The Wombs of Women: Race, Capital, Feminism

Françoise Vergès

Published by Duke University Press 2020

The Wombs of Women

Race, Capital, Feminism

Françoise Vergès
Translated by: Kaiama L. Glover

In the series Theory in Forms

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478008866

Overview
Contents

About this book

Françoise Vergès examines the scandal of white doctors forcefully terminating the pregnancies of thousands of poor women of color on the French island of Réunion during the 1960s, showing how they resulted from the legacies of the racialized violence of slavery and colonialism.

Author / Editor information

Françoise Vergès is an antiracist feminist activist, a public educator, an independent curator, and the cofounder of the collective Decolonize the Arts and of the free and open university Decolonizing the Arts. She is the author of Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Metissage, also published by Duke University Press, and numerous books in French.

Kaiama L. Glover is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College.

Reviews

“In her wonderful book, Françoise Vergès creates a methodology for teasing out the various strands within which French Republican thought has sustained gender, class, and racial inequality. In doing so, she conceptualizes a new lexicon for postcolonial critique. From the scandal in Reunion to the forms of sovereignty that work within this logic, feminism needs to reconfigure itself if it is to be a force adequate to the future in the face of its previous ignorance. Vergès’s book takes us there.”

-- Ranjana Khanna, author of Algeria Cuts: Women and Representation, 1830 to the Present

"Verges' book… sets itself as an example of what kind of work is necessary to reveal the coloniality of power which persisted after the formal end of colonization. In other words, this book teaches us the kind of work needed to practice a decolonial feminism, a 'killjoy politics', a counterhegemonic strategy which appears fundamental to understand the genesis of femonationalism. There is a particularly valuable contribution made by the book which promises to become one of the most relevant new acquisitions in decolonial and feminist studies."

-- Erika Bernacchi Ethnic and Racial Studies

“It is precisely the stories that do not get told in the grand narrative of French republicanism—and, more pointedly, the why of their non-telling—that animates Françoise Vergès’s decolonial, antiracist feminist work, The Wombs of Women (seamlessly translated from the French by Kaiama Glover in supremely engrossing prose).”

-- Chelsea Stieber Public Books

"Vergès's ability to make us focus specifically on colonial and post-colonial France is a feat worthy unto itself and makes this an important contribution to French feminist theory and post-colonial historiography.… An important book for any nation unpacking the not quite extinguished remnants of colonial paternalism.… It should be read alongside more so-called traditional histories of France, to act as a corrective to ongoing narratives of French self-identity."

-- Robin Mitchell H-France

"One of the ambitious aims of this book is to spark the development of a decolonial feminism which Vergès asserts requires delving into the past and rescuing ‘entire periods of history’ (p 115) from oblivion. This book achieves this so well, depicting the urgent need to rethink feminism through a decolonial lens and offers a significant contribution to postcolonial studies."

-- Natasha Lila Rooney Postcolonial Studies

"Vergès makes a powerful case for the geography closest in—here, the womb and its capacity for reproductive futures—as the grounds of any decolonial feminist history worthy of the name."

-- Antoinette Burton French Politics, Culture & Society

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Translator’s Introduction Kaiama L. Glover Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 / The Island of Doctor Moreau Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2 / The Rhetoric of “Impossible Development” Dependency, Repression, and Anticolonial Struggle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
3 / The Wombs of Black Women, Capitalism, and the International Division of Labor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
4 / “The Future Is Elsewhere” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
5 / French Feminist Blindness Race, Coloniality, Capitalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
Conclusion Repoliticizing Feminism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 184

eBook

Published: July 17, 2020
ISBN: 9781478008866