Details

Subject(s)

• Enslaved women—Barbados—Bridgetown—Social conditions—18th century [Browse]
• Women—Barbados—Bridgetown—Social conditions—18th century [Browse]
• Slavery—Barbados—Bridgetown—History—18th century [Browse]
• Bridgetown (Barbados)—Ethnic relations—History—18th century [Browse]
• Slavery—Caribbean Area—History [Browse]
• Slavery—Caribbean Area—History—Sources [Browse]
• Enslaved women—Caribbean Area—Biography [Browse]

Series

Early American studies [More in this series]

Summary note

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.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Source of description

Print version record.

Language note

Text in English.

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
• Index
• Acknowledgments.

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ISBN

• 0812293002 ((electronic bk.))
• 9780812293005 ((electronic bk.))

OCLC

951076737

Doi

• 10.9783/9780812293005

Statement on language in description

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