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

Main entry:

Fuentes, Marisa J., author.

Title & Author:

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

Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2016]
©2016

Description:

217 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Series:

Early American studies

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

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.

Resources:
Full text available from MyiLibrary

ISBN:

0812248228 (hardcover ; alk. paper)
9780812248227 (hardcover ; alk. paper)
0812224183 (paperback ; alk. paper)
9780812224184 (paperback ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Enslaved women Barbados Bridgetown Social conditions 18th century.
Women Barbados Bridgetown Social conditions 18th century.
Slavery Barbados Bridgetown History 18th century.
Enslavement history
Women's Rights history
Human Rights history
Femmes esclaves Barbade Bridgetown Conditions sociales 18e siècle.
Femmes Barbade Bridgetown Conditions sociales 18e siècle.
Ethnic relations
Slavery
Enslaved women Social conditions
Women Social conditions
Sklavin
Bridgetown (Barbados) Ethnic relations History 18th century.
Barbados
Barbados Bridgetown
Bridgetown

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Early American studies.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 307014
Call No.: BIB 252557
Status: Available

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