Names Unknown: Affect, Agency, and Incomplete Histories of 'Liberated African' Women in a Mid-Nineteenth Century World

Marcus Filippello, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

On 14 October 1848, three women arrived at the Court of Petty Sessions at Halfway Tree in the Parish of Saint Andrews in colonial Jamaica. Court records described each woman as “an African,” indicating they belonged to the small community of ‘Liberated Africans’ who had contracted out to work on various plantations throughout the colony shortly after being “freed” from illicit slaving vessels by the British Navy. They appeared in court because they accused the manager of the plantation where they were employed of mistreatment. In court proceedings and a forgoing investigation, the women gave testimonies in an African language, likely Yorùbá, which were translated by an interpreter and recorded by a clerk. These records offer rare glimpses into the lives of individuals who experienced enslavement, recapture, and “liberation” before emigrating to a colonial outpost in the nineteenth century. Yet how should we to sift through the layers of translation to hear their voices? Can we discern the underlying meanings of their testimonies to identify a more accurate reflection of their experiences and intentions? Can other seemingly isolated archival fragments allow us to trace the passages these women, and others like them, took from Africa along the currents of a new middle passage to the sugar plantations and courts of Caribbean colonies? This paper seeks to answer these questions through an investigation of various archival sources, alongside interpretations of psychoanalytical theory, and aims to highlight affect and agency as prominent themes.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 5. State Power