#plantation capitalism

[thozhar]

Indian tea production has been in severe crisis since the mid nineties largely due to neo-liberal structural adjustments in the Indian economy. The size of the tea industry, which is second only to China and accounts for 25 percent of global tea production, has made this a huge blow to the country’s agrarian economy. The industry employs 1.26 million people on tea plantations and two million additional people indirectly. As such, the economic crisis has had an enormous impact on the lives of local residents. In Kerala where I have been conducting research, there have been eight cases of suicide and twelve deaths due to starvation on tea plantations since 2001. Along with utter poverty and famine, tea plantation workers have faced increasingly unhygienic work environments, shattered social life/community relations, and withdrawal of the welfare measures previously enjoyed. The crisis punctured the isolated environments of the plantations and precipitated neoliberal reforms that closed down production in many areas either partially or completely. While many families remained on the plantations, large numbers of workers who had lived there for more than five generations were now compelled to seek work outside. Some went with their families to either their ancestral villages or regional industrial townships such as Coimbatore and Tirupur in Tamil Nadu. These plantation workers have now joined the ranks of the massive Dalit workforce powering India’s unorganised and informal sectors. In joining that pool of workers, Tamil Dalit labourers are exposed to aspects of a caste-ridden society from which they had previously been shielded. The situation of Saraswathi, a female retired worker in her early sixties, illustrates the dilemma and struggles of the workers who moved out the plantations.

— The hidden injuries of caste: south Indian tea workers and economic crisis by Jayaseelan Raj

[blueiight]

[sebastian] melmoth the wanderer v abramelin the mage

[nando161mando]

[cathkaesque]

The local population in countries that export bananas typically eat different varieties grown primarily by small farmers. The ones for the Americans and the Europeans, Cavendish variety bananas, are grown in huge, monoculture plantations that are susceptible to disease. The banana industry consumes more agrichemicals than any other in the world, asides from cotton. Most plantations will spend more on pesticides than on wages. Pesticides are sprayed by plane, 85% of which does not land on the bananas and instead lands on the homes of workers in the surrounding area and seeps into the groundwater. The results are cancers, stillbirths, and dead rivers.

The supermarkets dominate the banana trade and force the price of bananas down. Plantations resolve this issue by intensifying and degrading working conditions. Banana workers will work for up to 14 hours a day in tropical heat, without overtime pay, for 6 days a week. Their wages will not cover their cost of housing, food, and education for their children. On most plantations independent trade unions are, of course, suppressed. Contracts are insecure, or workers are hired through intermediaries, and troublemakers are not invited back.

Who benefits most from this arrangement? The export value of bananas is worth $8bn - the retail value of these bananas is worth $25bn. Here's a breakdown of who gets what from the sale of banana in the EU.

On average, the banana workers get between 5 and 9% of the total value, while the retailers capture between 36 to 43% of the value. So if you got a bunch of bananas at Tesco (the majority of UK bananas come from Costa Rica) for 95p, 6.65p would go to the banana workers, and 38p would go to Tesco.

Furthermore, when it comes to calculating a country's GDP (the total sum of the value of economic activity going on in a country, which is used to measure how rich or poor a country is, how fast its economy is 'growing' and therefore how valuable their currency is on the world market, how valuable its government bonds, its claim on resources internationally…etc), the worker wages, production, export numbers count towards the country producing the banana, while retail, ripening, tariffs, and shipping & import will count towards the importing country. A country like Costa Rica will participate has to participate in this arrangement as it needs ‘hard’ (i.e. Western) currencies in order to import essential commodities on the world market.

So for the example above of a bunch of Costa Rican bananas sold in a UK supermarket, 20.7p will be added to Costa Rica’s GDP while 74.3p will be added to the UK’s GDP. Therefore, the consumption of a banana in the UK will add more to the UK’s wealth than growing it will to Costa Rica’s. The same holds for Bangladeshi t-shirts, iPhones assembled in China, chocolate made with cocoa from Ghana…it’s the heart of how the capitalism of the ‘developed’ economy functions. Never ending consumption to fuel the appearance of wealth, fuelled by the exploitation of both land and people in the global south.

[wonderlandwalker]

Remember | Finnick Odair x Reader

THG Masterlist / Taglist / Inbox

Summary: The capitol has taken you from him, but he won't let them keep you. You can find pt. 2 here!

Content Warnings/Tags: Violence, bullet wounds, major character injury, blood, needles, angst, fluff, no use of y/n

Word Count: 4.0k

Requested by Anon: omg I love your writing and I have an unhealthy addiction to reading angst so could you please write something about the reader being with peeta and Johanna when they where taken by the capital and her being with finnick and recovering while she’s in district 13? 🫶🫶

A/N: The way I smiled when I saw this request I swear. This one has been in the works for a little while and I thought it fit perfectly. It is angst you ask for and it is angst you shall get. I'm considering writing a part two but I'm not sure how to yet. My bad habit of not proofreading happened again and with this one especially it was way too long so if I made any major errors pls do let me know.

The Capitol.

You are currently in the Capitol.

At least that’s where you think you are. You remember being in the arena, you remember running towards the general direction you last saw Finnick, remembering the marks you had gone by in case you had to take a different route. You remember seeing Finnick's face through the plantation, you’d be able to recall those features anywhere. You remember something hitting you from behind and falling to the ground, too caught up in catching up with him to check your surroundings. You remember crying out in pain, hoping he’d hear you. But the next thing you remember is the vision of him slowly going out of focus and losing consciousness not long after. 

At least that's what you think happened.

At least you can still remember, that’s worth something right? You remember your past, and you remember the reaping that led to the arena. The flood of relief that went over you as you finally found your way back to him. You don’t know what happened to Finnick, he was there too after all, but you had needed to split up early. Maybe he had been caught off guard too. Maybe he escaped. Maybe they never even found him. Maybe with him being the idiot he could be, he was probably already on his way here, looking for you. Just like you would have done for him, and he would have called you an idiot then too.

You would get out of here one way or another, that much you knew, but you needed to remember more, you needed to remember the last look on his face, you hadn't had much time to take it in, but you remembered the furrow of his eyebrows, the same expression he always had when he was trying to concentrate, you needed to remember that.

You knew that once you did get out of here, Finnick would be furious, telling you that you had been reckless, that you shouldn't have let your guard down, shortly after telling you how worried he had been. And it would feel like coming home.

Your mind becomes hazier, and it is harder to remember. You feel your head throbbing, and you move your hand towards it until you feel it can move no further. You open your eyes slowly, trying to adjust to the bright light that covers the room. You can't see much, can't move your head much.

You remember the rendezvous point you had talked about. You remember the quick “don't get yourself in trouble” and the kiss he gave you right before you parted ways.

You remember the layers of plants and trees you moved through, seeing some of them cut down, letting you know someone else had been there

But you know there is more, more that you missed. The stomped-out ashes that you ran past, you know you should have paid closer attention. But you can’t remember

You need to remember what happened. How you got here. Who got you here. If you really are in the capitol. But your mind doesn't want to cooperate anymore. The room is getting darker and darker, even though the lamp above your head is still dutifully buzzing

You wake up, you still remember where you are, or at least where you think you are. You still remember yesterday, was it yesterday? Why couldn't they just hang a clock in here? 

You look up, and you see a device set up, not too far from where you're lying down. You try to get a better look but the light above your head is too blinding to see anything else in the room. You don’t fully understand it until a man walks into the room with a video camera in his hand and an expression on his face that seems just a tad too happy. 

