It's very confusing how Elizabeth seems to love the slaves dearly and truly but still uses such violent words, probably because all she's know is a system where she dominates slaves in all ways "chicken" is dehumanizing, refers to animals who have now become commodities for their meat and the eggs they produce, and also highlights the way this relationship of power depends on the bodily. The white masters use the bodies of the black slaves to perform their commands and also to punish them

shrouding/shrouds, reminiscent of the shroud which covers a dead person -being sold = the social death of a slave? but also the more serious threat of physical death which can come from the unknown future owner, who can potentially be much more violent than the previous owners

it looks like her learning has been so influenced by white concepts (which makes sense because she could only learn from books written by white people) that she also associates blackness in general with the evil, or at least negative things (her separation from her family); the association can be found in European as early as in the Middle Ages

She really had no idea of the violence inflicted on her with those words... And the girl leads her by the hand, which also shows the relationship of power between the two

Again about the symbolic marriage between Natty and Chingachgook: impression that Uncas was his own son, namely with this moment; this pause would be appropriate for a close relative

key word: "as if". Comparing this to other novels by Cooper I am working on, I can see that in this novel, too, Cooper recreates a "wilderness" which not only no longer exists in the present of the narration, but which also has never existed as is -it was only perceived as such. This "wilderness" has always been inhabited and adapted by Indians.

For the Indians, link between land, the dead and the living -one of the reasons which make the displacement of natives all the more tragic

Kind of "wedding" in death? But also reminiscent of the symbolic marriage between Hawkeye and Chingachgook: Natty recognizes the existence of "gifts", which he thinks are related to race (however, at the end of the Deerslayer, he figures out they are cultural, and not innate). Natty is a Christian, which is why he would never scalp his enemies, but, in his opinion, Chingachgook should not be blamed for scalping people, because it is just how things are for the Indians. He accepts this difference and it does not prevent the two of them from being close. It seems that it is this kind of union the Delaware wish for Uncas and Cora in death.

Nature and landscapes in Cooper's novels bear the mark of future destruction -that of nature but also of man, especially Indians

Something that she looks at like a contradiction: an Indian who killed white men in battle is so kind to her as to give her food and water without even knowing her. Soldiers and warriors have to kill; they have no choice, and this man was fighting for the freedom of his people. Therefore, his killing an English man in battle does not mean that he cannot have a good heart.

These different accounts about Praying Indians seem to all aim to show them as cruel; the idea would probably be that a Praying Indian is still an Indian, and, as a result, must be wicked and violent

Classic justification of colonization: the idea that natural resources go to waste if Europeans do not exploit them

Praising God for keeping her safe while there was no "Christian soul" near her, while her being able to return to her husband unharmed was actually only made possible by the fact that the Indians are not as evil as she describes them...

Shows that "Praying Indians" were not necessarily submitted to the English "Praying Indian" was in italics in the original text, which could mean that she does not think their religious practices do not make them worthy of being called "Praying Indians" (if they had been recognized as Christians, they would have been called Christian Indians), or maybe just that it was the way a certain category of people called them

The "now" is interesting; did this war change her opinion on Indians? Or is it that she feels that she has to describe them as demons because it is what is expected from her now that everyone considers the Indians to be their enemies?

traditional opposition Indian vs English, wilderness vs town/settlement

Probably refers to the association between captivity and adoption in Indigenous cultures; she now belongs to this Indian tribe and should forget about English people

excusing her "weakness"? But she is a woman in a Puritan world, she is probably automatically seen as weaker than men anyway

the "stripped naked" comment seems to be recurring when she describes scenes of Indian attacks; it probably seems inhuman to her, hence the following association between the Indians and dogs

throughout the text, idea that God listens to their prayers

Interesting that she should mention such a military/strategic detail, which you would expect in a more detached account of the events

The description of the attack highlights how sudden and unexpected it was, focusing on sensory perception before explicitely saying what was going on. Also, "smoke ascending to heaven" foreshadows the death of people burned to death in their houses, as it is reminiscent of the way souls are said to ascent to heaven

the narrative of black enslaved women is one of gaps and silences. it is hidden within white men's accounts of black women it is also corporeal, insofar as it is expressed through the marks inflicted on the body, but also by sounds (screams, songs)

the shared experience of violence and struggle for freedom bridges the gap between past and present

murder has become the norm and, as such, is not worthy of being spoken about. by associating her life with murder only, her experience has been silenced; she only exists in her death, which is deemed insignificant

cf Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? The subaltern is not given space to speak; instead, the oppressor speaks for them The lack of a narrative from enslaved black women echoes the impossibility for other minorities to speak up, and especially women, for whom gender adds a layer of oppression

The silences and the inarticulate noises are themselves significant and part of the story, which is why they should not be erased but preserved as they are

Trying to recreate the victim's point of view from the perpetrator's/power-wielding category's account This subversion of the narrative itself gives the slaves their subjectivity back

so many historical documents mentioning slavery come from a place of power -white men, who not only did not go through slavery but also most often benefited from slavery... if they did not directly make economic profits from it, they at least benefited from the social hierarchy associated with it

Paradoxically, straying away from historical accuracy may be the best way to honor the forgotten and tell these untold stories

When you don't have access to testimonies from the victims themselves, your historical research may transform into fiction Boundaries set by the historical discipline prevented Hartman from going further in her hypotheses

The accounts provided by white men confine women to their bodies, whether it be a commodity that can be sold or an object of sexual desire and violence; how do we know what exists beyond the brutalized body?

