Fantasies of Consent: Black Women's Sexual Labor in 19th Century New Orleans The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Owens, Emily Alyssa. 2015. Fantasies of Consent: Black Women's Sexual Labor in 19th Century New Orleans. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845425 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Fantasies of Consent: Black Women’s Sexual Labor in 19th Century New Orleans A dissertation presented by Emily Alyssa Owens to The Department of African and African American Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of African American Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts July 2015 © 2015 –Emily Alyssa Owens All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham Emily Alyssa Owens Fantasies of Consent: Black Women’s Sexual Labor in 19th Century New Orleans Abstract Fantasies of Consent: Black Women’s Sexual Labor 19th Century New Orleans draws on Louisiana legal statutes and Louisiana State Supreme Court records, alongside French and Spanish Caribbean colonial law, slave narratives, and pro-slavery writing, to craft legal, affective, and economic history of sex and slavery in antebellum New Orleans. This is the first full-length project on the history of non-reproductive sexual labor in slavery: I historicize the lives of women of color who sold, or were sold for, sex to white men. I analyze those labors, together, to understand major elements of sexual labor in the history of slavery. I theorize the meaning of sexual labor and imagine the kinds of world(s) these arrangements brought into existence, and the ways that sex and its attendant affects articulated pleasure and violence within those worlds. This project offers the framework racialized sexual commerce to name the capacious intersection of sexual commerce and racial commerce, in order to imagine a singular, integrated sexual economy. This project also frames sexual labor outside of dominant scholarly approaches that seek out evidence of rape and consent. Building on these two foundational frameworks, this project argues that the antebellum sex market trafficked in affective objects, that is, affective experiences attached to labor (sex) and made into the primary commodities of this market. Fantasies of Consent asks what kinds of pleasures the bodies of women of color were called upon to produce for white men within the sex economy, what kinds of pleasures they themselves were able to inherit, and how both sets of pleasures emerged from and were therefore imbricated within the violence of the market. I argue that in the sex market, there was no pure consent—no pleasure, no freedom—that was not already shaped by the market through which it was articulated. Affective objects remade the violence of a sex trade that lived and breathed because of slavery as pleasure, revealing the impossibility of disentangling pleasure from violence within antebellum sexual commerce. ! iii ! ! Contents Acknowledgments……………………………………………..v Introduction Racialized Sexual Commerce …………………………………..1 1 Affective Objects………………………………………….25 2 Consent Sexual Violence in Liberalism’s Void ………………………....53 3 Promises Sexual Labor in the Space Between Slavery and Freedom………....83 4 Quadroon The Erotics of Safety and Danger in Racial Indeterminacy…….....128 5 Freedom Long Term Liaison and the Price of Consent…………………...150 Epilogue Desire……………………………………………………..181 Bibliography……………………………………………..191 iv Acknowledgements The writing of this project is marked by serendipity: it is only because the books I needed to read had already been written, because the conversations I needed to hear bubbled up around me, and mostly, because the people I needed to learn from crossed my path and offered help, advice, and cups of tea. For all the stars that aligned just so, I am grateful. I am enormously grateful to my committee, who shepherded this project from its infancy and through many twists, turns, pauses, and false starts since then. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham has been my guide for a decade; her abiding belief not only in my project, but in me, is quite simply the reason I am here. Robin Bernstein, who taught me how to “read like a superhero” and give gifts to my readers, is a model of outstanding feminist teaching and mentorship. Walter Johnson’s wit and his practice of teaching and writing with unwavering commitment to justice have buoyed me along at many points in this journey. Vincent Brown has been a delightful conversation partner, and has inspired me to keep creativity at the center of my method. Several institutions have supported my research. I am grateful to Meg Brooks Swift and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, which has supported my research since I was an