Li Gongming|Secretary of the Week: The Silent Su Qi and the Four... "Key Moments"

The Silent Past: Power and Historical Production, by Michel-Rolf Truyo, translated by Wu Qiang, CITIC Press/Insight City-State, March 2023 edition, 68.00 yuan

Today, when the text and image generation capabilities of artificial intelligence are about to break the last fortress of faith that intellectuals hold, I am afraid that not many people will be convinced of the so-called objectivity behind the generation of historical narratives, and discourses such as "history is written by victors" and the obscured "silent history" have long become clichés. However, the question of how "history" is produced by power is far from being solved, although the relationship between power and history writing has long been discussed, and Professor Luo Xin's wonderful exposition on "the monopoly of political power over historical discourse" (excerpted from his book "The Rebel Who Didn't Do Something") has also aroused repercussions, but it is still necessary to have an in-depth discussion of the means, nature and complex details of the "monopoly" process. Moreover, at a time when people are increasingly aware of the need to think about the future of world development in relation to the past and present, it is clear that there is a greater need to clearly understand the truth of the power production of the text "history". Historian Patrick J. Geary points out that modern historiography, as an ideological tool of nationalism, "has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic garbage dump filled with the poisonous gas of ethnic nationalism, which has penetrated the consciousness of the masses" (Patrick Gerry, The Myth of the Nation: The Medieval Origins of Europe, translated by Lü Zhao et al., Guangxi Normal University Press, 2022, p. 1). In no way should we underestimate the serious obstacles to the creation of future life by this toxic and solidified historical understanding. Gerry also once said at a seminar: "All historical questions are not innocent, they all have their own molecular biology lineage." The "innocence" of historical issues mainly refers to the complexity and profit motives of the real context of historical production, while the so-called "molecular biology lineage" actually refers to the lineage of power inheritance.

In this sense, American anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1997; translated by Wu Qiang, CITIC Press, March 2023) can be said to be an antidote to historical production and power relations, as Hazel V. Carby said in his "foreword" to the book, "his provocative questions, his insights... Will sting my conscience. It can also be said that only being stung will wake up in the fog of historical narratives produced by power. Born in Haiti and his uncle was a curator and historian of the Haitian National Archives, Truyo himself exiled to the United States for persecution and later became a professor of anthropology and social sciences at the University of Chicago, and is considered "one of the original, disciple, innovative, and thoughtful voices of academia because his theoretical framework expands the knowledge of the social sciences in Caribbean studies." The Silent Past shows Truyo's ability to historicize and contextualize his thinking about historical theory, and his experience of life at the bottom gives him a more sensitive and profound insight into all official historical narratives. Since the book is derived from the author's seminar papers and seminar discussions, its style of discussion and discussion cases may be difficult for readers who are not familiar with the relevant research context to understand, but its core ideas and exposition logic are quite clear.

The original title "Silencing the Past" has a coercive, repressive meaning "silent past." This is the central theme of Truyo's discussion in the book, and "Power and the Production of History" is the central path of interpretation of this topic. In "Self-Order," he said: "This book is about history and power. It involves many aspects related to the production of historical narratives, including the disparity of contributions between competing groups and individuals whose access to producing historical narratives is inherently unequal. The forces I want to expose are not as high-profile as artillery fire, class property, or political movements. I would say that they are equally powerful. History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never transparent enough to make its analysis superfluous. The ultimate characteristic of power may be its concealment; The ultimate challenge is to reveal the roots of power. "The clear and sharp statement (of the self-order) comprehensively exposes the process, means, and concealment of power to manipulate historical production, which is the most distinctive feature of the book's thesis and the most worthy of consideration.

According to Cabi, "For Truyo, the most important thing about 'the past' is its impact on the 'future'—the 'process' of transformation from the past to the future." The Silent Past offers strategies for dealing with the inequalities of power in knowledge about the past. We learn how to reposition limited evidence to produce new narratives, how to justify silence against the inequalities of power in those sources, archives, and narratives. We need to give voice to these silences and, in the process, demand the future. The important influence of the past on the future is self-evident, but the relationship between the "past" and the "present" is equally important. George Orwell said that "whoever masters the past controls the future", this phrase is known to many people, but often misses the immediately following "whoever masters the present, who masters the past". Orwell has made it clear and generalized about the relationship between power and historical production in the past, present and future. So how should this crude and ruthless "mastery" be cracked and dealt with? Kabi argues that Truyo offers strategies for dealing with the inequality of power in historical production, which is exactly what Truyo seeks to do. But the extent to which these tactics are effective enough to resist the total domination of historical production by power, and to give voice to all who are silenced, varies greatly from power to social context.

