapes. Anything to make life easier has become a demand. Could all of these easy to do projects or ideas be making our species lazy, and possibly out of touch with nature. We expect action packed stories and therefore little room is left for facts, now I think writers have to compromise factual based work for manageable action stories. I guess what i am trying to get at is that we (the species of humans) have come to rather enjoy fiction, where the truth has become much harder to deal with, for instance if aliens were really out there and the government told us people would freak out, the same with the truth about the “war on terror”, we just like fairy tale bull. I like how you took the labeling of Columbus Day from Trouillot and quoted it, “The Castilian Invasion of the Bahamas”, image that being our name for the holiday bankers have come to treasure.
Corinne- You went into depth about the Geometer of Race, I thought your ideas were put together in way to help others understand the article. You brought up classification and labeling, both having a tremendous affect on a person to a point where they believe it. It is like once something has a name and its labeled as Kincaid says, its a padlock with the key thrown irretrievably away. We are the only species who think highley of our selves, i don’t think chimps run around thinking my furr looks better than their furr. Its as if our higher brain functions have disconnected us from nature, from a form of balance. Everything to us has to be labeled and classified to fit a vision.
November 14, 2006 at 2:12 am
Jana – i agree with you about the the article by Blumenbach. it was a very intresting topic to read and changed the direction of the other readings. It funny because as White Americans we don’t really look at ourself as a race and look at others and a race but in the long run we are a race. It was funny to understand and i think we both are thinking in the same direction. Nice Paper i really enjoyed reading it!
November 14, 2006 at 5:35 am
David,
Great paper. You brought up some intresting points. The war in Iraq being one relating to the weapons of mass destruction. And your explanation of exercise of power as “sanitizing” helped me understand this concept better. I liked how you used Trouillot quotes throughout the paper and it flowed well.
November 14, 2006 at 11:05 am
Todd – good point….a sanitized fact is definitely President’s Day and the big shopping event of the year. Did you ever see the movie supersize me? They interviewed children and all the kids could identify a picture of Ronald McDonald but none of them recognized a picture of the president or jesus…if we quizzed students today, I wonder how many would say President’s Day is about a day off to shop or is just a holiday weekend. In addition, are car dealerships really celebrating and honoring the presidents or marketing their name to sell vehicles? This is also about the past being about the present.
November 14, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Jereme- I am currently taking Anthropology and from their stand point scientificaly were aren’t a race and that the human species doesn’t have enough variation to break down into real races, now if early hominids such as Neaderthals were still around there would be two races. When i had read the articles about race it was suprising, but well written about how we don’t have races.I wish they would teach this in the early grades of school so young kids can learn the difference between race and species. They also made the point that we can be more geneticaly identical to someone of a different ethnicity like in Africa than another in America. Genetics and Anthropology is really interesting and can teach people a lot about where we came from reguardless of your beliefs of the big bang theory or creationism.
November 15, 2006 at 2:21 am
QUESTION???? OFF THE SUBJECT, BUT IMPORTANT. For the people who have been writing to prisoners. I wrote a letter to a prisoner named Gary Basua, but I got a written letter in the mail from Harold Shamburger?? Obviously not the same person. I am thinking letters got mixed up because he think i want to have an aerobic dance instructer liscense, which totally off. So if anyone wrote a letter to Harold let me know, and if anyone gets a return letter from Gary Basua that would be my guy. Well thanks for any response because i would really like to know how Gary likes the book i sent him.
November 17, 2006 at 1:47 am
Corrine – I agree with you that the term “discovering America” has permanently branded the date October 12, 1492 in our minds. But was America really there for the discovery? Wasn’t it, in fact, already discovered and inhabited? But just because the inhabitants were Europeans, they didn’t count. It could simply be construed as a form of racism – the rich, white Europeans “discovering” a land with a bounty of natural resources and beauty. It is only incidental that this beautiful land is already inhabited by people who are not European, so they must not count.
November 17, 2006 at 1:54 am
Todd – I agree with you about Trouillot’s quote regarding normalcy and systems of domination. It is true that in our current society, we have been too blind and willing to believe what the government has told us. The government has forced the “normal” act of war and terrorism down our throats. The administration will lie to our faces to get the results they want. They will tell us that Iraq had weapons in order to get the public to feel that declaring war on Iraq was the correct thing to do. And when the truth was revealed, the administration couldn’t admit they were wrong. Instead, the public is told that the weapons were hidden better than anyone thought or the weapons were secreted from the country. Why should society be misled and the dominant figures feel the need to protect us from a truth that should have been told in the first place?
November 20, 2006 at 8:00 am
Corrine, Columbus hitting the Bahamas hit home for me on columbus day. I am a preschool teacher and I just couldn’t do the columbus story. I discussed the clothes of the day and the ships that were sailed back then. I just felt like I was perpertuating a lie to anything else.
