Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive

Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive offers a groundbreaking reconstruction of the experiences of enslaved women of African descent in 18th-century Barbados, particularly Bridgetown, using a patchwork of surviving archival documents. The study challenges traditional historical methodologies by interrogating the 'mutilated historicity' of enslaved women in archives, where they often appear disfigured and violated. It introduces new epistemologies to recover what might never be recoverable, embracing uncertainty and unresolvable narratives. By focusing on violence in its physical, archival, and epistemic configurations, the work provides a nuanced understanding of the lives of enslaved women while critiquing the discipline of history itself.

Newman, B. N. (2017). Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. Journal of American History, 104(3), 758–759. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jax338