This collection of writings from Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot includes his most famous, lesser known, and hard to find writings that demonstrate his enduring importance to Caribbean studies, anthropology, history, postcolonial studies, and politically engaged scholarship more broadly.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949–2012) was Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and the author of several books, including Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World and Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History.

Yarimar Bonilla is Professor of Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies at Hunter College, and Professor of Anthropology at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York.

Greg Beckett is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Western University.

Mayanthi L. Fernando is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Acknowledgments  ix
Prelude: Remembering the Songwriter: The Life and Legacies of Michel-Rolph Trouillot / Yarimar Bonilla  1
Overture: Trouillot Remixed / Yarimar Bonilla, Greg Beckett, and Mayanthi Fernando  14
Part I. Geography of Imagination
Interlude 1. Between the Cracks
1. Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness  53
2. The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean, and the World  85
3. The Vulgarity of Power  97
4. Good Day, Columbus: Silences, Power, and Public History (1492–1892)  103
Part II. The Otherwise Modern
Interlude 2. Ti Dife Boule: Radio Haiti Interview, 1977 / Translated and annotated by Laura Wagner  129
5. The Otherwise Modern: Caribbean Lessons from the Savage Slot  142
6. The Caribbean Region: An Open Frontier in Anthropological Theory  160
7. Culture on the Edges: Creolization in the Plantation Context  194
8. The Perspective of the World: Globalization Then and Now  215
Part III. The Fields in Which We Work
Interlude 3. Discipline and Perish  235
9. Making Sense: The Fields in Which We Work  239
10. Caribbean Peasantries and World Capitalism: An Approach to Micro-level Studies  276
11. The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization: Close Encounters of a Deceptive Kind  296
12. From Planters' Journals of Academia: The Haitian Revolution as Unthinkable History  319
Part IV. A New Duty Arises
Interlude 4. Theorizing a Global Perspective  341
13. Adieu, Culture: A New Duty Arises  347
14. The Presence in the Past  374
15. Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era  386
16. The Interrupted March to Democracy  406
Liner Notes: A Comprehensive Bibliography of Michel-Rolph Trouillot  421
Index  433
Credits  441