Gender and Violence in Cape Slave Narratives and Post-Narratives

Although most slaves' experience of slavery is lost to posterity, in some cases historians are fortunate enough to work with so-called slave narratives. The existence of many criminal court cases enables the historian to hear the voice of the slave clearly - albeit briefly and under strained ci...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:South African Historical Journal Vol. 62; no. 3; pp. 444 - 462
Main Author: Murray, Jessica
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis Group 01.09.2010
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects:
bodies
Cape slave narratives
Case studies
Court decisions
Discourse
Fiction
Gender
Historiography
History-Africa-Southern Africa
History-Slavery
Legal history
Modernity
Narratives
slave women
Slavery
Slaves
South Africa
Trauma
Violence
Women
South Africa
ISSN:0258-2473, 1726-1686, 0258-2473
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Although most slaves' experience of slavery is lost to posterity, in some cases historians are fortunate enough to work with so-called slave narratives. The existence of many criminal court cases enables the historian to hear the voice of the slave clearly - albeit briefly and under strained circumstances. Recently, some work has been done on these slave cases, but not in terms of narratives. Likewise, there is a new interest in post-narratives dealing with Cape slavery, but nobody has as yet connected these modern reincarnations with the earlier historical narratives. This article then, explores Cape slave narratives and post-narratives by focusing on the ways in which the bodies of slave women become the sites on which both physical and discursive violence is enacted. The nature of available texts necessitates a reading strategy that teases out information from the gaps and silences in the narratives in an attempt to reveal the variegated texture of the lived experience of slave women in eighteenth-century South Africa. The article demonstrates how the violent experiences of slave women, and the resultant trauma, complicate a clear-cut distinction between fact and fiction. Through a juxtaposition of court records and a fictional post-narrative, the article uses a literary reading to access women's stories.
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ISSN:0258-2473
1726-1686
0258-2473
DOI:10.1080/02582473.2010.519896