Birthing Herstory: Reproductive Labor and Slavery Re-Productions on the Antebellum and Academic Plantations

• In Event: What Is the Black Maternal Health Crisis and What Is It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?

Abstract

Objective/Purpose
Davies (2003) writes, “It is intended that the academy is perhaps the most colonized space. By this I mean, it is a site for the production and re-production of a variety of discourses which keep in place certain colonial structures'' (p. ix). I argue that these colonial structures include the ways in which universities seem forward thinking, progressive and liberal, but actually operationalize plantation politics (Squire et al., 2018; Williams et al., 2021), carceral logics (Shange, 2019), and slavery re-productions. In this paper, I make critical connections between the antebellum and academic plantations, particularly as it relates to Black women’s reproductive labor, including my own.
Theoretical Perspectives
The theoretical perspective that guides this paper is the afterlife of slavery, which Hartman coined (2007) as a way to explicitly name the remnants of chattel slavery in the United States. It captures the “continuous and changing present of slavery’s as yet unresolved unfolding” (Sharpe, 2016, p. 13-14). Hartman (2016) would later liken the slave ship to a womb, acknowledging the ways that Black women’s contemporary experiences are defined by material relations, reproductive capacities and historical regulations placed on our bodies (Cooper Owens & Fett, 2019; Prather et al., 2018), offering a lens through which to examine the gendered aspects of the afterlife of slavery in the academy.
Methods/Modes of Inquiry/Data Sources
Anzaldúa (1999, 2009, 2015) conceptualized autohistoria‐teoría as a way to bring the researcher into greater consciousness and knowledge of history, the self, and the contemporary world. Using this methodology, I use a wide range of methods at the intersections of autoethnography, historical analysis, and archival research to provide parallels between the painful collective memories of enslavement and the violence of our present narrative. Some of these connections across the antebellum and academic plantation include the ways that Black kinship ties are delegitimized and surveilled; the privileging of productive labor over reproductive labor; and prioritizing white interest over the needs of the self or family. Yet, I document across time assorted forms of resistance, or labors of love, among Black mothers as we reclaim our humanity, cultural heritage, and ways of knowing and being mothers. These efforts include but are not limited to breastfeeding as reparations, choosing reproductive labor as a communal investment, relying on faith and spirituality, (re)membering our history (Dillard, 2012), and rest as resistance (Hersey, 2022).
Arguments/Conclusions/Scholarly Significance
The significance of this paper is that it not only names the parallels and remnants of enslavement as it relates to Black women’s reproductive labor but begins the necessary work of dismantling systems of oppression by radically reimagining and creating anew in the academy. As such, this paper is an invitation for Black women to actualize new commitments in their roles as mothers and scholars. It is also a clarion call for reproductive justice and institutional investments in Black people that move beyond placating performative actions and instead toward substantive action to decolonize and abolish plantation politics in the academy.

Author

• Amber Neal-Stanley, Purdue University