Wow.

I always really love when poems repeat a specific phrase, in particular italicized phrases. It's very emotive and moving, and evokes a strong vocality to the work, especially when it is as salient and argumentative as this one. It also creates a subtle, final departure from the cadence and pattern of the preceding stanzas and descriptions.

Spice and whiteness is something I've heard a lot about in informal discourse (i.e. on social media, through memes) for many years. Given the history of spice and its proximity (or lack of proximity) to whiteness, I think it could be interesting to delve into the socio-politics of food and how its consumption/cultural modification opens up new enclaves for political transaction, conflict, and the idea of cultural/ethnic property.

This insertion of numerical statistics alongside such a rich pastoral depiction of the Encantadas presents a different knowledge framework. What is being excluded and why?

I'm interested in the aesthetic implications of "inhabitableness"; descriptors like "malignly crumbled" and "ruddiness into ashes" evoke the idea of something fragile and irretrievable. I recently studied the Old English poem 'The Ruin' from the Exeter Book, which suggested that 'ruins', when textually argued and depicted, present a certain notion of futurity and temporality that harbors a tonal inflection from the narrator/writer/author. These details, in my opinion, help textually build up to a vantage point that the reader can consider in their conceptualization of such a place. I have yet to find these denotations, but hope to do so once I finish reading the text.

Amongst all the primary texts we have studied in this course, this is perhaps the most emotive introduction to a setting/place I have read (combined with the introductory poem). It's captivating to say the least, and has my attention.

I need to unpack this.

I have often encountered this component in abolitionist literature: the idea of Christianization and being saved. This reminds me of Frederick Douglass's writings about the perceived dangers of literacy amongst enslaved people. Because literacy opens up an arena of agency, the contextualizing force of Christianized reading becomes not only oppressive, but also totalizing and erasive.

This sentiment reminds me of a key issue of cognitive dissonance underlying Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, in that someone could at once actively enslave people and be kind to them. What are the ramifications of these enclaves of "kindness"? What psychological and sociological complexes are constructed through this narrative of well-meaning enslavement? In a space where inaction can cohabit with feelings of remorse and distress, new complications arise.

Very provocative phrase.

Again, there is this implication that nature is a reflector of human proceedings, and perhaps more critically, indicators of date. The "hundreds of raven" here are arguably quite prescriptive.

I'm also interested in the literary presence and ties between masculinity (especially that experienced, internalized, pondered, and grappled difficultly by young men) and weapons (i.e. "instruments"). In another text in my other class, a young teenage woman Yde who is escaping her father's incestuous predatory advances, successfully transcends the gender and social artifice of masculinity by simply acquiring prowess of "instruments of war", like the slings here. Weapons are a potent symbol, and one I hope to continue tracing to see if any new realizations about masculinity and its physicality.

In another class I'm taking related to medieval literature studies, the theme of nature and purity comes up quite frequently. I'm interested in the connections I see between a belief in holiness and creationism and the colonialism and sullying of land that occurs when they are "discovered". There is this notion of property; who does this land belong to? Is it a shared space between God and the colonizers? What kind of ascendance and sacredness exists in this "peaceful and slumbering scenery"?

I'm intrigued also by the idea of emptiness; there is this subtle descriptive rhetoric that adornment is impending, and something belonging to a natural progression involving this project of "their Almighty Creator".

Additionally, I appreciated the scenic descriptors here ("long and shadowed vistas of the trees", "peaceful and slumbering"). It is vivid and evocative, which makes the underlying intonations and implications more potent.

There exists an acute awareness of the fact that names (or prefixes) hold a capacity for the transference of knowledge, ancestry, history, and Indigenous existence, and are thus ultimately powerful. They threaten and transgress the compartmentalizing borders of racial/ethnic identities that colonialist frameworks create and restrict.

This naturalization of indigeneity comes up again here (and so does the savage V.S. civilized dichotomy).

As we discussed earlier in class today (Wed, March 2nd), there exists this transposition of religious imagery onto the plane of "discovery" and property. Phrasings like "kept in reserve by the Deity", "had just risen" suggest a kind of instantaneous transformation and right to land. It's not surprising how the element of conquest is left out; indigeneity is erased.

