After completing my second reading of Marcy Norton's Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (2008) I seemed to focus on a point she brings up toward the end of her introduction that after my first read, I did not think much about. Particularly, she brings up a point addressing the consequences of West European empire building/expansion She states a myriad of actors that involve themselves with the two commodities, from "defiant Mesoamerican nobles" to "...the guests of well-appointed noble mansions" she notes, "Taking tobacco and chocolate as our guides, these individuals' struggles and stories become not isolated anecdotes but nodes of an expanding social web created by the accidents of empire" (12). Tobacco and chocolate act as the glue/binding agent that connects these actors to consequences of actions taken by Western European empires. Moreover, it is through empire and expansion of the West European regions and their respective places in an expanding transatlantic market that further move and shape chocolate and tobacco as well as the actors that utilize them.
Beyond empire, she further argues syncretism in shaping tobacco and chocolate. Norton argues that European deployment of goods had origin in "American technologies" and "therapeutic knowledge," further adding that it is important to understand that "...conquistadores, scientists, and theologians formally repudiated the syncretism that underlay the reception of the American goods" (10). Norton points out that Western Europeans did acknowledge and comprehend the more positive/beneficial aspects of the commodities (tobacco and chocolate) but at the same time those aforementioned persons (i.e. the "conquistadores" to the theologians) rejected any thought of syncretism with Mesoamerican commodities and their uses. Additionally, Norton writes, "Understanding this dynamic of syncretism and its disavowal can help us understand not only tobacco and chocolate but also the broader phenomena in which they were enmeshed: conquest ideologies, religious practices, colonial identities, scientific research, trading networks, state building, secular rituals, and discourses of the supernatural" (10). Syncretism along with its 'historical' critics assist in shaping the path tobacco and chocolate took and how they impacted various discourses--from "conquest ideology" to "secular rituals." At a broader look, syncretism is also a consequence of contact between the 'old' world and its emerging West European empires (especially the Spanish) and the 'new' Mesoamerican regions. Furthermore, syncretism is also a useful tool for analysis in how tobacco and chocolate coursed its way through various persons and events and how it impacted West European empire's social life/stratums and its accompanying economy/economies as well as the larger transatlantic economy. Additionally, syncretism is beneficial in analysis in that it can assist in placing tobacco and chocolate within an proto-nationalist frame on who most closely identifies, associates, and places consciousness with the two commodities. With Norton's monograph, is identity with the two commodities more found within an transatlantic community or is there still some residue of identity left for the Mesoamerican region? The question of identity and ownership with commodity has been a pressing issue with the texts we have explored so far in the course and this question definitely resonates within Norton's monograph. More or less, this is the broader question I have after reading this text for the second time and it is (again) my intention that class discussion can assist with answering it.
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