The camera starts blinking a red light, signalling you that it has started recording. The man has a sort of laser that he presses into your lower stomach, it doesn't breach your skin but it hurts like it does. It takes all your energy not to show him the satisfaction of it.

“Come on now darling, work with me a little.” He says after a while, changing the setting on the laser. The last bit of your energy is gone, and you can't keep the screaming from escaping any longer. It echoes off the white walls around you and when you hear yourself, you barely even recognize it. He seems satisfied with the result and finally puts the laser down. You look down but don't see any burn marks or indication of what has just happened.

He comes closer and you can see he is holding a sort of crowbar, but you're not sure why. You remember how you always left one outside your window in the districts, in case the wind had shut it and you needed to sneak back in. You remember Finnick finding out, giving you a serious, disappointed look, but not telling you to stop.

Before you can think of anything else, the bar hits you with full force, right above the spot he was previously focused on. You didn't expect it, and it knocks the little breath you had left out of your lungs. He hits again, not in the same spot, but close, he is very clearly aiming for your ribs. The switching between high-tech and old-school weapons has you puzzled, but you can't deny the result either of them has.

After a while, he stops, and with the added difficulty and pain that now comes with breathing, you are more than certain he just bruised a few of your ribs.

He walks back, taking the camera in his hands. He aims it at your face and you close your eyes to try and collect yourself as much as your current state allows. Your hair is a tangled mess and you are rather certain there is blood smushed over your face from the cuts you got in the arena. 

“Smile for the camera sweetheart.” He asks, even though it sounds more like an order than a request. You open your eyes to look at him. He is so close, and you want to drive your thumbs so far into his eye sockets you can feel the front lobe of his brain, if he even has one. But you can't do anything, no matter how much you want to fight, you are powerless here. You close your eyes again, trying to block everything out and remember.

You remember District Four, the way the light summer breeze would always carry the smell of the beach to your house, no matter how hard you had it, it always livened you up. You remember the first time Finnick tried to teach you how to surf, being so gentle with you no matter how many times you fell off it, always there to catch you again. You remember your last birthday, well, the day after, but you couldn't even complain about that. He had picked you up from your place and brought you to one of the lakes with him. He told you the story of one of his birthdays when he was younger, along with all the embarrassing details, but of course, it only endeared him further to you. You told him about the presents you got and all the people who came to wish you a happy birthday. You told him everything you could remember. You remember last seeing his face, maybe it was the last time you will have ever seen it. No. No, you remember it, but you’ll see it again, you have to.

“I’ll make sure your loverboy gets to see this, wherever he is, wouldn't want him to miss out on the fun.” 

Finn. Finnick. You remember Finnick. You remember when you returned from your first games. The black eye and broken arm you came home with. You remember how he lost it when they didn't immediately treat you for it. He would now either throw a fit over it for everyone to see or be so stoic in his thoughts even Johanna would get a little concerned.

You see the man standing up, walking to the table, and picking up something new. A syringe, it's a syringe. He walks over and pushes it into your upper arm, and before you know it, your vision turns black again.

You remember waking up to gunshots, and you panic. But after a few seconds, you figure out they’re not near you. There is, however, someone in the room with you, it's the same man again. He looks a little panicked, but you can’t figure out why just yet. The gunshots are becoming louder, and closer, and he seems more startled now. His arms drop to his sides from what he was doing and his eyes widen. Screams are echoing and you can hear footsteps.

You remember that pattern of paddling feet, and you recognize the second pair of steps too, but you can't remember much else.

The man gets closer to you, placing his hand over your mouth, pulling out a gun with his free hand and telling you to stay quiet. You never understood why people say that, it means he has something to lose, and you want to scream out, but your voice doesn't remember how to.

It's even closer now, right outside the door, and you can hear talking. You remember his voice. How he always asked you so sweetly how your day had been, the way he whispered sweet nothings in your ear as you fell asleep. 

You hear the door jiggle, and it makes you want to scream out for him, but your sore throat won't let you. For a moment you think that is it, you had your chance, and you let it go by. He’ll move along the hallway to the other doors and leave you here. But then you hear another gunshot, and they must have shot the lock, because right after you hear someone running into the door with an echoing thump as it breaks open. 

The man next to you had his gun pointed at the door, and he changes it to point at you instead. 

You were right, by the gods you had never been so thankful to have been right. Finnick walks in, and you can see the colour drain from his face as he does so. 

The man standing next to you is starting to get nervous, you can see the sweat starting to drip down his face. He must realize he has been matched, because there are more people by Finnicks side. But the man still has his gun pointed at you, and this isn't over just yet.

You can't keep your eyes open anymore, and when you close them, you remember. You remember your first kiss with Finnick, how nervous he had been at the time. He had been shaking a little and told you he was embarrassed by how much you got to him, but it only endeared him further to you.  He yells at the man to let go of the gun, he sounds nervous again.

But he doesn't let go, he decides to shoot. 

You hear the bullet leaving the gun, and for a single moment, you think it's over. The last thing you’ll ever see is Finnick, but he’s not himself. He’s upset, and even though you know he’s not upset with you, it still tugs at you. Except when you feel the bullet piercing through your skin, that's exactly what you realise. You can still feel it. He didn't shoot you right in the heart, he didn't shoot towards your head, he shot you in the abdomen. You’re not sure why, not sure why he didn't kill you, but you will never know, because not even a second passes as you hear a second gunshot, and he falls to the floor.

You can't seem to remember how to open your eyes, but you can hear Finnick rushing over and right as he reaches you, you fall. You fall into his arms and the memory of it gives you hope. Something comes in contact with your stomach, and the agony of it makes you want to scream out. You can feel him lifting you, and the shift of your body makes the bullet move, making you want to scream again. And if you remembered how to, you would have.

You know he’s talking to someone, but it sounds more like buzzing to you. You can only make out certain parts of the conversation, something about needing to leave, something about infections, and something about an aircraft. 

You can hear him talking again, and this time it’s directed at you. There’s a strain in his voice, and it sounds like he’s crying. It makes you want to comfort him, but you don’t remember how to.

“Please darling, just open your eyes."

But you’re afraid, youre afraid that if you open them, everything will turn out to be nothing but a dream, and he won’t be here anymore. But even if this is a dream, you need to see him. Even if it will turn into a haunted memory, you need to see his eyes looking back at you. It takes you some effort, but you open your eyes, looking at him. You can see tears flooding his face, you can see his lips moving, silent pleas coming from them for you to stay awake. He’s telling you how good of a job you’re doing, he's telling you to hold on. He promises that he won’t let anything bad happen to you ever again and that he won’t let go of you anymore.

You remember how he cried when you were reaped for the 75th games, and how you had told him everything would be okay, how you had comforted him, but you don't have the energy to comfort him this time. You remember hearing his sobbing, his shaking voice when you close your eyes again, not being able to keep them open any longer, even if you wanted to.

You wake up again, and for a moment you think it had indeed all been a dream, that you were right back where you had started, But then you remember the bullet in your stomach. You look down and see a bandage over it, even though it’s already soaked in blood. They must have taken it out. 

You try and concentrate, and you can hear Finnick talking to someone. “Just tell me, I know it’s bad but I need to know.” “Finnick, it won’t make a difference.” The person he’s talking to sounds desperate, and you remember how stubborn he could be when it came to you. 

But you don’t remember more, because your head starts to feel light again and you give in to the feeling.

