Dispossessed lives : enslaved women, violence, and the archive / Marisa J. Fuentes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fuentes, Marisa J., author.

Series:

Early American studies.

Early American Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enslaved women--Barbados--Bridgetown--Social conditions--18th century.

Enslaved women.

Women--Barbados--Bridgetown--Social conditions--18th century.

Women.

Slavery--Barbados--Bridgetown--History--18th century.

Slavery.

Bridgetown (Barbados)--Ethnic relations--History--18th century.

Bridgetown (Barbados).

Genre:

Biographies.

Sources

History

Biographies

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (228 pages) : illustrations, maps.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2016]

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

In the eighteenth century, Bridgetown, Barbados, was heavily populated by both enslaved and free women. Though their stories appear only briefly in historical records, Marisa J. Fuentes creates a portrait of urban Caribbean slavery in this colonial town from the perspective of these women. Fuentes takes us through the streets of Bridgetown with an enslaved runaway, inside a brothel run by a freed woman of color, in the midst of a white urban household in sexual chaos, to the gallows where enslaved people were executed, and with violent scenes of enslaved women's punishments. In the process, Fuentes interrogates the archive and its historical production to expose the ongoing effects of white colonial power that constrain what can be known about these women. Combining fragmentary sources with interdisciplinary methodologies that include black feminist theory and critical studies of history and slavery, Dispossessed lives demonstrates how the construction of the archive marked enslaved women's bodies, in life and in death. By vividly recounting enslaved life through the experiences of individual women and illuminating their conditions of confinement through the legal, sexual, and representational power wielded by slave owners, colonial authorities, and the archive, Fuentes challenges the way we write histories of vulnerable and often invisible subjects. -- Provided by publisher.

Vividly recounting the lives of enslaved women in eighteenth-century Bridgetown, Barbados, and their conditions of confinement through urban, legal, sexual, and representational power wielded by slave owners, authorities, and the archive, Marisa J. Fuentes challenges how histories of vulnerable and invisible subjects are written.

Contents:

Introduction

Jane : fugitivity, space, and structures of control in Bridgetown

Rachael and Joanna : power, historical figuring, and troubling freedom

Agatha : white women, slave owners, and the dialectic of racialized gender

Molly : enslaved women, condemnation, and gendered terror

"Venus" : abolition discourse, gendered violence, and the archive

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-204) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9780812293005

0812293002

OCLC:

951076737