It reminds me of last week's Sharpe reading about these slaves still existing in the present, namely as atoms at the bottom of the ocean. Here, it is unfortunately the experience of violence which bridges the gap between the past and the present, and informs present struggles for freedom

the ability to make yourself remembered without words -to tell a story without words

an example of how to look through the lines of the text and reveal the untold

only her "exchange value" defines her in the records as the name of the ship she was on is the only detail about her which we know of before John Josellyn's account

Her existence can only be talked about through the voice of a white man, as only white men have the power to speak and be heard

The existence of white men is being recorded, unlike that of black enslaved women

the only narrative available to us lies in the body -bodies marked by suffering and which speak to us only though their suffering... hence the difficulty of restoring the rest of the story

the Dutch verb zorgen seems to mean the same thing as the German für etwas sorgen (to take care of something but also to provide something), establishing a close relationship between the ship and its "human cargo" on the one hand and trade and economic needs on the other

the passive "to be worked" shows that rather than producing and transforming something, they are the ones who are being transformed, growing weaker and weaker until they die

no matter how much their story is silenced, their will always be scientific evidence of their suffering also, nature remembers them, even if men forget

By making these slaves physically present in the text, as they become its bones, the poet honors their memory and makes them present in the reader's mind as well

Moving from the particular to the universal allows Turner to tell the untold stories of many slaves

black is an excess insofar as it is always too much for the colonizer and also because it is too much to be translated into words (the two are linked)

Very interesting use of the asterisk; a space which contains all untold stories of black transformations and is a way to tell these stories without words The power of symbols like this asterisk, or less metaphorically, like marks on the body, allows for doing away with the constraints of a language which is often imposed by the colonizer

Looks like Africa would be the place where evil originates; white men would have to fight this evil by dominating black men to prevent them from hurting them

the use of the word "torture" is interesting... considering what black slaves had to endure...

associations between black magic and blackness; between the evil and blackness (cf all the representations of the devil being black that date back from the middle ages)

on the one hand, the "hideous" is attributed to an unnatural change in color, a shade of white which does not seem to belong to the human and the living; on the other, to Moseley, there may be something "hideous" in a black person becoming white, like a transgression of the "natural" hierarchy which, he believes, originates from color

actually abandoning them so that profits are not diminished

is he implying that black people would be inherently inferior to white people?

Dependence on slave labor; the sacrifice of the Africans is necessary for the market economy to thrive and for Europe to have access to these precious ressources

note that the work of these slaves is called "agriculture", which compares them to farmers and makes it look as though their work was human and not dehumanizing

hence the advantage of investing in sugar trade

maybe hinting that England is kind of lagging behind when it comes to the use and trade of this wonderful thing that is sugar and he's trying to persuade the English to catch up and make room for themselves in this economy

while he backed his first arguments in the text with the finds of Roman and Greek men of science, he makes this point without even giving one name of these "several physicians" or these "many people", who may as well not exist

the precision of these measurements may be associated with the seemingly scientific character of Moseley's text, but also to a concern with production and the quantity of resources that can be extracted from the sugar cane

Poking fun at Willis and Ray like that may be a rhetorical strategy to impose his point on the reader and thus convince them of the benefits of sugar, prompting them to buy them and indulge in market economy

It seems somewhat derogatory to call the Arabians a "tribe of copyists"; the word "tribe" implies a sort of circle that is not recognized as a nation in itself, as well as something primitive, not organized, not "civilized", while "copyists" hints that, according to Moseley, all the knowledge they have was copied from a higher authority, namely the Ancient Greeks and Romans

Mosley lays emphasis on the novelty of such a use of sugar, probably to appeal to the curiosity of his readers and make them interested in sugar

The cultural differences between whites and natives are shown to be but a pretext for economic activities, suggesting that market economy is the driving force behind slavery and the submission of peoples -not racism

He makes sure to make the difference between what is eaten by the white planters, indigenous people and black slaves, highlighting the differences mostly between the whites and the others, for the slaves and the indigenous people seem to eat similar things

This passage shows well the difference between planters, who are preoccupied with "exchange value", that is what value an item has in the market, and "use value", which answers basic needs like feeding yourself, and which is traditionally the sole concerns of indigenous peoples as well as of the slaves who were brought to the Americas

Does the fact that it has a different name in different languages mean that it was coveted by various countries?

It seems that Sloane tries to advertise his work by appealing to European desire for exoticism; the American continent appears to be not only a place where profit is made, but also the place where all fantasies can come true

This statement is either not accurate ("plantations" and their link to market economy and private property are the exact opposite of Indian values) or does not tell the whole story; the only reason for Indians to give up some of their core values to participate in the plantation economy would be not having the choice; their traditional way of life was probably threatened by attacks and encroachments on their lands, which prompted them to conform, hoping it would prove the idea that the land goes to waste in Indian hands wrong so that they could keep their land

Knowledge in the European world is associated with measuring and classifying, which means the scientist dominates nature from his point of view; by measuring and recording the existence of these different specimens in his book, Sloane makes them his. However, he points out the failure of this approach, confronted to the utmost diversity of nature -namely the vast variety of size and color. This seems to indicate that standard European ways to carry research -or just to interact with nature- are not fit for such a different milieu