When you wake up again, you manage to open your eyes, and you can see someone sitting in a chair next to the bed you're in. He’s slumped over, his face half pressed into the mattress and half into your stomach, both of his hands are holding onto one of yours. It hurts a little, but you don't mind, because it reminds you, even when you look away, that he is still there. You remember the way he always softly snores, and the way he wiggles his nose when your hair falls over it.

You think you're connected to a monitor, because something is beeping in the same rhythm you can feel your heart beating, and it gives you a headache. So you close your eyes again, and once again, you give in to the feeling of sleep that looms over you.

Since you had been brought to District 13, he has barely left your side. He keeps putting cold washcloths on your forehead to try and break your fever. It won't help, and he knows it, but no one has the heart to stop him. 

You haven't shown a single sign of life since they had found you. It was unsettling, the silence that filled the room, none of your usual laughter and banter there to replace it. 

It’s only when Finnick's head shoots up that the others notice it as well. The steady beeping that has been imposing the silence in this room for weeks picking up its pace. The beating continues to go faster and faster, your body shaking up from the bed in almost the same rhythm. But right before anyone can do anything about it, it stops. It all seems to stop, you stop moving, and the monitor stops beating.

He starts giving you chest compressions, and someone rushes into the room holding a small bottle, they fill a syringe with the clear liquid and inject it into your arm. Within a few seconds, your heart starts beating again. But it’s only after a minute of the monitor showing him a steady heartrate that he stops his actions.

It’s dark in the room when Finnick wakes up, and if it wasn't for the soft light and the beeping of the monitor, he would've thought he was dreaming, but it seems the reality won’t let him escape. He struggles not to fall back asleep, and every few minutes he does, but every time he wakes up startled again, scared that you’ll be gone if he doesn't open his eyes every once in a while. It was easy to see the toll it had taken on him. His posture was slouched, his face less well-groomed than usual. But no one could blame him, because they could see the way he looked at you, as if you were the sun and your dimmed light turned his world dark. 

He knows the chance you can hear him is small, but he feels the urge to talk to you nonetheless. 

“I don't think I can hold this in any longer. I remember some studies that have shown people in comas do hear what's going on around them, but maybe it’s for the best that you don’t, because you would never say yes.”

He continues but he feels his voice choke up, and he runs a hand through your hair to calm himself down, his other hand still holding onto yours.

“We talked about it once, I still remember every single word you said. You came at me with all your logical reasons for why it would be a bad idea. But what you never understood is that when it comes to you, I'm not able to think rationally, because my love for you will overpower anything else.” He chuckles softly as he recalls the memory he’s about to tell you next.

“I remember when I opened up to you for the first time. I had always held things to myself, but you were so calm as I talked to you. I thought for sure I had screwed it up somehow then. Everyone always tells me now how happy you make me, and they're right. Ever since you came into my life there has not been a single moment when the thought of you did not bring me joy, even when we fought my memories of you could still somehow bring a smile to my face. 

I remember when they showed me the video, they hadn't wanted me to see it, but you know how stubborn I can be when it comes to you. I saw you, I saw the way in which they were hurting you. And I started yelling, ironically enough in that moment, you were the only one that could have calmed me down. I remember yelling at them, fighting with them not to wait any longer, that they couldn't let you wait any longer, they had to have me sedating until they came to a conclusion."

He reaches into the pocket of his trousers, taking a small ring. It was his mother's ring, he had found it a while back and had carried it with him ever since. He had thought of moments to give it to you, but every time there was one, every time he was about to ask you, something had happened, something had interrupted him. But there was no one interrupting him this time. “I have thought about asking you this every time I see you, and I can't hold it in any longer. So when you wake up, not if you wake up, because I know you will. I know you will wake up because you have to. So when you wake up, will you marry me.” A little part of him had thought you'd wake up, that you’d answer him. Even if you said no, it would still be better than what's happening right now, because he didn't care if you'd say no, if you’d say you weren't ready, because nothing could be worse than the silence that followed him. And so he slid the ring onto your finger delicately, as if you were to disappear if he wasn't careful. He put the ring on your hand because he knew that even if it wasn't today, and it wasn't tomorrow, someday you would marry him, and he wouldn't let you slip away.

At first, he thought he was imagining it, sleep deprivation and desperation playing a trick on his mind. But then he saw it again, in the beams of morning light he could see your hand moving, as if it was trying to grasp onto something, trying to pull you back into this world. It woke him up in an instant. But it was all followed so fast, the way your eyes slowly opened, squinting at the light. Before you had even awoken for a second, he moved from where he had been right beside you in order to hug you. And he was about to get lost in the thought of your moving lips, tears falling down his eyes, about to get lost in a kiss full of built-up pain and desperation when he noticed, something was wrong. Your eyebrows were knitted together and the corners of your mouth turned down just a little. He looked at your expression, your body language, something was wrong. You looked vulnerable, you looked like you wanted to protect yourself from someone.

It was only when he looked into your eyes that he truly understood something was very wrong.

Your eyes looked as if you were in pain, but it wasn't a look of any physical pain, it looked as if something was endangering you, but he couldn't understand what it was. He slowly moved so as not to startle you and asked you “Darling, what’s wrong” And at first you didn’t respond, but when he kept looking at you, expecting him to answer you, you started to speak. “Am I supposed to remember you?” 

He immediately flinched back at the statement, his shoulder sunk and his eyes dimmed. Someone told him it wasn't uncommon for brain injuries to cause short-term memory loss after a coma.

So slowly, and surely, he made it work. But it was crumbling him down every time you didn't remember the unconscious acts of affection, so foreign to you now. A quick touch on your arm as he walked towards you made you flinch slightly as if his hand had been on fire. The subtle smiles he gave you when entering a room were now met with you looking down. The way that even though you were physically here, you really weren't. 

He promised himself, he vowed to himself that he would make you remember. That no matter how long it took, he would wait for you. He would wait for you to remember, make you remember. Because he had very quickly learned that he couldn’t live without you anymore.

Part 2: Trying to Forget

[chrysanthemum-aria]

okay I reblogged this earlier with a few tags but I kinda wanna talk more about how these remind me of the silent man-made forests in the Philippines

They're called "silent forests" for a reason. For context, these are big-leaf mahogany trees, trees not native to the Philippines, and is highly invasive. Because of this, the complex, intertwined relationships between flora and faune that have evolved throughout the ages are nonexistent. Not a single chirp to be heard. Mahogany leaf litter also alters soil composition, choking out any trees and plants trying to grow too.

The fact that this was an attempt at reforestation adds salt to the wound, as this could have been an opportunity to reforest any of the hundreds of vulnerable and endangered native tree species in the Philippines. Im pretty sure this is kinda old news and that there Are recent reforestation projects for said native trees, but as someome who loves birds and nature in general, this one instance makes me real sad

sources I used for my big-leaf mahogany callout post:

monoculture forests are deeply unsettling in a way that is hard to explain to people who do not spend a lot of time looking at forests

[fatehbaz]

Indigenous genocide and removal from land and enslavement are prerequisites for power becoming operationalized in premodernity, a way in which subjects get (what Wynter names) “selected” or “dysselected” from geography and coded into colonial possession through dispossession. The color line of the colonized was not merely a consequence of these structures of colonial power or a marginal effect of those structures; it was/is a means to operationalize extraction (therefore race should be considered as foundational rather than as periphery to the production of those structures and of global space). Richard Eden, in the popular 1555 publication Decades of the New World, compares the people of the “New World” to a blank piece of “white paper” on which you can “paynte and wryte” whatever you wish. “The Preface to the Reader” describes the people of these lands as inanimate objects, blank slates [...]. [Basically, "Man" is white, while non-white people are reduced to an aspect of the landscape, a resource.] Wynter suggests that we [...] consider 1452 as the beginning of the New World, as African slaves are put to work on the first plantations on the Portuguese island of Madeira, initiating the “sugar-slave” complex - a massive replantation of ecologies and forced relocation of people [...]. Wynter argues that the invention of the figure of Man in 1492 as the Portuguese [and Spanish] travel to the Americas instigates at the same time “a refiguring of humanness” in the idea of race. This refiguring of slaves trafficked to gold mines is borne into the language of the inhuman [...].