I still have more thought-work to do with this passage, but these are some preliminary thoughts.

This ties back to earlier discussions we were having about firstness (e.g. "in the first Puritan", "the first man"), and how that comprises a large part of settler colonial pride and justification of value.

This idea of the "destiny" of a country also solicits further consideration of what the conventionally forged/predicted paths of history/sociopolitical fate are. As I keep reading, I hope to make further sense of the word choice "destiny of America".

The assimilating or "re-educating" model he's postulating is intriguing because it doesn't incorporate the literal or actual proactive motions of education/"letters", but instead posits a kind of divine, instant transformation. Of course, this is religious imagery, but it also points to the instancy and urgency with which American people and "explorers" want BIPOC communities to adjust to their spiritual and theological conceptions.

It's worthwhile, also, to examine these notions of divinity and enlightenment and how they intrusively structuralize an imperial religious history.

Again!

Yup (re: my previous annotation), it's the "savage" versus "civil" dichotomy again.

I'm interested in the implicative politics of the word "civil", especially considering the "civil" v.s. "barbaric" dichotomy that's often attributed to European versus Native societies and communities. What constitutes civility, in his eyes? I'm sure this word will turn up again throughout our course readings, so I will continue to contemplate how the usage of this word develops and traverses different colonial knowledge frameworks.

These questions are actually surprisingly self-aware; they're tangentially touching upon the practice of colonization and intrusion/exploitation (historically "coercive or violent means", "real benefit"); although it would be great if they were extended a bit..

I think the analogy of the world and nature as an "apartment of the boundless palace of the sovereign Creator" is interesting, particularly because it materializes and conceptualizes the imperial/colonial view of the world (and everything in it, as he posits shortly after this) as not only property, but also as an aesthetic object. "Beautiful and pleasing", "free to the inspection and enjoyment" extend upon this. "... all of his creatures" is also very evocative of an idea of exclusion/inclusion of who can access these proprietary rights (not literally, but figuratively).

The repeated quoting of scripture in this text positions it as a moral signifier/guide, which makes me think: how do scriptures help make sense of a world amidst landscapes of trauma and affliction? What frameworks of thinking do they present?

I have some inkling thoughts about the authorial intentions underlying this opening, but I still remain mildly confused (I'm not currently familiar with the intersection of religion and colonialism, but hope to be as I read). It does certainly seem to me, though, that this is a literary calibration of sorts, and arguably appealing to a specifically targeted religious readership.

Reading so many of these religious interjections is making me think back to how God is portrayed in literature and accounts of life/trauma/violence during the colonial era, and throughout the historical trajectory of slavery. A book I'm thinking back to is Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and how it depicts God textually as a coping/survival mechanism for trauma. It's interesting to comparatively examine this element of God both from the perspective of subjugated/enslaved/oppressed people and that of colonizers.

The colonial idea and language of "barbarity" and its application to BIPOC is something that simultaneously disgusts and intrigues me. I'm wondering if this commodifying animalization of BIPOC comes from an anxiety to further distance people from their humanity in order to maintain colonial/proprietary dominance.

It's challenging to come to terms with the fact that even at the disposal of tools like critical fabulation, the limitations (caused by archival violence) still persist. Sometimes, you just can't know.

I could see this pulsing through the heart of Dr. Marisa Fuentes's project.

This is the exact academic/archival phenomenon Dr. Marisa Fuentes articulates in Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive, that "the issue of “re-dress” is inescapable in writing histories of black life as the legacies of racism, racialized sexism, and poverty continue to haunt our present."

This quote was really moving and striking to read. It made me think of a concept I learned about in a previous class, specifically that there is a "specter" of Black women in literature.

"It has a great solvent power; and helps the solution of fat, oily, and incongruous foods and mixtures... For this reason, sugar is much used in foreign cookery, and so much introduced at the tables of the luxurious..."

