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A Poetics of RelationRelating the Female Experience

A Poetics of Relation: Relating the Female Experience [Aeurocentric artistic and literary imagination has long fixed non Western women as exotic and erotic objects. The “historical” and fictional representations of Afro-Caribbean women were part of a colonial dis-course seeking to legitimize the enslavement of Africans by relegating them to bestiality. Mystifying the blacks’ sexuality was a most effective way to dehu-manize them; hence the black woman was construed as an irrational wanton. In this respect she was opposed to the white Creole, invariably character-ized by virginal purity, while the mixed-raced woman gradually became the embodiment of sensuality. In actuality, such a racial categorization aimed to palliate the acute shortage of white women in the early colonial period, the slaveholders’ sexual claims on their female slaves being conveniently validated by this alleged promiscuity.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Poetics of RelationRelating the Female Experience

Ferly, Odile
Springer Journals — Nov 17, 2015
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25 pages

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2012
ISBN
978-1-349-29866-2
Pages
17 –42
DOI
10.1057/9781137089359_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Aeurocentric artistic and literary imagination has long fixed non Western women as exotic and erotic objects. The “historical” and fictional representations of Afro-Caribbean women were part of a colonial dis-course seeking to legitimize the enslavement of Africans by relegating them to bestiality. Mystifying the blacks’ sexuality was a most effective way to dehu-manize them; hence the black woman was construed as an irrational wanton. In this respect she was opposed to the white Creole, invariably character-ized by virginal purity, while the mixed-raced woman gradually became the embodiment of sensuality. In actuality, such a racial categorization aimed to palliate the acute shortage of white women in the early colonial period, the slaveholders’ sexual claims on their female slaves being conveniently validated by this alleged promiscuity.]

Published: Nov 17, 2015

Keywords: Female Character; Female Experience; Woman Writer; Female Protagonist; Caribbean Woman

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