---

The natal moment of the 1800 Industrial Revolution, [...] [apparently] locates Anthropocene origination in [...] the "new" metabolisms of technology and matter enabled by the combination of fossil fuels, new engines, and the world as market. [...] The racialization of epistemologies of life and nonlife is important to note here [...]. While [this industrialization] [...] undoubtedly transformed the atmosphere with [...] coal [in the nineteenth century], the creation of another kind of weather had already established its salient forms in the mine and on the plantation. Paying attention to the prehistory of capital and its bodily labor, both within coal cultures and on plantations that literally put “sugar in the bowl” (as Nina Simone sings) [...]. The new modes of material accumulation and production in the Industrial Revolution are relational to and dependent on their preproductive forms in slavery [...].

---

Catherine Hall’s project Legacies of British Slave-Ownership makes visible the complicity in terms of structures of slavery and industrialization that organized in advance the categories of dispossession that are already in play and historically constitute the terms of racialized encounter of the Anthropocene. In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners for their lost "property"] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain and its colonial enterprises and empire. As the project empirically demonstrates, these legacies of colonial slavery continue to shape contemporary Britain. A significant proportion of funds were invested in the railway system connecting London and Birmingham (home of cotton production and [...] manufacturing for plantations), Cambridge and Oxford, and Wales and the Midlands (for coal). Insurance companies flourished and investments were made in the Great Western Cotton Company, for example, and in cotton brokers, as well as in big colonial land companies in Canada (Canada Land Company) and Australia (Van Diemen’s Land Company) and a number of colonial brokers. Investments were made in the development of metal and mineralogical technologies [...].

The slave-sugar-coal nexus both substantially enriched Britain and made it possible for it to transition into a colonial industrialized power [...]. The slave trade [...] fashioned the economic conditions (and institutions, such as the insurance and finance industries) for industrialization. Slavery and industrialization were tied by the various afterlives of slavery in the form of indentured and carceral labor that continued to enrich new emergent industrial powers from both the Caribbean plantations and the antebellum South. Enslaved “free” African Americans predominately mined coal in the corporate use of black power or the new “industrial slavery,” [...].

---

The labor of the coffee - the carceral penance of the rock pile, “breaking rocks out here and keeping on the chain gang” (Nina Simone, Work Song, 1966), laying iron on the railroads - is the carceral future mobilized at plantation’s end (or the “nonevent” of emancipation). [...] [T]he racial circumscription of slavery predates and prepares the material ground for Europe and the Americas in terms of both nation and empire building - and continues to sustain it.

---

All text above by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019. At: e-flux dot com slash journal/97/252226/white-utopia-black-inferno-life-on-a-geologic-spike/ [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity and context. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[blueiight]

ldpdl, ethnicity, and the false monolith of blackness

there's this false tendency to think amc louis being made black is pandering, or a means of removing louis from his oh-so-detailed /sarcasm/ background in the books. i also find that people tend to not even understand what show louis's ethnic background is, despite rolin jones the showrunner and even the fictional louis both coalescing around this multigenerational explanation of the gens de couleur in new orleans, and how jim crow disempowered them.

I came around to his ethnicity a sort of interesting way which is through Lestat. [ … ] I was like lets give him a legitimate a third attempt at figuring how to be with somebody for the rest of his life and how to not repeat your mistakes. [ … ] I started from there so it had to be someone with some money cause he had to be with his own folks and I thought he wanted someone who could fight back and who could be a challenge and would force him to restrain himself. And nobody at AMC was interested in 7 seasons of the regretful plantation owner, so we made Louis come from a lineage that did have a plantation and did own slaves.

rolin jones in the s1 post-finale episode of the podcast names how he came to this understanding of louis's character. lestat, after failing to make a bride of his mother, and a concubine of nicki, was seeking for someone of a similar background, or the most approximate equivalent. he would not have been interested in louis if louis was an anglophone baptist black man descended from upper-south arrivals into new orleans, nor would he have been interested in louis if louis was a poor black creole honestly s1 does not give a good reading of claudia's ethnic bg in new orleans, but since she cannot understand french, we can presume shes either a poor creole removed from her cultural background with her vampiric adoption narrative in mind, or was also of an anglophone baptist black background like claudia was. louis coming from this fallen sort of gentry, the free gens de couleur, similar to that of the tvl lestat who came from this barren aristocracy dating back to the crusades, was key to lestat's long-term goals with louis.

Capital accrued from plantations of sugar and the blood of men who looked like my great grandfather but did not have his standing. But then decades of Jim Crow and the electrified light of a new century had vanquished any idea of a free man of color. - AMC IWTV 1x01

louis was of the first generations of the gens de couleur to be born, raised into, and face the institutional and personal ramifications of being viewed as black in america. this fuels much of the character's rage as he moves through storyville, trying to continue the similar modality of exploitation to the contrary of pretty baby with brooke shields, majority of the brothel circuit was statistically black girls + women being sexually pawned off to white men but ultimately failing to do so bc of the anglophone white american class that now rules over him. [tom anderson, alderman fenwick, finn o’shea starting out as louis’s subordinate then ending w/ him entering whiteness by having a sporting house throwing torches at louis’s brothel in s1e3]

By 1850, the free population of color, beset by the hostility of white supremacy, was economically diminished and residentially segregated. The Americanization of Louisiana, and in particular New Orleans, was completed before the state became the sixth to secede from the Union in 1861 in the struggle over the perpetuation of slavery. [link] The Democratic redeemers who came to power in 1877 lost no time in redefining the Negro's "place" in Louisiana life. They immediately restored the color line in the New Orleans public schools and offered silent support to de facto segregation practices in places of public accommodation. With the assistance of two landmark decisions by the United States Supreme Court, the redeemers soon dismantled the egalitarian legal apparatus put together piece by piece under the Radicals. Finally in 1890 they began to write their "final solution" into Louisiana law with a series of "separate but equal" statutes. Soon New Orleans Negroes were again segregated in virtually every public pursuit. [link]

[mesetacadre]

are these groups part of the proletariat?

farmers

priests/nuns

retail salesmen

strippers

people who invest in stock

taco truck owner

actors and singers

Priests, salesmen, sex workers, and actors/singers are all workers. Priests sell their labor-power to the church they're a part of, traditionally for extremely low wages as well. Salesperson is just one function a worker can have within a retail workplace, sex workers sell their labor-power to a capitalist as well. Actors and singers, and more generally people in the entertainment industry sell their labor-power in exchange for a salary. As I explained in the post I assume you're asking about, in some cases that salary is so high that it enables some workers to acquire private property and become part of the bourgeoisie themselves. In any case, the basic economic relationship is still that of a proletariat's

"Taco truck owner" has it in the name, they own a small amount of private property, and sometimes 1 or 2 workers. Investing in stock requires capital, and stock itself is also capital.

