Comment: This reminds me of a class I took on the French Revolution. In part of the class we discussed the Haitian Revolution and the lack of documentation we have from them. This comment on silence and stutters reminds me of my professor showing us how historians were able to piece together certain connections between rebelling groups and other aspects of the Haitian Revolution even with an immense lack of documentation.

Question: How is the average historian supposed to "maintain enough watchful lucidity to safeguard against," what she calls the "confining reflection[s]," which "narrow and suffocat[e] paths (of interpretation)," if though she says this phenomenon is "inevitable. . . and often invisible to the historian?" I guess I don't fully understand this passage. She makes it sound as though historians, and people generally, narrow the possible their possible interpretations regardless of the document and that this cannot be helped. However, somehow, we're supposed to be able to "maintain watchful lucidity," even though this occurrence is "invisible," and "inevitable."