Lire l’&lt;i&gt;Histoire générale des Antilles&lt;/i&gt; de J.-B. Du Tertre

Kullberg, Christina

doi:10.1163/9789004434967

Cited by 5 publications

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“…This is perhaps in part explained by language barriers and the difficulties ingrained within archaeologists' use of such sources (Lightfoot 1995;Stahl 1993;Wood 1990;Wylie 1985). In addition, ethnohistoric texts often present idealized or fictitious descriptions stemming from the biases of island colonization (Kullberg 2020). Despite their limitations, ethnohistoric texts have been extensively utilized in Caribbean studies on ecology (e.g., Lorvelec et al 2007) and history of disease (Grunberg 2015) and may be usefully integrated within archaeological frameworks when used cautiously and with transparency.…”

Section: Incorporating Ethnohistoric Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…De Rochefort (1665b:140, see also 1665a [1658]:37) offers further credibility to Du Tertre's claim: "if it [agouti] is taken young, it is tamed easily." While de Rochefort has long been accused of plagiarizing sections from Du Tertre's work (Kullberg 2020;Roux 2011), his book "Histoire Naturelle" is not a complete appropriation. The sections regarding agouti differ sufficiently between the two sources, suggesting they were conceived and written independently.…”

Section: Agouti Tamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ethnohistoric Accounts as Valuable Resources for Deciphering Commensal Relationships of Pre-Contact Caribbean Agouti (Dasyproctidae: Dasyprocta)

Rabinow

2021

Journal of Ethnobiology

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The Neotropical rodent agouti (Dasyprocta sp.), arguably one of the most prominent pre-Contact introduced commensals of the Lesser Antilles, has long been proposed as having been managed and maintained in captivity by Indigenous Caribbean groups. These claims, however, remain so far unsubstantiated. Ethnohistoric texts may serve as valuable resources for establishing the commensal relationships agouti shared with Indigenous Caribbean groups. Here, I synthesize the evidence from seventeenth century French ethnohistoric texts to address the question of pre-Contact agouti management and captivity and concretize some of the many other commensal relationships linking agouti to Indigenous groups. Ethnohistoric texts reveal that, in addition to having been managed through garden hunting, agoutis occurred as tame, in close proximity to settlements, although they do not appear to have been maintained in captivity. Agoutis also occurred as detached from human settlements, maintaining minimal interaction with human groups. Ethnohistoric texts repeatedly associate agoutis and agouti skeletal elements with ritual practices, suggesting ceremonial/cosmological value. This study shows that ethnohistoric texts hold critical potential for substantiating pre-Contact commensal relationships and, by extension, may offer insight into Indigenous identities and lifeways, and island ecology.

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Section: Incorporating Ethnohistoric Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Agouti Tamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnohistoric Accounts as Valuable Resources for Deciphering Commensal Relationships of Pre-Contact Caribbean Agouti (Dasyproctidae: Dasyprocta)

Rabinow

2021

Journal of Ethnobiology

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Introduction: Tracing Entanglements in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean

Kullberg

2023

Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700

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This introductory theoretical chapter makes the case for reading seventeenth-century French travel writing to the Caribbean in situ. Using Édouard Glissant’s notion of point of entanglement, it argues for a shift in perspectives that would seek to undo the colonial bias of early modern texts and seek other entangled ramifications of French Caribbean literature. In so doing, the book brings attention to ways in which enslaved and Indigenous peoples actively contributed to shaping early colonial society and, indeed, the representations of it. The first section discusses discourses of silencing around French coloniality in the period and presents the theoretical points of departures that have been guiding the work. The following section is devoted to a more thorough discussion of the notion of baroque and how this book uses it as an operative concept to read through the entanglements of travel writing. The third section gives a contextual framing for the analysis. It sketches the history of the period that the travel narratives describe and presents the population of the islands. Finally, the fourth section offers a more detailed account of the travelogues, their writers and the predicaments that dictated these texts, and ends by outlining the chapters or points of entanglement that will be approached, namely geography, the self, and language.

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Constructing the Self Between Worlds

Kullberg

2023

Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700

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This chapter shifts the attention toward another point of entanglement, namely the construction of the travelers’ self as a changing narrative category within the travel narratives. Drawing on recent research around the complex development of the notion of the self in the seventeenth century, the argument is that the self is unstable and multiple; it mediates between the space of reception (France) and the space described (the Islands). The self thus becomes a site where the effect of otherness can be traced: it becomes a narrative locus of unsettlement where the impact of early island society and its people is visible on several levels. The first section is devoted to the conditions governing travel writing in order to understand how the travelers used this strategically in their representations of the islands in terms of both distance and embodiment. The second section centers on Labat’s travelogue in order to analyze how that embodiment led to the construction of an experimental self influenced by the islands: the individual traveler’s experience becomes a way to think through the social body’s experience. The third section examines how the self negotiates encounters with others. By interrogating the figure of the commentary, it questions the construction of a discourse of ambivalence, bordering on sentimentality, with regard to enslaved peoples and enslavement as an institution. The last section looks closer at engagements with Indigenous peoples in terms of an anxiety of influence: the narratives configure that influence through style. The travelers, it claims, both underscore and distance themselves to uphold an intermediary position.

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Lire l’<i>Histoire générale des Antilles</i> de J.-B. Du Tertre

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Ethnohistoric Accounts as Valuable Resources for Deciphering Commensal Relationships of Pre-Contact Caribbean Agouti (Dasyproctidae: Dasyprocta)

Ethnohistoric Accounts as Valuable Resources for Deciphering Commensal Relationships of Pre-Contact Caribbean Agouti (Dasyproctidae: Dasyprocta)

Introduction: Tracing Entanglements in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean

Constructing the Self Between Worlds

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