As for farmers, it depends on what exactly you mean. Historically, although nowadays it is practically extinct, the peasantry as a class were a holdover from feudal production, an exploited class distinct from the proletariat. Their production was individualized, as opposed to socialized in the case of proletarian production. They often produced only for themselves and some type of lord who owned the land. They were largely adjacent to the proletariat, but some aspects of their economic relations also sometimes placed them closer to the petty-bourgeoisie.

Most farmers nowadays are large landowners who own large amounts of machinery and employ specialized workers, while others (in the imperial core) are still landowners but they instead rely on cheap labor by migrant workers, sometimes undocumented ones, allowing for practically slavery conditions. These agricultural workers are proletarian, distinct from their historical ancestors of feudalism, in that they only earn a salary, and don't own their tools nor their land. Their production is also almost exclusively geared towards the national and international market, it's not individualized production. This is even more marked in the imperialist relations that govern the monoculture plantations of the global south.

[probablyasocialecologist]

We cannot understand industrialization outside the history of colonialism, and its relationship to a system of accumulation of surplus value – capitalism. Following the insights of Samir Amin, Celso Furtado, Raul Prebisch, Eric Williams, Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik, and Walter Rodney, amongst others, this perspective characterizes the seemingly apolitical process of industrialization as linked the violence of primitive accumulation, commodification, exchange, and war. That is, the slave trade, the colonization of the United States, the erection of colonial plantations in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and Latin America, all contributing the raw materials, food items, and export markets which subtended the low-waged process of European and eventually US industrialization. These processes, whose echoes are still reverberating, produced a massive amount of CO2 emissions. Furthermore, contemporary patterns of exchange, although not occurring under direct colonial patterns of control, are still unequal on South-North lines. That is, trade between formally independent states, based on the seemingly efficient price system, hides a new mode of control. An hour of labor in the North continues to receive a far higher reward than an hour of labor in the South, even when using similar or identical technologies, and northern products exchange for ever-increasing amounts of southern resources over time. As a result, wealth concentrates in the North, in part because wages and profit concentrate there, and produce and reproduce social-economic polarization within the world system.

[hotvampireadjacent]

“It is much more profitable to consume coffee than to produce it. In the United States and Europe coffee creates income and jobs and mobilizes substantial capital; in Latin America it pays hunger wages and sharpens economic deformation. It provides work for more than 600,000 people in the United States: those who distribute and sell Latin American coffee there earn infinitely more than the Brazilians, Colombians, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Haitians who and and harvest it on plantations.” -The open veins of Latin America( page 101)

[psychotrenny]

Yeah China had one of the most monetised economies in the world for centuries. Previously (since about the 12th century) the Yuan dynasty and their Ming successors had issued paper fiat currency but run-away inflation led to the Ming abandoning that idea during the 15th century and began replacing them with Silver coins. Silver had always been relatively rare in Eastern Eurasia compared to the West (where as meanwhile gold was relatively common) and about the time reintroduction of silver coins really started ramping was when the global maritime trading network of Europe really got established. There was massive demand in Europe for all manner of Chinese goods (silks and other fabrics, porcelain, tea) and the Spanish became very reliant on imports from other parts of Europe they paid for with their Silver coins. So the you had Europeans (both the Spanish themselves trading through the Philippines and other Europeans who used coins they had earlier acquired from the Spanish) very willing and able to meet the massive and expanding demand for silver China was experiencing at the time. However a lot of European sovereigns were worried about the impacts that the draining of their silver reserves would have and desperately tried to find some other less valuable good they could trade for Chinese products. By the 18th century the British had found their answer in Opium (grown in their Indian colonies on largely former cotton fields after the growth of the Egyptian and USamerican cotton industries drove them out of business) and this trade was so lucrative they were willing to go to war to maintain it. But even as the flow of silver into China eased up the volumes of Pesos that remained in circulation were sufficient to maintain their position as a widely accepted currency into the 201th century

One of my favorite little facts about history is that the Mexican peso was functionally the everyday unit of currency in China in the 19th and early 20th century. Silver was one of the few western commodities that Chinese merchants were willing to trade in at rates that made shipping it to China (an expensive, arduous process) profitable; this trade became so voluminous by the 19th century that large everyday transactions even far away from port cities were conducted in pesos, in large part because Mexico's large domestic silver supply and existing transpacific trade links meant that the currency was stable (a known quantity to merchants in a time and place where relatively pure silver coins were otherwise uncommon) and readily available for use in trade

[twola]

you mentioned wanting some smutty prompts; how about the opposite of Seven Deadly Sins?

what about Seven Heavenly Virtues with a high honor!Arthur and an F!reader getting into all kinds of NSFW shenanigans, except filled with turmoil and drama as i imagine a high honor Arthur wouldn't want to impose at first... 👀

Oh! I have thought about this in the past - this isn’t going to be anywhere near as ambitious as that, but here is a drabble post with the seven capital virtues.

Virtuous

High-honor Arthur Morgan x Younger F!Reader Smut (18+), MDNI

➵ Fic Masterlist ➵ AO3 Link

At least with you, he will try to be a good man. It doesn't come naturally, of course.

Chastity: the state or practice of refraining from extramarital, or especially from all, sexual intercourse.

You’re drunk. Rip-roaring drunk. Stumbling drunk. But on a night like tonight, you blend in. Tonight liquor is flowing and the mood is jovial: little Jack is back in his mother’s arms and for once in the past several months, everything seems like it’s going to be okay.

You aren’t as drunk as Karen, god, that’s a good thing, her drinking is getting a bit out of control.  But you’re drunk enough to be troublesome.

You’re drunk enough to sneak away and climb into Arthur Morgan’s bed. He’s important enough that he’s gotten his own room, and as Javier belts out another refrain in Spanish, you sneak away and creep upstairs in the old plantation house, into Arthur’s room. The oil lantern casts shadows in the room, over shelves of ammunition, knives, and a map stretched out on a table. 

You sway slightly, moving toward the bed. You’re not sure you’ve ever been this drunk before. 

What you do know is how you’ve been watching him for months, probably since you joined this gang, nursing an infatuation for Dutch’s top gun. You know he’s older - you’re not much past twenty yourself, but it is him you see when you shut your eyes and touch yourself on lonely nights.

Kicking off your shoes, you crawl into his bed, pulling the sheet over yourself. Somehow, the whiskey in your belly burns in a smoldering frustration - you want him, you want him, and damnit, you’re going to do something about it.

Arthur returns to his room much later in the night, smelling like cigars and whiskey.  He pauses, for a moment, seeing a huddled form in his bed, but quickly relaxes, taking his hat from his head and placing it on the shelf atop a box of rifle cartridges.

“What are you doin’ up here, little lady?” He asks in a patient tone, unwinding his gunbelt from his hips, spreading it over the map on the table.

“Waitin’ fer you, Mister Morgan.”

Arthur sits on the edge of the bed, “What could you possibly be waitin’ for me for?”

You push yourself to sit up on your elbows. “How come you don’t have a lady, Arthur?”

He snorts, smirking slightly and shaking his head while pulling one of his boots off, “None would have me, Miss.”

“I would.”

Arthur stops, turning around and looking at you.

“Little lady, you’ve had quite a bit to drink tonight. Talkin’ all sorts of silliness.” 