By "silent past", Truyo refers to the silence in historical production, in fact, more accurately the past that is silenced in historical production. Kabi further concretely analyzes this: "His forensic analysis of the four moments of when silence entered the production of history reveals the entanglement of history and power, which applies not only to archives, but also to the processes and practices by which history is confirmed, recognized and organized into the realm of knowledge." For Truyo, history is always material; It starts with the body, artifacts, people or things that played an important role in the event, actors, and audiences. His emphasis on processes, production, and modes of discourse looks at the many locations of historical production: schools, media, and popular history mobilized by various actors. In Truyo's case, questions that receive special attention from Truyo's research perspective are questions about how everyday matter becomes evidence of historical production in the blink of an eye, why buildings that were once unnoticed become monumental, and why events that have not been recorded in the past can enter the glorious chronology. Above all, in his reflection on these issues, what he really focuses on and reveals is not their true connection to the past, which he certainly sees through the hypocrisy and arrogance, but the kind of future they reveal. For him, it doesn't matter what "history" is, what matters is how knowledge and narratives about "history" are generated, and more importantly, how power works in this process. Here, he feels anxious that "while some of us are arguing about what history is or was was, others keep it in their own hands" (214). In fact, from the perspective of these focal issues that Truyo repeatedly addresses in the book, the "some" in the last sentence of the main text of the book should be seen as the best complement to the subtitle of the book: "The power of some people and historical production." ”

At the beginning of the book, Truyo starts with the concept of "history", but he does not discuss the formation of this concept in historical theory and historiography, as well as various definitions and views, but directly puts forward the popular expression of history that he is concerned about: history means both "what happened" and "what is said to have happened", followed by positivism and constructivism to summarize the different tendencies in various historical theories, the former distinguishing between historical processes and narratives about it. The latter tends to emphasize the overlap between historical processes and their narratives. In fact, the concept of "history" was discussed as early as G.W.f. Hegel (1770-1831) Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (Philosophy of History), and the French historian Jacques Le Goff wrote about "history" in Histoire et Memoire (1988) The etymology of has been traced and defined in great detail. Whether from the perspective of theoretical speculation or conceptual history, these can be regarded as the source background of Truyo's popular expression of "history".

What makes some narratives and not others powerful enough to be accepted as history, if not historical authenticity itself? If history is only the story told by those who triumphed, how did they achieve victory in the first place? Why do all the winners tell different stories? (p.8) These questions are raised sharply and profoundly, and the factors involved here in historical production, such as the field, participants, processes, means, and results, are very complex, and the role of power in these factors is not only decisive, but also hidden. Truyo argues that traditional historiography grossly ignores and underestimates these issues, and can provide a rather limited view, "because historical theory rarely examines in detail the concrete production of a particular narrative." Narratives occasionally take the form of illustrations, or at most in the form of texts, but the processes in which they are produced rarely constitute the object of study" (31). If it is a bit difficult to ask historical theory to "examine in detail the specific production of a particular narrative", it is unreasonable not to take the field, process, and means of historical production as one of the research objects in the research topic. Therefore, the author says that one of the choices of the book's topic is a concrete concern with the historical production process, rather than an abstract concern with the nature of history; "Only by focusing on this process can we reveal how the two aspects of historical authenticity are intertwined in a given context." It is only through this overlap that we can discover how different ways power operates, how some narratives are possible and others silent. In this way, "we cannot pre-exclude any actor involved in historical production or any place where production may have taken place" (p. 35). These so-called "actors" certainly go far beyond scholars, professionals, and politicians, and the public of any identity has the potential to contribute to historical production. More graphically, Truyo puts it mildly that "the participants in any event may begin the narrative production of the event before the historian arrives at the scene" (pp. 35-36). This is especially true in today's era of self-media, and needless to say, today's historians are rarely on the scene.

Chapters two, three, and four of the book discuss, respectively, the forgotten slave-turned-colonel of the Haitian Revolution, the general silence of Western historiography on the Haitian Revolution, and the so-called historical consensus surrounding Columbus and the competitive appropriation of Columbus's discoveries. In his discourse on how Colonel Sanse Soucci, an important leader who has been overlooked in the history of Haiti's revolution, disappears from the historical narrative, Truyo examines the different levels of silence in the three faces of Sanse Succi, revealing the relationship between narrative and silence as equivalents: each narrative also produces a silence. People are no strangers to this kind of narrative (prominence) and silence (erasure) in historical narratives, but the problem is that the microscopic processes undoubtedly need to be deeply revealed by researchers. It is in this section that Truyo proposes four "key moments" in which silence enters historical production, which are well summarized in advance in the first chapter above: "Silence enters the process of historical production at four key moments: the moment when facts are created (the creation of historical materials), the moment when facts are compiled (the production of archives), the moment when facts are reproduced (the formation of narratives), and the moment when retrospective meaning is produced (the final creation of history). ...... In other words, any historical narrative implies a specific set of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operations required to deconstruct these silences will vary. (pp. 36-37) These four "pivotal moments" are enlightening for any researcher who questions and excavates the power intervention behind a historical narrative. "Any historical narrative implies a specific set of silences", because narratives rely on historical sources, and historical sources imply choice, so silence and absence must be part of the historical production process. But Truyo's argument contains more complex considerations, such as the fact that silence in the production of historical materials is not the direct product of power or ideological intervention at the beginning, but "occurs at the very beginning of historical production" (p. 69). This prevents over-interpretation of power intervention.

