Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History Free Audiobook Download by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

In this audiobook, Trouillot looks at the relationship between power and history. He believes that people who have a voice in society are able to create their own history, but in order to suppress a social group's voice, one must silence their past. This book also examines how power effects the production of history as well as the effects of culture on social movements.

"If we pay attention to the past," Trouillot says, "we will never be able to break out of it." Trouillot's essays investigate the colonial world of Haiti and the way that history is created as a result of a Western European power structure. His argument involves the idea of silencing, which he describes as the "power of governance to put a stop to knowledge production and remembrance" in order to keep colonized peoples powerless.

A more precise definition of 'silencing' is the social process through which people try to prevent the revelation of information and ideas that are uncomfortable or threatening to their sense of power and control. 'Silencing the Past' theorizes on the various different forms this phenomenon takes, with a particular focus on how power comes into play in relation to what it means to be human. In his book, Trouillot points out that "power cuts across eras, cultures, nations and languages," and is used by both rulers and oppressed groups

The essay is mainly focused on the concept of power and how it has historically been used to control and silence populations. It is also about how people are beginning to take more agency in their own historical processes and the role of written texts in this process.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot discusses the historical production of history and how power shapes how we view the past. The author looks at how historians can be used to either help or harm society and gives examples of use of history in both cases.

In Silencing the Past, Michel-Rolph Trouillot uses Foucault's concept of power to explore how history is produced and consumed. Using a radical form of scholarship that starts with a close reading of documents, Trouillot shows how various social actors shape texts for different purposes.