Gendered geographies

Motherhood, slavery, law, and space in mid-nineteenth-century Cuba

Bibliographic Data

ID4348924
AuthorsCamillia Cowling (University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume27
Issue6
Pages939-953
Publication date2018-09-19
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueWomen s History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0961-2025 • E-ISSN: 1747-583X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09612025.2017.1336845
OpenAlexW2551699630
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited2

This article explores the negotiations over physical space that underpinned women’s legal claims in mid-nineteenth-century Cuba. Legal petitioning revealed women’s surprising mobility, journeying between rural areas and the capital city. The cases are striking because women experienced ‘spatial subjection’ under slavery in particularly intense ways. The use and abuse of physical space by slaveholders and the colonial state facilitated the appropriation of their reproductive lives, while their opportunities for mobility were more limited than were those of enslaved men. Women’s journeys were frequently undertaken on behalf of children, who had been separated from them through sale. Focusing on gender, law, and the politics of space and slavery in their lives and journeys helps us avoid reifying the ‘mobilities’ of Atlantic subjects. For these women, mobility was probably undesirable as an end in itself. Instead, they sought fixity, as a creative, resistive counter to the abuses wrought on their bodies and families by the constant dislocations of the plantation system

Ancient history · Appropriation · Colonialism · Mobilities · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Law

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