3/5 - Jemmy Button and Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection

Social/Gender History - gives light to voiceless (gender), faceless masses “from below” (class), and subaltern (race)

• gives people agency and legitimacy

  • a lot of the time, history is just “great man” history in which its about one great individual, like George Washington, and not about the collective “little” people.

  • stop caring about Columbus, care about the Natives he kidnapped and enslaved

    • not even the most important thing that happened in 1492

      • expulsion of Jews and moors from Spain

        • RACE!!!! lets talk about it

Jemmy Button is a Fuegian Native who was essentially kidnaped from his family and brought to England. He struggles to live as an English male life, and then struggles to life as a Feugian when returned. Jemmy being returned is a novel experieonce because usually, those kidnapped have a one way trip.

• leaving or staying

  • there is a question of staying or leaving when presenting the opportunity to do so and why Jimmy’s decision to stay is so signnificant

Language, Culture, Stability

• Jemmy can’t speak his native language anymore

  • tension

  • emotional disconnect/miscomunication

The main experiment of Fitzroy, is the question of wether or not you can civilize an individual Native, and therefore a civilization.

• to civilize is to get away from savagery

• want Jemmy to “give back” to Tierre del Feugo after civilizing him

  • english language

  • clothes; and what they mean

    • buttons!!!!!!

    • Jemmy is exchanged for a button

      • at this time, buttons were very important; gives insight into their world

        • the invention of the zipper radically changed the meaning of clothes as handmade clothes go out of popularity and clothing manufacturing comes into play

        • the zipper comes associated with the ease of undressing, and therefore sexuality. Buttons are slower to remove and therefore a modest

          • Jemmy not wearing Buttons anymore allude to the over-sexuality connected to being a Native, as Englishmen are offended by nakedness

  • religion (Christianity)

The issues of race has not come in et because they haven’t been defined yet at this time

• Actor’s Categories - terms people at the time used to describe things (problematic); you have to have very circumstantial situations to use these terms and must make a note of the social temperature of the time

  • savages

  • negro/nigger (hard r)

• Historians Categories - terms of this day in age to use instead of the terms of the time (very PC)

  • colonized

  • Blacks

People are very interested to find if there are historian categories that match actor categories. They shows that someone was before their time.

During the meeting of two cultures, there is no set culture to derive from. Thanksgiving is made of nothing but “Native” foods; there’s not a single English food. When talking of the colonized and colonizers, it is easy to slip into the rhetoric of the colonizers when in realist, it is very give and take with a flow.

• Indians drink a LOT of tea and the English have a mile of curry spots

Darwin’s Breakthrough

“But, in contradiction of what has often been stated, 3 years has been sufficient to change savages into as far as habits go, complete & voluntary Europaens.”

• Darwin observes that an individual can be changed and molded sufficiently in a short period of time.

• People who have been changed can’t simply go back

Things can change in a short period of time, very quickly…EVOLUTION!