Note the contrast between foodstuff that need labor and external resources to be refined/manipulated (e.g. fat, incongruous foods and mixtures) versus that which has been processed/altered by sugar; note how the latter is the material that upwardly transcends and serves "tables" of higher wealth.

Ironic

I'm interested in how both Moseley and Sloane heed who/what is and isn't a credible "writing authority" quite closely, and insert these thoughts in their texts.

I may be amplifying a small detail here, but the "by many subsequent writers" portion strikes me because it implies and inscribes an importance to to cross-validating within a scientific/writing community. This is a valid concern, even today in scientific journals, but it is rarely enunciated explicitly; there is no need for this sentence, is what I'm saying. Thus, this meta critique is reflective of 1) Moseley's own assumed importance of his own writing authority, and 2) his unawareness of the relativity of his own standing as a writer.

Per my last annotation (and this may be repetitive), this is another example of how subtle details in treatises, documentation, and primary 'accounts' use tools like language (i.e. making information available only in English) to further marginalize/erase alternate narratives.

It's a worthwhile exercise to hone in on the specific language used here in Moseley's transition to the "confused" Arabian accounts. Subtle details like "We must" and "being the next authorities in succession" imply, as do many scholars who center Western and Eurocentric knowledge systems, a certain hierarchy that already 1) marginalizes, 2) dismisses, and 3) 'Others' another viewpoint.

It's a worthwhile exercise to hone in on the specific language used here in Moseley's transition to the "confused" Arabian accounts. Subtle details like "We must" and "being the next authorities in succession" imply, as do many scholars who center Western and Eurocentric knowledge systems, a certain hierarchy that already 1) marginalizes, 2) dismisses, and 3) 'Others' another viewpoint.

The term "furnish" struck me because it suggests that the quality of being unfurnished (which is intrinsically colonial) is equal to an invitation for external invasion, which it does and should not.

Even from my amateur perspective, I can see how this quote advocates for the idea that there is a certain systematic procedure to the learning, documentation, and production of history. It feels strange to reference my own past experiences with cataloguing, citations, and lists (in the context of modern literary research), and to know that it was seamlessly applied in this heavy colonial context is strange, to say the least.

I’m also interested in the use of pronouns “him”, despite there being no clear subject. This doesn’t render as surprising, but I still can’t help but hope that the degree of erasure wasn’t too severe when it came to female scholars and writers of history at the time. This is why pronouns have always been both telling and important, especially when they yield implications for the perceptions of gender roles at the time (considering that this is studied as a key primary reading, ages later).

This continues our week 2 seminar discussion about firstness and colonial “Inclinations”, to put it in Sloane’s words. By mentioning (with a tone of amusement and curiosity) this common preoccupation with firstness, Sloane hints at why punctuality would be important to a colonizer looking to claim new territory. To be able to preserve and present something original to someone ‘worthy’ (note his language about who is “properest” to consult with), whether it be a monarch, an eager public eye, or another group, is to be able to credibly establish a footprint and acquire more funding and accolades. It’s interesting how the practice of colonial insurance (i.e. making sure ‘discoveries’ are heralded and properly documented) is applied to natural conquest in this text. This may be a stretch, but I think this implies that plants and people are similarly victimizable in the exercise of commodification.

From the outset, the capitalization of “Things”, “Countries”, “Fields”, “Mind” and “Uses” articulate a linguistic space of colonialism, where the exercise of relocating and privately cultivating these “wild” plants inevitably turns public, natural property into private property---the symbolic conquest of nature. When we consider the interlinking of “Countries” with “Uses”, as well as "Inclinations", we see how this colonial terminology can turn into not only a unified vocabulary to be consulted (and verified), but also a way to think about the study of conquest (which is self-perpetuating and thus arguably more dangerous).

This capitalization is consistent throughout the text, which parallels the nature of conquest: it is consistent, systematic, and traceable. Capitalization, which signals a certain loudness, demonstrates Sloane’s wish for the reader to participate in the habit of thinking using these terms (insidious)!

I wonder; what additional formal techniques exist in Sloane's repertoire?