You shake your head, your hair falling out of its messy braid, you reach over toward his arm, placing your small hand upon it, “I- I know I’m young, Arthur, but I could make y’so happy- ‘nd -”

A hiccup interrupts your confession. Arthur’s confidence is not inspired, as he turns back toward his other boot, sliding it off as it tumbles to the floor.

“ -’ nd, - and I know I could keep y’satisfied.” You punctuate the last word by running your hand from his forearm up his bicep to his shoulder, gently rubbing at it.

The liquor in your system has removed any sense of propriety from your mind. Every tawdry fantasy of Arthur Morgan you’ve had in the past months runs through your head, and now here you are, in his bed, practically propositioning him.

“Darlin’, this ain’t a good idea.”

You pull your hand back like you’ve touched a hot stove. “D’ya… d’ya not want me?”

He turns again, moving one of his legs onto the bed, and faces you fully as he takes a deep breath. “Sweetheart - I…that’s not…”

“I can go, I’m sorry, I’ll not bother-” You stumble over your words, trying to crawl out of bed.

His large hand on your thigh stops your forward motion. It also stops all coherent thought in your head.

“I ain’t gonna take advantage of you with you near fallin’ over drunk, little lady. But ‘course, course I want you - I don’t know why a pretty young thing like you would want an old man like me for.”

“Arthur-” You whine, and he blinks as seemingly all of his blood rushes to his groin at the needy sound of your voice.

“Y’need to get some sleep, then we can talk about this.”

“In the morning?” You ask, and he gently takes both of your shoulders and guides you down to lie in his bed.

“We can talk about it in the mornin’. After you’ve slept this off, alrigh’?” 

“Promise?”

“Yes, darlin’. I promise.”

You take that to be enough and settle down in his bed to sleep. Arthur sighs, watching as you quickly drift off, and stands up, pulling an old chair next to the bed and sitting down in it. He runs his hand down his beard and stares at the cracked and stained ceiling of the room.

Christ, the girl in his bed was close to fifteen years younger than him. He shouldn’t be entertaining this at all, for her sake. Dirty old man…

But still, he did have a soft spot for the smiles you give him. The sway of your narrow hips as you walk in camp, the shine of your long hair, the freckles that have developed on your face, and decolletage under the Lemoyne sun…

And here you were, in his bed, pleading with him to sleep together.

Arthur crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back in the chair, knowing that for your sake, he had to be a better man.

Temperance: the quality of moderation or self-restraint.

The sunlight on your eyelids makes you scrounge your nose, and your eyes slowly flutter open. Your head pounds, but you blink yourself into self-awareness, realizing everything you said and did last night was not, indeed, a dream.

Arthur is sleeping in the chair next to the bed and nods awake when he hears you moving.

“How’re you feeling, little lady? Seems like you had quite a bit to drink last night.”

You rub your forehead, avoiding eye contact with him, a vibrant blush settling on your cheeks as you sit up. 

“I c’n go get you some coffee.” Arthur stands up, moving toward the bed to put his boots on. At that moment, you decide to go for broke, reaching out to grab his arm.

“Mm?” Arthur hums, turning toward you. Your eyes flit from his, down to his lips, and you unconsciously lick your own. With the newfound courage of a woman with nothing to lose, you surge forward and press your lips against his. He is surprised and doesn’t respond for a moment, but after recollecting his wits, he turns fully toward you and wraps one of his arms around you.

You pull back, your eyes still looking downward. “I think we agreed that we was gonna talk.”

“We did,” Arthur says, but he leans in to press his lips against yours, his tongue brushing along the seam of your lips, demanding entrance. You sigh, leaning into him and allowing him so. His lips are chapped, but still soft, as his large arm winds around you.

It’s several moments like this, mouths moving against each other, until you maneuver yourself nearly into his lap, clutching at him desperately.

You pant into his mouth, reaching toward the button on his trousers. His hand catches yours, however, and a groan rumbles from deep in his chest.

“Arthur -” You whine, you feel your bloomers wet against your skin, and you’re sure that he’s hard in his trousers. 

“C’mon now, sweetheart.” He grits out, pressing you away from him in the bed.

You pout, “You said we would talk about this in the morning.”

“I reckon we better start talkin’ then. Don’t think we were doin’ much talkin’ there.” 

Patience: the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.

Arthur was a busy man. As the lead enforcer of the gang, he was one of the men who brought in the most money - he could be very convincing at the end of a shotgun.

You knew Arthur did what he had to do: it kept you fed, clothed, cared for. 

You were also annoyed that you’d barely seen him for a week: frankly, since that morning after Jack’s return, he’s been in and out of camp at Dutch’s beck and call. Only around to give you sweet kisses behind crumbling columns or trees draped with Spanish moss. 

When you do get the chance, you clutch at him as if you could make him stay, pressing your tongue into his mouth, trying to pull him downward. It is really somewhat laughable, as he could toss you over his shoulder one-handed should he choose.

But he doesn’t choose.

He does pull you away after several moments, usually after the soft moan has escaped your mouth and you’ve pressed yourself against him.

“Patience, little lady. Ain’t no one ever tell you the best things come to those who wait?”

You pout back at him, deciding not to tell him how you’ve snuck into his room and touched yourself in his bed at night.

Diligence: having or showing care and conscientiousness in one's work or duties.

The afternoon heat hung low, sweat breaking out on the back of your neck as you rushed toward the back of the old plantation house, hiking up your skirts as you bound down the stairs of the back porch while no one is around. Bolting toward the old dockhouse, you grin as you see Arthur’s horse grazing in the fields at the back of the property.

He’s standing there, whisps of smoke drifting upward from the cigarette hanging from his lips. Leaning against a cypress tree eyes out on the horizon over the waters of the Lanaheechee.

He hears you coming, why wouldn’t he, you’re bowling through like a bull in a china shop. Arthur turns right as you come up to him, nearly launching yourself at him in delight.

“Whoa there, gonna run straight into the water now.” Arthur smiles, his hands on your shoulders.

You press forward into his embrace. “I knew you’d catch me.”

He snorts lightly, his arms moving to wrap around your small waist.

“Y’ready to get away for a bit?”

You look up at him, a head and a half taller than you, beaming, “Really?”

“Reckon I’ve done enough jobs to earn an afternoon off. C’mon, let's get out of here.”

He winds his arm around your shoulder and starts walking the two of you toward his horse. 

“Where we goin’?” You ask as you reach the mare, and Arthur swings you up to sit on the horse’s rump. He taps your leg lightly.

“You’ll see, little lady.”

Charity: aid given to those in need

The picnic in the meadow outside Bolger Glade did not last long. A few canned peaches were consumed before you crawled into Arthur’s lap and drew him into a kiss.

This time, finally, he does not push you away as you press against him. Indeed, he does the exact opposite. He rolls you beneath him, flat out on the blanket, and moves his lips from yours down your neck, suckling gently at the skin there, before his hand ducks downward to gather your skirts up, fingers trailing up your legs underneath the cotton.

“Y’want this?” He pants in your ear as his rough fingers press against your bloomers, and all you can do is whine needily in acquiescence. 

He pulls your bloomers down, down your thighs, down past your knees, and tosses them to the side before sliding his hand up your skirts again. You cling to his shoulders, eyes fluttering shut as a high moan as he touches your skin. 

Arthur rubs in gentle circles against your folds, and your breath loudly hitches as one of his fingers pauses near your opening for but a moment before sliding inside. 

