Sweepin' spirits: Power and transformation on the plantation landscape

Abstract

When one thinks of power, a number of thoughts come to mind. Is power the ability to influence something or someone? Does power have anything to do with authority or control? Is power given by others or earned by the individual? I begin this article with the word and idea of power because some of the chapters in this book focus on power dynamics and all of the authors in this volume discuss how landscapes are perceived in the past or in the present. In this chapter, I will explore landscapes as more than just places affected by people, but made of living species-plants, trees, birds, animals, fish, and so forth, while recognizing that it is people who bring social and symbolic meaning to these places. Therefore, I see power in who transformed the plantation from a natural landscape to cultural landscape as the central component in understanding black cultural production in the 19th century. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.