Archives of Reproduction: Intersectional Approach to Narratives of South Asian Indenture

Abstract

Much like the majority of South Asian diasporic cultural studies, analyses of literary and historical narratives of indentureship are often limited to the critical lens of race and racialization. In recent years, “caste” as a category of analysis has emerged as a leading approach alongside racial identity. However, these connected approaches fall short in addressing the historical and cultural remembrance of indentured women. In this presentation, I will present a case for the need of “reproduction” and “reproductive agency” to be considered when detangling the historical and literary representations of the South Asian indentured woman, specifically on the Caribbean plantation. Within the interpretative framework of “intersectionality,” scholars of racial capitalism have demanded the need to consider reproduction, especially coerced, unfree or semi-free reproduction, to be a crucial analytic. By studying “freedom papers” from British archives of indenture and alternative readings contemporary literature by David Dabydeen, Ryhaan Shah and Peggy Mohan, this presentation argues that an intersectional study of race, caste and reproduction offers a renegotiation of histories of anti-colonial struggle in indentured communities and illuminates questions related to experiences of violence and dispossession among descendants who attempt to reconstruct the silos and lacuna of their familial histories.