Charles Taylor Book Award Winner 2025: Kevin Olson, Subaltern Silence: A Postcolonial Genealogy

Winner: Kevin Olson (University of California, Irvine) for Subaltern Silence: A Postcolonial Genealogy (Columbia University Press, 2024)

Modernity looks different after reading Subaltern Silence. Traditionally imagined as a project of liberation—underpinned by the rise of the free press and the growth of the public sphere—Olson’s analysis upends this understanding. His meticulous and self-reflexive archival work reveals how liberation and publicity have long been conjoined to domination and silence. A new dialectic of enlightenment emerges: not only reason but speech and discursive presence may shirk their liberatory promise. 

Through a deeply interpretive engagement with colonial and post-colonial archives—especially those surrounding Haiti’s revolution and postcolonial trajectory—Olson investigates how subordination operates not only through literal voicelessness but through misrepresentation—a strategy that renders individuals unheard, devalued, and erased. The book invites readers and researchers to think about and study voices that are absent in the archives, challenging us to confront how history is told and who is left out. 

While firmly grounded in historical inquiry, Subaltern Silence resonates powerfully in the present. Its discussion of misrepresentation as a method of silencing remains urgent in light of ongoing struggles over voice, recognition, and power and is a valuable contribution to critical theory and political thought. 

Selection Committee:

Osman Balkan, University of Pennsylvania

Rebecca Ploof, Leiden University

Jessica Soedirgo, University of Amsterdam