Through these three central cases, Truyo seeks to reveal that in each historical narrative, "different types of silence are combined." In each case, these silences crisscross or accumulate over time, producing a unique fusion. For each narrative, I use different methods to reveal the conventions and tensions in this fusion" (p. 37). By entering the specific context of the silent past and the history of power production, and by tracing the operation of power on historical production in various "moments", Truyo concludes that "power enters historical production at different times and from different perspectives, and plays a role in the creation and interpretation of narratives." ...... In history, power begins to move from the stage of historical materials. (p.39) Of these three case narratives, the historical narrative production of Columbus' discovery of the New World is clearly representative, not only more basic for us than the understanding of the Haitian Revolution, but more importantly through the universality of the orthodox historical narrative established through anniversaries, large-scale celebrations and the promotion of related cultural products, and Truyo's statement that "the isolation of a moment creates a historical 'fact'" is not difficult for readers in different contexts to understand.

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the Bahamas. This was not a big deal at the time, but it was only because Charles V and his pretentious Catholic empire "needed a living hero, which made Columbus, who was then deceased, a hero"; In 1552, Charles V was presented with this as the most important historical event after God's creation of the world and the coming of Christ (p. 166). Thus this day became the day of the "Great Discovery" in later historical narratives, and the year became the Year of Columbus. On October 12, 1792, a sumptuous celebration of Columbus' discovery of the New World was held, and in 1992, the United States held a grand celebration for the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's landing. Truyo points out that "celebration is created, and this creation is part of the production process of history. The celebration straddles two sides of historical authenticity. They impose a silence on neglected events, while filling that silence with a narrative of power of the events celebrated" (164). But unlike in 1792, the centennial celebration was most striking with protests from the United States and around the world, denouncing the celebration of the conquest while trying to change the narrative of the Great Discovery. Many observers, historians and activists have keenly denounced the arrogance implied by the term "discovery" in celebrations of the quincentennial of Columbus' landing in the Bahamas. Truyo argues that "the problem here is not just blind arrogance. The terminology system defines a field politically and epistemologically. The name (naming) creates a field of power" (p. 160). Many of the names in historical narratives are indeed evidence of the arrogance and arrogance of power in historical production. The celebration under the sweeping operation of power "contributes to a continuous process of myth-making" (161), giving the chosen historical events a clearer form of memory and enduring public significance. If it had not been met with protests from the public and academia, the historical narrative produced by power would have become history in the first sense of the word that Truyo spoke at the beginning.

In the final chapter, Truyo writes that he once visited the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, followed the ancient path to the central pyramid, stoically climbed the three hundred and fifty-four steps, and entered the ruins and stroked the wall with his fingers for a long time. "Although I was touched by this magnificent building, I never felt that I was touching history." Finally, he says, "I used to respect the past, but the past is not history" (p. 199). This narrative of his personal experience brought back memories in my eyes. In the summer of 2018, my family and I came to the Yucatan Peninsula to drive off-road, and visited Tulum, Coba, Ek Balam, Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, Xlapak, Labna and other places, in Mayan pyramids, temples, observation decks, city walls, stadiums, As I walked between the colonnades and drew sketches on the scene, I kept reminding myself that this was the most authentic site in history, the most authentic historical site in the archaeological sense. But after seeing this real feeling of Truyo, I remembered that what I felt at the time was probably in large part from John Lloyd Stephens' "Incidents of Travel in Central America" (Chiapas, and Yucatan), which I bought at the Dante Bookstore in Merida City Yucatan), he often wrote some moving emotional records during his expeditions, such as one day near the ruins of Say, he saw a red handprint on the building stone, and felt that this handprint brought him closer to the builders of the Mayan city. Truyo's real feelings and statements make me think that even if we are on the site of a historical site, it is still difficult for us to truly return to the real historical context to tell this history without a deep understanding of the truth of the "silent past" and the relationship between power and historical production.