Files
Abstract
While the obligation to provide sexual labor was a defining feature of enslavement for women throughout the slaveholding societies of the Atlantic World, much of this labor was hidden and shrouded in silence. Drawing on a corpus of legal documents, police correspondence, medical dissertations, and printed journalistic sources, “The Libidinous Commerce: Race, Sexuality, and Slavery in Rio De Janeiro, 1850-1888,” examines both the seen and unseen intimate labor performed by enslaved women in Rio de Janeiro from 1850-1888. It details how brokers and traders colluded to traffic young enslaved women into the city of Rio to be marketed and sold for intimate, sexual labor; how slaveholders seized upon enslaved women’s non-biologically reproductive sexuality for personal pleasure and the creation of short-term profit; and how, in turn, enslaved women struggled against their bondage, employing the law as a tool of resistance.
This dissertation argues that in addition to motherhood and reproduction, the sexual economy of slavery was predicated upon non-biologically reproductive intimate labor that extended into the realm of the personal and private. In doing so, this work demonstrates how slaveholders—both male and female—leveraged and exploited enslaved women’s sexuality for profit and pleasure not as an incidental function of slavery but as a central, lucrative part of the system.