å Friday, September 22nd, 2017

A woman who embodies traits that are caring, giving, strength, kindness and love could be considered to have the qualities a mother figure should have. Motherhood is expressing these characteristics towards a woman’s child. In the readings by Angela Davis and Silvia Federici, the joy that is supposed to accompany the motherhood status is practically obsolete. There are no sweet stories of mothers and their children in either piece; the roles women had to endure during those times were that of fear and pain. Given that the African women entrapped in slavery were seen only as laborers, the acts of mothering children was subsequently taken away, and the label of “breeder” was pasted unto them (Davis, 11). This also made it easier for the slave owners to yank young children away from their mothers and sell them as slaves as well. In this respect the women were somewhat overvalued than their male counterparts, because they could do work in the fields and bear children which could be sold off and therefore increase profits of the slave owners. They were able to disassociate the beauty of motherhood from female African slaves and turn them into breeding appliances. Similarly in the Federici reading, women were degraded and their rights were controlled by the European government. Expecting mothers were no longer able to rejoice in childbirth surrounded by the other women in their community and midwives were scrutinized by male doctors, who eventually stole their roles in the delivery room. The government put precedence to the unborn child over that of the women requiring midwives and doctors to save the child and not the mother in life or death situations. Women were victimized and punished under false allegations of infanticide or even reproducing without the government’s consent. The European government wanted full control over the population during the era of accumulation and just as the slave owners did in Davis’s reading, were able to turn women into baby making machine (Federici 102,103).

Being far away from their own country, African slaves were forced into a life in America where they would be dehumanized and manipulated into tools for labor. They had to leave behind their whole lives and give up their way of living. However, according to the works of Davis and Morgan, contrary to their working environment, a home became a place where African slaves could actually live like a human being, similar to how they would have lived back in Africa, a life abundant with tradition and culture. Davis first introduces the concept of African slaves’ home and family through the work of Herbert Gutman and his book, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom. In it, Gutman emphasized how a family in slavery still flourished and exercised autonomy by living under traditional customs, in a way relieving themselves from the reality of being a slave (Davis, 1983:18). In an environment that was demoralizing and unrelenting, these slaves found the strength to live on by holding onto a part of their old life, remembering that they are part of a distinct culture and society. Davis shows that a home was a means of reminiscing their former lives and holding onto their African tradition and culture.

Morgan similarly portrays a home as a place of carrying out their African tradition. One example that Morgan provides is circumcision. The ritual of circumcision, particularly for female children, was meant to signal the start of adulthood, further symbolizing the linkage between a daughter and her mother, grandmother, and even ancestors (Morgan, 1997:65). Because of the environment that they lived in, where their social status was almost non-existent, it was necessary to find a substitute and alter the ritual in some way. Nonetheless, African slaves strived to carry on their tradition and customs even in Americas. This act of holding onto their origins and practicing traditional rituals within their families represent an effort to humanize themselves, and to not forget that they are more than what they are treated as. This further insinuates the importance of a home, a place that allowed them to live like a human being.

Both Davis and Morgan portray a home as an important aspect of lives of African slaves, because it provided comfort and familiarity by allowing them to carry out their traditional customs.

I found the concepts of labor in relation to the female body to connect through the works of Federici and Morgan. We are able to see in two different narratives how women’s bodies are exploited in terms of labor through different means of manipulation. For instance in Federici’s Caliban and the Witch” which covers the fourteenth through sixteen-hundreds we are introduced to labor changes through the anti- enclosure riots. When these Lords took away the land that was being farmed by both men and women it also aided in taking away manual labor jobs from women thus forcing them into reproductive labor. Another way in which Federici’s works demonstrated the exploitation of a woman’s body in terms of labor was through the population decline that was disguised as the faults of women for not reproducing enough. Another direct link to the female reproductive system and reproductive labor. These examples shown by Federici highlight an internal mark on the female body for her place in the work force among society. Versus Morgan’s work which I feel demonstrates the more external links to the exploitation of the female body. In multiple references throughout this work, Morgan quotes the work of English European travelers who refer to indigenous women’s breasts as low and sagging. Specifically in reference to the African woman, this false visual was to used in English European literature as a means to reinforce that their place was solely that of enslaved labor. This racist depiction of low sagging breast’s was explained by these English travelers as a means to actually be so heavy and low hanging that it would act as a “natural” anchor to hold them in their work station which would in turn allow the person to be able to produce more, over a longer period of time. ( Morgan 14) The reason I am revisiting Morgans work is due the way in which indigenous women were depicted in this literature. These indigenous women masculinized through the false exaggeration of their bodies, which was a way in which to link them only to manual labor. Also in Morgans work, we are able to see how differently the white women were depicted. In contract to the Indigenous female, the white women were describes as perky breasts while embodying extreme femininity exiling them from any manual labor. This is the factor in which helped me bridge these two works together. In Morgans work extreme femininity exiled these women from manual labor but it acted as another force in which to confine them to reproductive labor as well, thus connecting the two works by Federici and Morgan.