"On Ginseng and Iroquois:
Abstract
This study is dedicated to 2 texts written by French Jesuit father Joseph-François Lafitau (1681–1746), created in the context of his missionary stay in Nouvelle France: Mémoire concernant la précieuse plante du gin-seng de Tartarie (1718) and Mœrs des Sauvages amériquains comparées aux mœrs des premiers temps (1724). Both texts permit a multi-level analysis of material dimensions of culture and knowledge in the history of knowledge, the first dealing with a botanical subject, the second an anthropological one. They convey a meta-reflective discourse on material-specific epistemological problems that is realized through narrative textual structures. These texts enable a structural view point of systemic functions of the materiality of knowledge in historical epistemological orders. Finally, they show exemplary and significant transmedia representation techniques and the associated textualization and visualization strategies.