“Prison of the Womb: Gender, Incarceration, and Capitalism on the Gold Coast of West Africa, c. 1500–1957” with Sarah Balakrishnan

Buymeacoffee.com/everythingisideologyPatreon.com/everythingisideology Show notes: We are joined once again by historian and writer Sarah Balakrishnan to discuss her article “Prison of the Womb: Gender, Incarceration, and Capitalism on the Gold Coast of West Africa, c. 1500–1957” the conversation explores a largely erased history of indigenous prison systems in the Gold Coast and the central role women’s bodies played in the development of debt, trade, and colonial economies from the fifteenth century through the twentieth.Drawing from archival discoveries, oral testimonies, and overlooked colonial records, Balakrishnan traces how women were held as collateral in systems of credit, hostage-taking, and imprisonment long before and during European colonial rule. The discussion examines the emergence of debtor’s prisons in West Africa, the gendered logic of incarceration, the relationship between kinship and finance, and the ways colonial administrations simultaneously condemned and depended upon these prison systems for economic stability.Along the way, we discuss mercantile capitalism, palm oil economies after abolition, Victorian colonial morality, matrilineal social structures, public women and prostitution, and hostage-taking, and the violent intersections of sexuality, reproduction, and governance. The conversation also reflects on the ethical and emotional weight of archival work, particularly the testimonies of incarcerated women whose voices survived in scattered colonial documents despite deliberate attempts to erase these systems from official history.Biography: Sarah Balakrishnan is a Canadian-Indian writer and scholar based in the Department of History at Duke University. Balakrishnan is the 2022 Narrative Prize winner, the winner of Narrative Magazine’s Best Under 30 writing contest, and a finalist for the Cecilia Joyce Johnson Award for Short Fiction from the Key West Literary Seminar. Since 2020, BalaKRISH NIN has served as a fiction editor at The Maple Tree Literary Supplement. Her fiction writing has been supported by grants from Craigardan, Hedgebrook, and American Short Fiction. Balakrishnan received a PhD in History from Harvard University in 2020 and a BA in History and Political Theory from McGill University in 2014. She was a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge, a postdoctoral fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, and a postdoctoral fellow in the History Department at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Balakrishnan scholarly research has appeared in a number of prestigious venues, including The Journal of African History, The Journal of Social History, and Comparative Studies in Society and History.Links: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/64BC1FC4663980DC8003820860462F1B/S0010417522000469a.pdf/div-class-title-prison-of-the-womb-gender-incarceration-and-capitalism-on-the-gold-coast-of-west-africa-c-1500-1957-div.pdf