The wombs of women : race, capital, feminism
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The wombs of women : race, capital, feminism
（Theory in forms / edited by Nancy Rose Hunt and Achille Mbembe）
Duke University Press, c2020
- : pbk
- Other Title
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Le ventre des femmes : capitalisme, racialisation, féminisme
Available at 3 libraries
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Library, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization
: pbkFERE||396||W11948833
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the 1960s thousands of poor women of color on the (post)colonial French island of Reunion had their pregnancies forcefully terminated by white doctors; the doctors operated under the pretext of performing benign surgeries, for which they sought government compensation. When the scandal broke in 1970, the doctors claimed to have been encouraged to perform these abortions by French politicians who sought to curtail reproduction on the island, even though abortion was illegal in France. In The Wombs of Women-first published in French and appearing here in English for the first time-Francoise Verges traces the long history of colonial state intervention in black women's wombs during the slave trade and postslavery imperialism as well as in current birth control politics. She examines the women's liberation movement in France in the 1960s and 1970s, showing that by choosing to ignore the history of the racialization of women's wombs, French feminists inevitably ended up defending the rights of white women at the expense of women of color. Ultimately, Verges demonstrates how the forced abortions on Reunion were manifestations of the legacies of the racialized violence of slavery and colonialism.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Translator's Introduction xiii
Introduction 1
1. The Island of Doctor Moreau 1
2. The Rhetoric of "Impossible Development": Dependency, Repression, and Anticolonial Struggle 29
3. The Wombs of Black Women, Capitalism, and the International Division of Labor 49
4. "The Future Is Elsewhere" 63
5. French Feminist Blindness: Race, Coloniality, Capitalism 89
Conclusion: Repoliticizing Feminism 115
Notes 125
Index 157
by "Nielsen BookData"