undergraduate; to the Charles Warren Center for American History and Arthur Patton-Hock and Larissa Kennedy, the always-friendly faces of the CWC; to the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia and especially to Erica Armstrong Dunbar, who is a fierce mentor and is changing the landscape for scholars of color doing research in Early America. I conducted research at various archives throughout this project, and am grateful to the knowledgeable archivists who provided guidance and insight. Thanks first to Bruce Raeburn at Tulane’s Hogan Jazz Archive, whose insight about the collection’s Storyville holdings structured my earliest digging in archival sources, and to the Historic New Orleans Collection, whose collection of Storyville’s Blue Books shaped early iterations of this project. I am indebted to Irene Wainwright, who helped me sift through collections of emancipation papers at the New Orleans Public Library. Many thanks go to The Library Company of Philadelphia’s Krystal Appiah, curator of African American history, for being deft with the collection and for, just as importantly, being a kind face in the reading room. Mindy Kent at Harvard University’s Law School Library showed me the ropes of legal research and was always generous with time, enthusiasm, and new avenues of inquiry. Finally, enormous thanks goes to Florence Jumonville and James Lien at the University of New Orleans’s Earl K. Long Library, keepers of the Louisiana State Supreme Court Collection, which is the backbone of this project. In order to do any work in these archives, I needed a place to sleep. Luckily for me, folks in far away places offered places to lay my head, but even more luckily, they offered new and lasting friendships. Jeff Lockman and Mark Townsend welcomed me to New Orleans many times, and introduced me to the very best red beans and rice (to be eaten, properly, on a v Monday) I have had to date. Teresa Wallace and John Chou opened their home to me for a whole semester in Philadelphia. The two of them filled my time there with evenings filled with delicious dinners and lively, heartfelt conversation, and feline companionship in the form of the inimitable Rosie and Sammy that kept words flowing during the day, staving off loneliness while I was far from home. I look forward to many, many happy returns to these new friends. Back at home, I was lucky to be able to produce this project from the home-base of a rich university community. In the Department of African and African American Studies, I am grateful for many teachers, interlocutors, and friends, including Lawrence Bobo, Glenda Carpio, Marla Frederick, Alejandro de la Fuente, Henry Louis Gates, Elizabeth Hinton, Biodun Jeyifo, John Mugane, Tommy Shelby, Werner Sollors, and Ashley Farmer, Peter Geller, Amber Moulton, Lizzy Cooper Davis, and Lisanne Norman. The staff of the department have a way of making things tick, and I am incredibly thankful for Leanne Chaves, Kathleen Cloutier, Cassandra Fradera, and Gisele Jackson for the zillions of appointments made, funding secured, emails answered, technology wrangled, and, above all, friendly words day after day after day. The Committee on Degrees in the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, including Brad Epps, Alice Jardine, Caroline Light, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Amy Parker and Linda Schlossberg taught me to think as an undergraduate, and has remained an intellectual home in my time in graduate school. The Graduate Consortium of Women’s Studies led me to a writing group that provided structure and support in a key phase of this project. The Hutchins Center has provided constant stimulation. The Warren Center’s seminar communities, “Empire, Sovereignty, Migration, and Diaspora: Transnational America from Above and Below” and “Everyday Life: The Textures and Politics of the Ordinary, Persistent, and Repeated” each left an indelible mark on this project. I have been mentored by a network of feminists of color who have shepherded me through this process: Jayna Brown has uplifted me with humor, honesty, and imagination; Kimberly Juanita Brown has read drafts, strategized next steps, and provided pep talks; Adrienne Davis has understood and encouraged this project; Marisa Fuentes has been an early reader and a inspiration in the study of sex and slavery; Jeffery Q. McCune, Jr. has been a source of energy and excitement; C. Riley Snorton has been a model of drive, focus, and friendship; and Kyla Tompkins has offered sage advice and a source of support on many levels. I am grateful for the sustaining friendships I made at Harvard. Scott Poulson-Bryant and Rhae Lynn Barnes were my first friends in graduate school, and remain my favorite people to run into in the Yard.