Interruption: Rethinking Circum-Atlantic Gender Variance of the Enslaved in Eighteenth-Century West Africa and Colonial Louisiana

Hamzić, Vanja

Abstract

The book project I currently work on seeks to offer a critical historical analysis of the all but forgotten eighteenth-century lifeworlds of the enslaved West Africans, who were brought largely from the ports of Senegambia to colonial Louisiana. I argue that paying attention to one particular aspect of being in, transitioning and surviving these worlds can interrupt not only the stubborn formations of silence in the colonial archive but also the ways that ostensibly tongue-tied archive is continuously used to legitimise and loudly proclaim as ‘historical’ only certain kinds of subjectivity and life of the enslaved Africans. That aspect is gender, or more specifically, gender variance of the enslaved.

Citation

Hamzić, V. (2019, May). Interruption: Rethinking Circum-Atlantic Gender Variance of the Enslaved in Eighteenth-Century West Africa and Colonial Louisiana. Paper presented at Roundtable Session on Critical Directions: On Gender, Law and Intersectional Subjectivities, Law and Society Association Annual Conference, Washington, DC, USA

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Roundtable Session on Critical Directions: On Gender, Law and Intersectional Subjectivities, Law and Society Association Annual Conference
• Start Date: May 1, 2019
• End Date: May 1, 2019
• Acceptance Date: May 27, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 5, 2020
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference