Slavery, Violence, and Unbound Sexual Violability

Patrice Douglass • University of California, Berkeley

September 27 @ 6pm via Zoom: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/98168770558

Arguably sexual violence under slavery has been compartmentalized as primarily rape and breeding. Contrarily this talk interrogrates how narrowing the scope of slavery's sexual practices underscores the breadth, magnitude and totality of its occurences. In this respect, this talk interrogates instances of antiblack sexual(ized) violence in the antebellum archive that are not easily articulable as sexually violent and lack attributions of value, reason, and logic to maintain a slave economy. These examples are employed to develop a theory of sexual violability for the slave as a status that is not contained by specific practices or historical moments, but is constituent of the (re)production of the slave as passibility towards the infinite fortification of the Human.

Consent & Subjection
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