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A review by bahareads
Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba: La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841-1844 by Aisha K. Finch
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
The book's thesis is the rural slaves of African descent helped to organize and lead one of Cuba's most memorable resistance struggles. The movement of 1844 cannot be understood apart from the revolts of 1843 or separated from the political architecture of West and Central Africa. In the broadest sense she seeks to understand what happened in rural Black communities during the years leading up to 1844 repression She traces the outlines of Black political culture in rural plantation work that produced insurgent struggle and transcended its limitations.
Finch is countering previous ideas that the Spanish colonial government made up the Black rebel movement to persecute and dismantle the upwardly mobile free people of colour in the particular region. Few scholars have developed into the landscape of Black political life in Western Cuba after 1844 and before 1868. Recent historical debates have shifted to highlight links between 1844 and international debates over the slave trade and colonial rule. Few scholars have examined the centrality of Black historical actors in the project of nation-making in Cuba.
Finch places women at the center of the narrative opening up new theoretical possibilities for the entity known as slave rebellion. She uses a pedagogy of state terror and believes the lives of the enslaved (political subjectivities, social and community formations, and gendered identities) offer important ways to understand the making of this and other slave movements.
The IMPORTANCE of this book lies in its contention that a group of slave dissidents shaped Cuba's largest anticolonial endeavours before the opening of independence in 1868. Finch seeks to excavate a longer narrative for the Black political struggle that has been obscured by the state. She wants to muddy categories of slave struggle by showing slave women in a different light, and she wants scholars to think more expansively about how slave insurgencies and other liberation struggles are brought to life.
Finch's archival approach was interesting. The reading practice employed questions an approach to the archive first and last as a diagnostic of colonial pathos, fear, and fantasy It is suggested that the attempt to acknowledge the violence of the archive can sometimes produce other kinds of violence in the way we remember our histories. She weaves a path through the archive's epistemological violence by reading state documents as an index of colonial power and self-fashioning & texts with multiple authors. Most importantly she considers the silences as texts with gendered implications.
The significance of this book is Finch moves rural Black people's stories to the forefront by exploring visions of resistance that developed in rural Cuba 1841-44. She calls attention to the majority organizing collectives and individuals in the movement: slave women and non-elite men.
It contains two strands of knowledge: the lengths the colonial state would go to contain its threats and endless possibilities for black degradation under slavery.
The (my fav) methodology Finch uses in her book is her expanding upon Stephanie Camp's idea of rival geographies. "Use of plantation space was highly contested and planters sought to exert spatial and temporal control over black bodies, yet these bodies pushed back creating rival geographies." + "Mapping out public and liminal spaces where enslaved reclaimed their bodies, time, and relationships will enable us to understand how Black Cubans created their own rival geographies."
A lot to be said but this book is fantastic
Finch is countering previous ideas that the Spanish colonial government made up the Black rebel movement to persecute and dismantle the upwardly mobile free people of colour in the particular region. Few scholars have developed into the landscape of Black political life in Western Cuba after 1844 and before 1868. Recent historical debates have shifted to highlight links between 1844 and international debates over the slave trade and colonial rule. Few scholars have examined the centrality of Black historical actors in the project of nation-making in Cuba.
Finch places women at the center of the narrative opening up new theoretical possibilities for the entity known as slave rebellion. She uses a pedagogy of state terror and believes the lives of the enslaved (political subjectivities, social and community formations, and gendered identities) offer important ways to understand the making of this and other slave movements.
The IMPORTANCE of this book lies in its contention that a group of slave dissidents shaped Cuba's largest anticolonial endeavours before the opening of independence in 1868. Finch seeks to excavate a longer narrative for the Black political struggle that has been obscured by the state. She wants to muddy categories of slave struggle by showing slave women in a different light, and she wants scholars to think more expansively about how slave insurgencies and other liberation struggles are brought to life.
Finch's archival approach was interesting. The reading practice employed questions an approach to the archive first and last as a diagnostic of colonial pathos, fear, and fantasy It is suggested that the attempt to acknowledge the violence of the archive can sometimes produce other kinds of violence in the way we remember our histories. She weaves a path through the archive's epistemological violence by reading state documents as an index of colonial power and self-fashioning & texts with multiple authors. Most importantly she considers the silences as texts with gendered implications.
The significance of this book is Finch moves rural Black people's stories to the forefront by exploring visions of resistance that developed in rural Cuba 1841-44. She calls attention to the majority organizing collectives and individuals in the movement: slave women and non-elite men.
It contains two strands of knowledge: the lengths the colonial state would go to contain its threats and endless possibilities for black degradation under slavery.
The (my fav) methodology Finch uses in her book is her expanding upon Stephanie Camp's idea of rival geographies. "Use of plantation space was highly contested and planters sought to exert spatial and temporal control over black bodies, yet these bodies pushed back creating rival geographies." + "Mapping out public and liminal spaces where enslaved reclaimed their bodies, time, and relationships will enable us to understand how Black Cubans created their own rival geographies."
A lot to be said but this book is fantastic