The Khajiit and Argonians, the peoples the Tamrielic mainstream places outside its categories of men and mer, and the politics embedded in that classification.
LESSON 01
The Category Itself
Interrogate the men-mer-beastfolk scheme before using it.
Who drew the categories
The tripartite division of Tamriel's peoples into men, mer, and beastfolk is not a neutral taxonomy discovered by observation. It is a scheme used by the dominant human and elven societies, and the third category is defined largely by exclusion from the first two. Peoples placed in it have historically been subject to enslavement, exclusion from legal protection, and denial of political recognition. The category therefore does real work in the setting, and that work is the first thing a student should examine.
Sources: TES-MORROWIND, TES-ESO
Consequences of classification
The clearest demonstration is Morrowind, where Argonian and Khajiit slavery was a legal institution and was defended by appeal to precisely this classification. When the Empire incorporated Morrowind it did not immediately abolish the practice, and the accommodation is recorded in the terms of that incorporation. A student who adopts the tripartite scheme uncritically inherits the assumptions that justified those arrangements.
Sources: TES-MORROWIND, TES-ESOLESSON 02
The Khajiit of Elsweyr
Examine a people whose internal diversity is routinely flattened by outsiders.
Furstock variation
Khajiit sources describe substantial variation in form among Khajiit, conventionally organized by furstock, with the form an individual takes tied to the phase of the moons at birth. The range described is wide, extending from forms close to common quadrupeds to forms readily mistaken for other Tamrielic peoples. Outside accounts almost always ignore this and present a single generic Khajiit type, which is a straightforward failure of observation on the part of those accounts.
Sources: TES-ESO, TES-SKYRIM
Religion, trade, and reputation
Khajiiti religious tradition centres on a distinct pantheon with its own account of creation and the moons, which does not map neatly onto either imperial or Altmeri theology. Khajiit are also strongly associated in outside sources with caravan trade and with criminality, and these two associations frequently appear together. The pairing should alert students that a reputation for thieving attaches conveniently to a mobile trading population that outsiders wished to regulate.
Sources: TES-SKYRIM, TES-ESOLESSON 03
The Argonians and the Hist
Study a people whose social organization rests on a non-human intelligence.
The Hist
Argonian society is described as bound to the Hist, the trees of Black Marsh, which are presented as intelligent and as playing a direct role in Argonian development and identity. This is not an ornamental religious detail: the connection is described as materially shaping Argonian physiology, cognition and collective decision-making. Any account of Argonian behaviour that omits the Hist is describing something other than what the sources describe.
Sources: TES-MORROWIND, TES-ESO
Resistance and the limits of empire
Black Marsh is consistently depicted as the province least amenable to outside control, a result of terrain, disease environment, and the Hist connection together. Argonian responses to Morrowind's long history of slave-taking include sustained resistance, and in the Fourth Era a large-scale Argonian invasion of a weakened Morrowind is recorded. Framing Argonians solely as victims of Dunmeri practice misses their standing as an effective political and military actor.
Adopt methods suited to peoples whose record is written mostly by others.
The asymmetry of the record
For both Khajiit and Argonians, a disproportionate share of surviving description was produced by imperial administrators, Dunmeri institutions, and travellers, rather than by the peoples themselves. This asymmetry does not mean nothing can be known; it means the known material must be read against the grain, attending to what an administrator needed to be true. Where Khajiiti and Argonian self-description is available it should be given priority over external characterization.
Sources: TES-MORROWIND, TES-ESO
Terminology in this programme
This programme uses the term beastfolk only when describing the Tamrielic classification itself, and otherwise names peoples as they name themselves. The distinction is not decorative. Using an outsider category as though it were a natural kind smuggles a contested political claim into what looks like neutral description, which is exactly the error this course exists to prevent.