Hopefully, you’re far enough from the road not to bring attention to the two of you, because you’re having an increasingly hard time keeping quiet, thrusting your face against his shoulder to muffle your sounds, especially when he slides another finger into your wet warmth.

It's only a few moments more before you keen, mewling into the linen of his shirt as he whispers sweet nothings in your ear: good girl, that’s it.

“Let me… let me make you feel good,” You pant, reaching for the buckle of his pants as you regain some of your wherewithal.

He gently swats your hand away.

“Hush, I ain’t done with you yet.”

You want to scream aloud when his head disappears under your skirts and you feel his tongue press against your cunt.

Humility:  a modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness.

You moan into his neck as you roll your hips in his lap, his hands spread wide over the globes of your rear and he pants in return, grinding you against the hardness in his pants.

“Fuck,”  he swears, and lays you down on the blanket, looming over you, hands reaching to undo the buttons of his trousers. “Y’ready?”

“Y-yes.” You shiver, opening your legs for him and starting to pull your skirts up, uncovering inch by inch of your inner thighs up to the thatch of dark hair shrouding your cunt.

Your breath hitches as he fully opens his pants, about to pull his length from them.

Arthur stops, looking at you, studying your eyes, your face, before frowning. “You’ve never done this before.”

He leans back up onto his knees, shaking his head. You rocket up in concern, afraid he’s going to leave, god, that would break your damn heart.

“Tell me the truth.” He asks, his tone firm.

You shake your head and Arthur sighs, staring down at his hands in his lap, the swollen tenting of his half-opened trousers, his cock still steel hard.

“I - I ain’t worthy of this honor, darlin’. Y- you should have a far better person than me bein’ your first.” Arthur says, one hand moving to redo the buttons of his pants.

“No,” You cry out forcefully, grabbing his hand, “I want it to be you, Arthur.”

“Little lady-”

You interrupt, grasping his hand in your own and interlacing your fingers. “You’re kind, and you’re wonderful, and I know you ain’t gonna hurt me.”

You lay back on the blanket, your hair fanning out, and still holding his hand, you pull him toward you. Arthur closes his eyes, visibly struggling with himself.

“I-”

He trails off, and after several moments, his eyes flutter open again. You’re spread out beneath him, his knees framed by your open legs, your face flushed, your cunt wet and needy and ready for him.

“Arthur. I want it to be you.” You say, with more force behind your voice.

He breaks.

“Alright, sweetheart… Alright.”

Kindness: the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.

Arthur pulls his cock from his pants, stroking himself several times, and as you watch him, your hand moves down between your legs, touching your glistening folds as he grunts in approval. After several moments, he looks back at you, a serious heaviness in his eyes.

“You tell me if it hurts - you hear that?” “Yes,” you whine, gasping as he moves over you, placing his elbows on either side of your head, capturing your lips as he presses his length against your core, parting your folds, gently jutting his hips back and forth, covering himself with your slick. 

The head of his cock hits that bundle of nerves and you moan loudly into his mouth, and he jolts against you, pressing his length even harder against the seam of your body.

He curses against your lips, pressing himself up with one arm, balancing on his other forearm, as he reaches down between you to grasp the base of his cock. He slowly pulls it down, down the seam of you until the head catches at your weeping opening. He presses in slightly, enough so that he can move his hand, and immediately moves up to cradle your cheek. His thumb traces your jawline for a moment, his blue eyes flutter as he begins to press forward.

Your breath escapes you as you throw your arms around his neck, his flesh splitting you open - it does hurt, but god, if he were to stop, your heart might hurt even more. He’s about halfway in when he starts peppering kisses over your brow, his thumb drawing gentle circles over your cheek.

“Y’okay?” He asks, his voice not more than a whisper.

“Yes, please… please.” You plead, unable to articulate any further.

Arthur groans, pressing completely inside you, his girthy cock fully seated, and he remains still as your fingers dig into his shoulders, his work shirt saving his skin from your nails.

After a few moments, you unclench your hands, one moving up his neck to grasp the ends of his short hair. “Arthur,” you moan, in a high, flighty voice that gives him permission to move.

He slowly, gently, retracts his hips from yours, and then presses back forward, intently watching your face for any twinge of pain. When he sees none, he repeats the process a little faster. And again, a little faster.

You gasp and whine in tune with his thrusts, and finally, he lets out a groaning whimper after he’s sure you’re enjoying it. “God, you’re so tight, squeezin’ me like this-”

You mewl as he lowers himself completely over you, your ankles crossing over his lower back. The sounds coming from your mouth edge on obscene, as Arthur thrusts into your accepting body over and over again.

“That’s it, that’s it, c’mon, darlin’, let go.” He grunts into your ear, nuzzling against the side of your head.

You cry out, your back arching up as you convulse around him, crying his name in absolute adoration.

Arthur presses his forehead against yours, gritting his teeth and screwing his eyes shut as he thrusts a handful of more times before pulling himself from you, reaching down and stroking his cock as he finishes, his spend coating his fingers and dripping to the blanket beneath you.

He pants, leaning on his side as he lowers his hip to lay beside you, your legs falling open. He kisses your forehead, one of his large hands pulling your skirts down over your knees and thighs as you catch your own breath.

“Good for ya?” He rumbles, his hand finding purchase on your soft belly.

You open your eyes, smiling up at him. The sunlight pours through the tree you rest under on the warm afternoon.

“You’re so good for me, Arthur.”

[jaggedjot]

“Louis de Pointe du Lac. That's an interesting name.” “Louis of Pointe du Lac Plantation. My great-great-grandfather owned one. All that remains is the name.”

“And a sizable trust to oversee as a consequence. Capital accrued from plantations of sugar and the blood of men who looked like my great-grandfather but did not have his standing.”

When introducing himself to Daniel both in 1973 and in 2022, Louis alludes to the ways that the legacy of chattel slavery in the United States remains present through his life. The ramifications of this history will be explored further in his interviews; it is intrinsic to the racism that Louis describes experiencing, and it is built into the economic and cultural foundations of the societies that Louis has and continues to navigate through. The way that this subject is broached however, in both the past and present, specifically centres the relationship between slave plantations and Louis’ own affluence.

Daniel’s remark being prefaced by Louis offering to “Get the boy whatever he wants”, before carelessly pushing a platinum credit card between them, implicitly correlates Louis’ response with that ostentatious display of wealth. It is not an intentional association made by the characters, and Louis immediately downplays the link when he recognises it (“All that remains is the name.”). Given his reaction, it seems likely that Louis did not talk about this topic during his subsequent interview with Daniel, though, again, that does not mean it would have had no bearing on other matters discussed. By contrast in the present day, Louis broaches the subject himself and fairly openly acknowledges the correlation. It was a slave plantation and the exploitation of enslaved people that created the sizeable trust that paid for the house and lifestyle that Louis and his family enjoyed. While Louis does not state it directly, the unavoidable implication of Louis clarifying that his great-grandfather was black and had a different social status to that of slaves (“[…] the blood of men who looked like my great-grandfather but did not have his standing.”) is that several generations of Louis’ black relatives have, at least indirectly, financially profited from chattel slavery. It is unlikely that this wealth was all inherited after the fact, considering that the abolition of slavery in the United States occurred only a couple of decades before Louis was born. These pieces of information seem to contradict then the implicit suggestion of Louis’ earlier explanation in 1973, that the only direct bearing the de Pointe du Lac plantation has had on his life is a shared name.

