Black Society in Spanish Florida Book

Academic exploration of a New Orleans Slave market made some interesting, and relevant points such as ..."slaveholders depended upon the world to be relatively constant: they depended upon being in the same bed, answering to the same name, and tasting the same food in the same way when they woke up as they had when they went to sleep. And like anyone else, slaveholders also depended upon their property to help them keep themselves constant over time-They oriented themselves around the expectation that they would have the same things and the same rights over those things when they woke up as they had when they went to bed."....So this shows the strength and problem with this book at it's core its a didactic analysis of slavery and slaveholders worldview with many well-researched examples most from old court cases brought by slaveholders against one another over who cheated or lied to whom regarding this sale of this slave. The problem here is the overintellectualizing of this very emotional subject sometimes the examples given sound too much like the much-discussed painting, The Treachery of Images ("Ceci n'est pas une pipe"; "This is not a pipe"), by the French surrealist painter, René Magritte. Magritte foregrounds and problematizes the way that we attribute significance to images, the idea that an image of a pipe is not the same thing as the pipe itself (or the letters p-i-p-e). It is a representation of a pipe, once removed from its referent, the object to which it refers. So for chapters of this book the author does the same sort of analysis with the slave and the visual grammar that a slave but together at times to shape the slaveholders perception of him, weather to further a sale prospect "My wife is right over there Sir she's a good cook sir, and we would be mighty pleased if you buy us together." or to act dull and uninterested trying to ruin a sale that would not be desired by the slave. Somehow I find describing these things academically while more precise in language somehow makes the book sound in a way inauthentic. Still this and a earlier book I read The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry by Sublette, Ned are the two must read books on this subject I would say although there remain many books I have still to read I found this one to have given a very clear description of the slaveholder fantasy and how it shaped the Southern and US economy.