I do think it’s impossible for scientists to get “the facts” of the matterwithout their own perspectives getting in the way.
Before I talk about facts in the book, I really want to talk about how this ironically goes along with an assignment I had earlier for another class. In one of my classes, we had to read an article about introverts and write an essay responding to it. You can tell the article was clearly written by an introvert especially since the writer came out and said it. Even if the writer didn’t say it you would be able to tell by the things he was saying. He talked mainly about how the world would be better if it were ran by introverts and made extroverts seem like the most annoying people in the world who don’t know how to be quiet. I actually took offense to this because I feel like I am more of an extrovert and I happened to be roommates with somebody who is an extreme case of an introvert. In my essay I talked about this and about how it seems to be harder on me living with somebody that is a polar opposite to me than it seems to be on her. I realized by the end of my essay that from my point of view introverts, or at least my roommate, seemed to be more annoying than extroverts. So for my conclusion I stated that an article would be more informative if it was written by somebody who was neutral and was a mix between an introvert and an extrovert. I also feel this same way about history, but there’s one big problem to that philosophy. A person who doesn’t show strong feelings for a subject, whether it’s for that subject or against that subject, they probably wouldn’t take the time out to write a book or an article about it. And if they do it because they are forced to for an assignment, it probably wouldn’t be very enjoyable for the readers.
Back to the book, I believe Trouillot’s theory supports my belief about not being able to get to “the facts”. Trouillot mentions that relationships of power can make a narrative dominant or it can silence a narrative. In the first “moment”, which is fact creation, many potential sources have been eliminated because the creator’s ability to relate to it has been destroyed. The second “moment” is fact assembly. Archives are mainly put together by the government and wealthy people so the narratives of the less powerful rarely made it into the archives or under their own names. The third “moment” is fact retrieval. Many narratives get looked over because they don’t fit into the conventional times. Some get lost in translation when they have to be translated from a foreign language into English. Some mistakes are also due to incomplete research or incautious scholars. Some of the history is also changed when publishers or writers decide not to include facts that they find redundant or offensive, although they may be very important. The fourth “moment” is the delivery of facts. This moment has just as much to do with the consumption of history as its production. Like one of the examples that Trouillot gives is when the facts about Davy Crockett became a big deal in the “de la Pena diary” , de la Pena himself was silenced.
Due to all these facts I don’t think it’s possible for historians to have “the facts”. As time goes on, facts are left out and opinions are turned into facts.