Both the dismissal and the acknowledgement are characteristic of how Louis describes the past; factual as a basic statement but carrying additional implications whose accuracy is more questionable and or left carefully unexamined. This is a rhetorical device that aids Louis in maintaining control of the narrative and its meanings while avoiding, as much as he can, outright lies. While Louis does view Daniel as a necessity for him to revisit his story, it needs to be stated that this does not prevent Louis from consciously and unconsciously tailoring it for his audience. It is possible that Louis only acknowledges the subject at all in the second interview because he is aware that Daniel has likely done some background research on his family. Considering how insensitive to racial issues Daniel can be, as well as his deliberately combative and contrarian approach to interviewing, it may be that this is a subject that Louis does not want to explore with Daniel specifically; it is perhaps notable that the penthouse Louis shares with Armand contains at least two pieces of art (Slave Auction by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Transformation by Ron Bechet) which are about chattel slavery. Regardless of the reason for Louis’ selectivity, this context continues to hover on the periphery of Louis’ story, adding additional layers of meaning to the events that follow.

It contextualises the contradictory feelings Louis has about his work as a landlord and pimp, roles that may step outside of the shadow of sugarcane and slavery but are only made possible through investing the profits of them. When Louis confesses to the ways he treats his workers, tellingly he invokes plantation imagery with “[…] I lie to myself, saying I'm giving them a roof and food and dollar bills in they pocket, but I look in the mirror, I know what I am; the big man in the big house, stuffing cotton in my ears so I can't hear their cries.”. This conflict then deepens the resentment Louis has towards his family for criticising how he provides for them, with Paul being the only member who even entertains the idea that they should not spend the money at all (“We should tithe that o'er to St. Augustine's 'fore this house falls in on us.”). Whereas the family judges Louis for connecting them to an industry they view as sinful and lacking respectability, contrasting it to the seemingly fondly remembered family plantation (“Daddy was here, we'd still be in sugar cane.”), Louis is troubled by the exploitative nature of that work and capitalism as a whole. Yet there are also times when Louis exhibits pride towards his business dealings (“And I was now the owner of the brightest club in the district. My club, my rules. […] It was everything I had ever wanted or wished for. […] I made a mountain of money, enough to retire and be buried like a pharaoh.”). This could be suggested to be partly because Louis has moved away from the legacy of his family’s past to create something that he can try to believe is helping his, primarily black, workers (“I paid the staff better, paid the band better, all the while helping those who had been with me down the block to better themselves.”).

Most significantly of all, this context adds an additional lens through which Louis and the audience can examine some of the overarching existential ideas that Louis has been grappling with throughout his life, and that the second interview brings to the forefront. How does the past continue to define our present? Can we be considered in any way culpable for the actions of others? What reparations can we make for the harm, deliberate and unintentional, that we do? The open-ended way that Louis approaches the link between his inherited wealth and chattel slavery, as well as the subsequent ways that these have shaped his life, is reflective of those unanswered questions. Louis is desperately trying to find, if not a definitive answer to these philosophical quandaries, an insight that can give his existence purpose and direction. It is vital to Louis that his experiences offer some greater lesson (“That's the purpose. Our book must be a warning as much as anything.”), and ideally one that he can prove that he has already learnt. The different ways that Louis approaches the subject in 1973 and 2022 then reflect how he is revaluating the past and himself (“The passage of time and the frailties that accompany it have provided me perspective.”), but despite this, critically and symbolically, Louis still does not seem to have come to any conclusions.

[whencyclopedia]

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was an American lawyer, statesman, philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. A prominent figure of the American Revolution, he wrote the Declaration of Independence and later served as the first secretary of state, the second vice president, and the third president of the United States (served 1801-1809).

Early Life

Thomas Jefferson was born on 13 April 1743 at Shadwell Plantation in Albemarle County, Virginia. He was the third of ten children born to Peter Jefferson, a wealthy planter and land surveyor, and Jane Randolph Jefferson, a daughter of one of Virginia's most influential families. When Peter Jefferson died in 1757, 14-year-old Thomas inherited 5,000 acres of land as well as 60 enslaved people. From 1758 to 1760, he was privately tutored by Reverend James Maury before going on to the colonial capital of Williamsburg to attend the College of William & Mary. In his first year at college, he spent lavishly on parties, horses, and clothing, but he would soon regret this "showy style of living" (Boles, 18). His second year, therefore, was much more studious; he would apparently spend 15 hours a day at his studies, pausing only to exercise or to practice his violin.

The studious Jefferson soon became the protégé of mathematics professor William Small, who he would fondly remember as "the first truly enlightened or scientific man" he had ever met (Boles, 17). Small introduced Jefferson to the two other great intellectuals in Williamsburg – law professor George Wythe and Lt. Governor Francis Fauquier – and, at their weekly dinner parties, the four men would discuss politics and philosophy, greatly influencing the young Jefferson's political and intellectual development.

After completing his formal studies in 1762, Jefferson remained in Williamsburg to study law under Wythe and was admitted to the Virginia bar five years later in 1767. In 1768, he was elected to the House of Burgesses, representing Albemarle County. That same year, he began construction of a new home atop an 868-foot-high (265 m) mountain that overlooked his plantation. Called Monticello – Italian for "little mountain" – the house became the passion of Jefferson's life, and he would spend the next several decades designing and renovating it. The actual labor, of course, was mostly performed by his slaves; over the course of his lifetime, Jefferson owned approximately 600 enslaved people, most of whom were born into slavery on his property.

In 1772, after several failed romantic pursuits, Jefferson was finally married to the beautiful young widow Martha Wayles Skelton. Five years his junior, Martha shared his passions for literature and music; indeed, they often played music together – she on the harpsichord, he on the violin. The couple would have six children, only two of whom – Martha 'Patsy' (1772-1836) and Mary 'Polly' (1778-1804) – would survive to adulthood. When Jefferson's father-in-law died in 1773, he and Martha inherited 11,000 acres of land and 135 more enslaved people. By then, Jefferson had become involved with Virginia's struggle against Great Britain. Parliament's attempts to tax the colonists without their consent were vehemently opposed by the American Patriots, who saw such taxes as violations of their 'rights as Englishmen'. In 1774, Jefferson argued as much in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America. In it, he asserted that the colonies had the right to govern themselves, that they were tied to the English king only through voluntary bonds and that Parliament had no right to interfere in their affairs. This work earned him recognition as a Patriot leader in Virginia and led to his appointment as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in the spring of 1775.

Writing the Declaration of Independence

Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (Public Domain)

Continue reading...

[magnetothemagnificent]

Since its Halloween season again......

Places appropriate to have haunted ghost tours or Halloween parties:

-a historic mansion (that wasn't a slave plantation, for fuck's sake)

-your own house or a friend's house

-a forest (as long as you're not disturbing the local landscape and wildlife)

-an amusement park

-a cornfield

-an abandoned industrial warehouse

Places that are not appropriate to have haunted ghost tours or Halloween parties:

-human specimen collection museums

-historic prisons

-historic asylums

-historic slave plantations

-historic hospitals

-sites of tragedy (battlefields, mass graves, memorials to genocide and other historic atrocities)

-marginalized communities' cemeteries and burial grounds

This goes for both people participating in these events and for people hosting it. Sometimes historic sites will host these events as their only way of generating revenue because Capitalism is a plague. Don't attend these events. Want to support a historic site's management? Just donate money directly, don't attend an event profiting off the disrespect and defilement of human bodies and lives.