Memories of Enslavement and Sexual Violence

Bahl, Eva

Angela Davis stated that “slavery relied as much on routine sexual abuse as it relied on the whip and the lash” (1981: 40) and bell hooks stated that “no scholarly attention has been given to the oppression of black women during slavery” (1982: 22). Forty years later, there has been research on this matter and sexual violence is increasingly recognized as a vital and structural part of the systems of enslavement in the Atlantic World. But taboos and knowledge gaps remain around the issue. Based on empirical research from my fieldwork in Ghana and Brazil for the project “Individual and collective memories of slavery and the slave trade: A contrastive comparison of different communities, generations and groupings in Ghana and Brazil” (funded by the German Research Foundation, 2022-2025), I will discuss references to the topic of rape and sexual violence that I’ve come across in family and community (hi)stories and in guide narratives at memorial sites.

Davis, Angela Y. 1981. “Rape, Racism and the Capitalist Setting.” The Black Scholar 12(6):39–45.

hooks, bell. 1982. Ain’t I a Woman. Black Women and Feminism. London/Winchester: Pluto Press.