"This is primitive hoodoo," objected Roswell Bounce.
* * * * * * * * * *
Roswell uses the term "hoodoo" to mean nonsense. He doesn't buy into Merle's belief that two spectacularly different experiences are representative of some singular physical law of the universe. But he's also, in his use of the terms 'primitive' and 'hoodoo', evoking, in an imperialist manner, the beliefs of some Black southerners, hoodoo being a sympathetic magic of African-based folk cures. The reduction of another culture's beliefs to a synonym for nonsense expresses the amount of Othering often done to non-white, non-European peoples.
On the other hand, Roswell Bounce, we've learned, is a cynic and a pragmatist. Of course he isn't going to believe in non-Western medicinal beliefs that amount to no more than folklore and superstition! Oh no! Now I'm doing it! Damn my imperialist, cynical nature!
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