November 27, 2006 at 4:17 am
Dina McCarthy
STP4 – Columbus
dmccarthy5@sbcgloal.net
Americancultures1395
In Chapter Four of Silencing the Past, the significance of Columbus and the “idea” of the West, is pertinent. Here, Trouillot cleverly writes of the origins of control over the means of production of history by Europeans. Partly because of the later importance given to “October 12, 1492,” an importance never expressed in Columbus’ own lifetime, “Contact with the West,” says Trouillot, “is seen as the foundation of historicity of different cultures. Once discovered by Europeans, the other finally enters the human world.” (Anderson).
Trouillot puts Columbus day in to context by placing Columbus’ stumbling on the Bahamas beside events that people in 1492 thought were important, most significantly the end of the Castilian war against Muslims in the Peninsula and the Christians taking of the city of Grenada. In 1492, Columbus’ discovery was not perceived as important. Trouillot then examines the process through which Columbus Day became so important and isolates key factors in the process: e.g. the isolation of a date, the naming, and the commemorations. (ufl.edu).
Trouillot discusses how the current global westernized hegemony treats specific historical events, events chosen for their relevance to the text of western dominance. As he explains, the quite accidental discovery of America in point of historical fact was actually Columbus stumbling onto the Bahamas and then he and his half crazed men going on a rampage. This sordid event went unheralded in its own time. However, the story of the conquest of the New World demanded a date, so October 12, 1492 became a historical beacon. (Scheffer).
On the other hand, the only successful slave revolt in history, which led to Haitian independence in 1804, hardly registers in the Western consciousness. In its time, this cataclysmic event was recognized as a serious threat to the institution of slavery in the New World. Haiti has paid the price for its self-
Dina McCarthy
STP4 – Columbus
dmccarthy5@sbcgloal.net
Americancultures1395
liberation ever since, in ostracism as a Black and poor society, in a sense “disappeared.” After all, wasn’t it the beneficent whites that eventually freed the slaves? (Scheffer).
Trouillot argues that the silences are part of the production of historical narratives at different moments: in the creation of archives, the making of narratives, and the making of “history” or retrospective significance. As he writes, “any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences” (27). The academic “historical guild” does not necessarily accomplish the ways in which these silences are repressed or addressed vertically, top-down. Instead, history as it is known and lived by most people emerges from diverse sources: media, national representations, religious groups, tourist centers, national currency and so on.
According to Trouillot, the concern is “not what history is…but how history works.” History, to the author, is an ambiguous blend of “mentions” and “silences,” whereby some peoples and their times are left out of history. A historian is neither objective nor neutral. Every move or non-move in the construction of history is a reflection of conscious choice, more often than not from a context of Euro centric domination. The very selection of sources for an archive pre-determines a whole range of “silences.” (Corbett). Trouillot says:
“By silence, I mean an active and transitive process: one ’silences’ a fact or an individual as a silencer silences a gun. One engages in the practice of silencing. Mentions and silences are thus active, dialectical counterparts of which history is the synthesis.”
December 10, 2006 at 1:30 am
Oh boy proving evolution and religion is as comparing Columbus as the first to discover/conquer America/Bahamas. People are going to believe what they are comfortable believing and unfortunately it will be for most what ever is easiest for them to imagine, grasp and remember.
It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power. (114) enslaving the naives of the Bahamas is like the church hypnotizing it’s followers. Because of the countless celebrations and and acceptance of belief and hope are such stories celebrated. It almost reminds me of how nieve my sister was when she said that her four leaf clover tatoo represented her being Irish when it’s the three leaf clover that actually represents the Irish. It only got worse when I told her we were not Irish and that if she ever researched and asked the family we are Polish English and German. She just assumed because that was what my dad hoped that we were and he said it jokingly at the dinner table one night during thanksgiving. Goes to show that paying good attention at the dinner table can keep you from very imbaressing moments. One should never assume or as to be so gullible that they believe the first thing they hear especially without getting a second opinion or confirmation from a credible source. Then again who’s to say who and what is credible now a days. just because it came from pro quest does not mean that it is credible. I am sure that there are article that pro-quest makes available that talk about the 1492 event and that Columbus discovered America on that day.
December 10, 2006 at 8:50 am
Dawn- it is important for your children to learn the date…so start by being truthful, but also tell them what the popular majority believes in. they just might be able to teach their parents something about their history …I know I have more than once.
December 10, 2006 at 9:08 am
Todd and Donna – War and Terrorism is not normal. At least not in my day and age, but maybe in Bush’s!!! I was raised in an environment that was started out as the American Dream, and then went it went to shreds most like Louis’ and more than once or twice. You would think that someone might learn the first time especially the hard way, but it only makes us want to challenge it again.