Between Human and Animal
Between Human and Animal
The Disabling Power of Slave Law
Through a close examination of British Caribbean slave laws, this chapter argues that British Caribbean slave law always recognized the humanity of the slave, and the law’s power derived from its ability to see Africans’ humanity and effectively disable it. Slave law suspended Africans and their descendants between the human and the animal through disability-inducing laws. The principle of maternal inheritance was a legal notion that positioned enslaved women as legally equivalent to animals. The slave codes of Barbados and Jamaica disabled enslaved Africans by limiting their mobility, freedom, and autonomy, and by divesting them of political status. The codes encouraged the physical impairment and disfigurement of captives by sanctioning punishments that disabled and disfigured as well as by establishing a culture in which whites could punish captives with impunity in whatever way they desired.
Keywords: slave law, Caribbean, humanity, disability, maternal inheritance, animal, Barbados, Jamaica, punishment, disfigurement
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