Repairing the Past

A Conversation with Michel-Rolph Trouillot about History, Law, and Justice

Abstract

The paper presents contributions from Michel-Rolph Trouillot's book, Silencing the Past, to rethink how legal theory engages with history. First, the text addresses the book's analytical framework, highlighting how the Haitian Revolution is thematized to explore the links between power, history, and racism. Next, Trouillot's approach is used to confront how hegemonic legal theory understands the relationship between the normative and factual planes in light of a particular view of the history of modernity. The conclusion is that Silencing the Past provides elements for a historicization of law capable of redressing the power of colonial violence in the sociohistorical process and in what is said about it.