According to James Scott in his book Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, the sort of mapping that Jefferson uses in Notes on the State of Virginia is a "state's attempt to make a society legible." The experience of reading Jefferson's Notes was one of having the feeling of being at the top of a church spire looking down across the land beyond. The observer isn't so much part of the land, but is above the land as a ruler would be, necessarily. Scott claims that "the designs of scientific forestry and agriculture and the layouts of plantations, collective farms, ujamaa villages, and strategic hamlets all seemed calculated to make the terrain, its products, its workforce more legible--and hence manipulable-from above and from the center (Scott 2). When you define something, you outline its edges and determine where that something stops and where something else begins. In rulership, the ruler needs to know what he or she has sovereignty over: what exactly is the scope of the rule and where does it end for someone else to take responsibility. So, Jefferson appears to be doing just that.: as he outlines the state of Virginia (measures and delineates) he accesses its quality and his subjective opinion fills in the map. Without his subjectivity, he wouldn't know where the work should be directed.
Scott uses the example of the manipulation of a beehive. You cannot just go in directly to reconfigure the hive in some way without some sort of destruction or disruption to occur to the system of the hive. So, there needs to be a plan in place and a surveying of the quality and structure of the hive. Scott also talks about remaking reality through state power. For Jefferson, he needs to know the reality first and foremost, before anything at all can be changed because what if you disrupt something that cannot be replaced? If we compare "seeing like a state" to "seeing like an Enlightenment subject", we can see a divergence happening from the way we are used to seeing knowledge and experience being handled. Typically, through these Enlightenment narratives, we see societies and places being described in depth and their use value and efficiency being analyzed "as is". Even if we are getting a very subjective, visceral viewpoint from the writer (as in Celia Fiennes' narrative Through England on a Side Saddle), we are still seeing straight out facts through a certain lens of experience. With Jefferson, we are seeing through the eyes of someone whose sole purpose is to govern. Not only is he giving us an inventory of what he has to work with, he is accessing it according to what the potential is of the state to not only function, but to thrive and become better (improvement). Jefferson is taking the present moment as a starting point and is seeing into the future.
One chapter stuck out to me from the book: Query 18 on Manners. "There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us." So, here Jefferson sees strong evidence that it is the manners of the people that is causing the practice of slavery to continue. "The most boisterous passions", "the unremitting despotism", and "degrading submissions" are being pinpointed as the likely cause. The need for the people to continue to uphold these norms is the reason why the practices are not changing. This is where Jefferson diverges from previous narratives. In Grainger's Sugar Cane, practices are not being criticized and asked to be changed entirely. Jefferson, however, is using his control and sovereignty over the state in order to address future change that will occur under his watch.
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