AHA Session 267
Conference on Latin American History 62
Conference on Latin American History 62
Saturday, January 6, 2024: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Mission I (Parc 55, Fourth)
Chair:
Lara E. Putnam, University of Pittsburgh
Papers:
Comment:
The Audience
Session Abstract
Scholars now have the benefit of a full generation of pioneering work by feminist historians, historians of slavery, and feminist historians of slavery who have pulled matters of sexual violence and coercion out of the stigmatized shadows. Meanwhile, norms of silencing have also shifted in the societies we live in, leading to new public discussion of (and sometimes, consequences for) myriad forms of abuse and harassment. Breaking silence—and pushing back against the systems of reporting and recording that tend to mask or minimize experiences of victimization—has seemed a laudable and shared goal. But what are the limits to that project? What risks or costs may we need to weigh? Are all silences created equal? Are some stories simply too painful to touch? This panel brings together case studies from seventeenth-century Iberia, the transatlantic slave trade, the nineteenth-century Caribbean, turn of-the-century Central America, and late-twentieth-century Mexico to ask: which silences should we break? What cautions does an ethic of care demand?
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