Summary Of Silencing The Past By Trouillot

History continues to be a widely contentious topic since it has polysemy connotation. History can be many things, it can the events that occurred centuries ago, events that happened just yesterday, or this moment. With history encompassing a large gamut of events, it is the role of the historian to view the events and offer explanations for what occurred. It has been noted by Michel-Rolph Trouillot that history has been altered from being a “sociohistorical process to our knowledge of that process”. Understanding history as a process can be difficult since there are many ways chains of events can be perceived by an individual. With many different perceptions and narratives explaining how or why an event occurred, it can cause the interpretations
Trouillot notes that the pursuit of investigating the true nature of history has driven historians through a division between historical process and historical knowledge. Trouillot argues that history is not to be divided in such a manner, but rather the focus should be driven to understand how history works. Trouillot asserts that history reveals itself through the “production of specific narratives”. Consequently, rather than focusing on the how or why something occurred, historians should focus on answering how or why a specific narrative was created. Trouillot believes that through this process of analysis, one can gather an understanding of the multiple perceptions and why other perspectives prevail. Trouillot’s approach to history can be applied to the historical narratives that shape the history of Alexander the Great and his approach can elucidate the silenced
Alexander is widely known to be highly intellectual and possessing great vitality since he successfully commanded a campaign that extended his empire from Ancient Greece to Asia. Alexander’s great accomplishments continue to be written about in modern times. This contributes to the amount of the literary sources that highlight pivotal points in Alexander’s life. This is a production of narratives. Each narrative is specific as they give insight on a matter, and each source serves the purpose of educating the reader in a certain perspective. To understand the history of Alexander, the reader should focus on the process and conditions in which the narrative is created. By focusing on the process and conditions, the reader can comprehend not only the presented material, but also how that material shapes the history of Alexander. The material that will be analyzed is the Wikipedia entry of Alexander the Great. Wikipedia is an online-based free encyclopedia that is written by multiple online-users. There are no requirements for this collaboration, meaning that anyone can contribute to writing Alexander’s Wikipedia narrative. The entry is extensive and covers various topics of Alexander’s life such as his early life, his campaigns, and his final years. The Wikipedia page presents one narrative of Alexander the Great, and is understandably different than the ancient sources, and other modern works