Motherhood in slave plantations reveals the systemic violence of the colonial system. Enslaved women faced double exploitation: productive in the fields, sexual and reproductive on the estate. The family separations imposed by the masters broke the mother-child bonds from a very young age, while rapes and forced pregnancies denied any bodily and emotional autonomy. This reality reveals how the slave system dehumanized women by denying their status as mothers and instrumentalizing their reproductive capacity. Addressing this theme allows us to understand the intergenerational traumas and daily resistances deployed by these women to preserve, despite this violence, a form of dignity and family transmission.
With Domitille de Gavriloff, a doctor at EHESS and recipient of the Chancellery of Paris universities 2025 and the thesis award from the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery by Les Anneaux de la Mémoire, in partnership with NOLA xo NALA.
Conference proposed as part of the exhibition "Maternities, Archaeology of the Maternal Figure" from April 10, 2026, to January 10, 2027, at Chronographe.
Source: Nantes Métropole