Actors and narrators

 History is "the story of a people," and the way we tell that story illustrates who we include and exclude, whose voices we privilege and whose we silence, who holds power and who does not. It's a powerful tool that shapes how we understand the present. 

What events, which people, what locations are most significant to understanding history, and how can we decide? Who should decide? History's complexity resides, in no small part, in the reality that historical actors are also simultaneously the narrators of the events that they've participated in or observed. They are closest to the events, but they are not the most reliable sources of information about those events. 

As Michel-Rolph Trouillot reminds us, "Human beings participate in history both as actors and as narrators. The inherent ambivalence of the word 'history' in many modern languages, including English, suggests this dual participation. In vernacular use, history means both the facts of the matter and a narrative of those facts, both 'what happened' and 'that which is said to have happened.' The first meaning places the emphasis on the sociohistorical process, the second on our knowledge of that process or on a story about that process" (p. 2).