The political ecology of slavery: Edmund Ruffin and the simbi of South Carolina

IF 0.3 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
Amanda Lowe
{"title":"The political ecology of slavery: Edmund Ruffin and the simbi of South Carolina","authors":"Amanda Lowe","doi":"10.1080/08905495.2022.2144207","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the early months of 1843, Edmund Ruffin began a geological tour of South Carolina to survey the landscape and the current state of plantation farming across the region. Commissioned by governor James Hammond, Ruffin’s survey aimed to diagnose the decline in plantation productivity in the state. In the diary that he kept during his tour, Ruffin describes stories of nature spirits called “simbi,” whom enslaved and indigenous inhabitants believed guarded limestone springs in the south-east of the state. This paper argues that in the accounts of simbi, which are embedded in a geological survey that aims to increase the efficiency of resource extraction, Ruffin’s reader glimpses a competing geology composed of stratified historical, environmental, and phenomenological meanings. The paper recontextualizes simbi in order to suggest how truly destabilizing a simbi metaphysics is to Ruffin’s own ecological project. By drawing on a rich body of recent religious studies of the African diaspora, the paper suggests possible ecological claims being made in these simbi stories, and that these claims are deeply rooted in knowledge about land use, sustainability, inheritance, and privatization that unsettle the plantation system. The paper aims, in other words, to more thoroughly perceive the network of relationships between enslaved persons, the fountains, spirits, the dead, and the African continent co-present with Ruffin’s geology. It also examines the interpenetration of Ruffin’s political and geo-agricultural writings in order to illustrate how he grounds his racial politics in his understanding of ecology.","PeriodicalId":43278,"journal":{"name":"Nineteenth-Century Contexts-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Nineteenth-Century Contexts-An Interdisciplinary Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08905495.2022.2144207","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the early months of 1843, Edmund Ruffin began a geological tour of South Carolina to survey the landscape and the current state of plantation farming across the region. Commissioned by governor James Hammond, Ruffin’s survey aimed to diagnose the decline in plantation productivity in the state. In the diary that he kept during his tour, Ruffin describes stories of nature spirits called “simbi,” whom enslaved and indigenous inhabitants believed guarded limestone springs in the south-east of the state. This paper argues that in the accounts of simbi, which are embedded in a geological survey that aims to increase the efficiency of resource extraction, Ruffin’s reader glimpses a competing geology composed of stratified historical, environmental, and phenomenological meanings. The paper recontextualizes simbi in order to suggest how truly destabilizing a simbi metaphysics is to Ruffin’s own ecological project. By drawing on a rich body of recent religious studies of the African diaspora, the paper suggests possible ecological claims being made in these simbi stories, and that these claims are deeply rooted in knowledge about land use, sustainability, inheritance, and privatization that unsettle the plantation system. The paper aims, in other words, to more thoroughly perceive the network of relationships between enslaved persons, the fountains, spirits, the dead, and the African continent co-present with Ruffin’s geology. It also examines the interpenetration of Ruffin’s political and geo-agricultural writings in order to illustrate how he grounds his racial politics in his understanding of ecology.
奴隶制的政治生态:埃德蒙·鲁芬与南卡罗来纳州的辛比
摘要1843年初,埃德蒙·鲁芬(Edmund Ruffin)开始了对南卡罗来纳州的地质考察,以了解该地区的景观和种植业现状。受州长詹姆斯·哈蒙德委托,鲁芬的调查旨在诊断该州种植园生产力的下降。在他旅行期间保存的日记中,鲁芬描述了被称为“simbi”的自然精灵的故事,被奴役的土著居民认为他们守护着该州东南部的石灰岩泉水。本文认为,在旨在提高资源开采效率的地质调查中,鲁芬的读者看到了由分层的历史、环境和现象学意义组成的相互竞争的地质学。本文对辛比进行了重新文本化,以表明辛比形而上学对鲁芬自己的生态项目是多么的不稳定。通过借鉴最近对非洲侨民的大量宗教研究,该论文提出了这些辛比故事中可能提出的生态主张,这些主张深深植根于对土地使用、可持续性、继承和私有化的了解,这些知识扰乱了种植园系统。换言之,这篇论文的目的是更彻底地感知被奴役者、喷泉、灵魂、死者以及与鲁芬的地质学共同存在的非洲大陆之间的关系网络。它还考察了鲁芬的政治和地理农业著作的相互渗透,以说明他是如何将种族政治建立在对生态学的理解之上的。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
46
期刊介绍: Nineteenth-Century Contexts is committed to interdisciplinary recuperations of “new” nineteenth centuries and their relation to contemporary geopolitical developments. The journal challenges traditional modes of categorizing the nineteenth century by forging innovative contextualizations across a wide spectrum of nineteenth century experience and the critical disciplines that examine it. Articles not only integrate theories and methods of various fields of inquiry — art, history, musicology, anthropology, literary criticism, religious studies, social history, economics, popular culture studies, and the history of science, among others.
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信