Spivak and Kincaid: an Analysis of the Reproductive Rights of Subaltern

Colonizers utilize unethical reproduction as a form of domination against women– and in some cases of resistance, many women may refuse to bear children. Xuela, the protagonist of Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother is the representation of the colonized in the act of rebellion against their reproduction. Although she refuses to have children, even after pregnancy– she permeates self-love for her own body and sexuality. Her sexuality serves as a form of autonomy and power over her identity as a woman and over her ethnic identity as Carib. The communities around her treat her as a signifier and range from her childhood classroom to the couple she lives with.

Xuela’s community around her represents the colonizer of her identity and objectifies her, giving her an identity based on their interpretation. Through several demonstrations of masturbation, Xuela shows that she speaks strongly for her body self-love and her rights, despite her various displacements in life. However, Xuela’s perceived agency and her decision to not bear children may be a result of the hegemonic power that colonizers have over the colonized. The effects of settler colonialism and reproduction is illustrated through Dorothy Robert’s Killing the Black Body: Reproduction in Bondage; Making Reproduction a Crime; Race and the New Reproduction, Andrea Smith’s Conquest: Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide; “Better Dead than Pregnant”, and Gayatri Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? The Autobiography of My Mother takes place in Dominica.

After British colonization, the protagonist Xuela’s mother dies during childbirth and she experiences abandonment from her father at a young age. He abandons her with his laundress, only making visits to his daughter every time he drops off his dirty clothes. Without the guidance and close support of family members, Xuela grows to be a hardened individual who is manifested through self-loving her body. Her sexuality with men, including Monsieur LaBatte, Roland and Phillip is an example of her refusing to bear children and body’s rebellion against colonization by men. Xuela’s distant relationships with men may stem from her loveless childhood full of abandonment, and may have led to her refusal to be subservient based on her gender and also on the fact that she was a rare Carib.

The source of her self-love and appreciation is apparent in her habitual masturbation and sense of bodily odors, as Kincaid writes, “The smell of my underarms and between my legs changed, and this change pleased me… in private, then as now, my hands almost never left those places, and when I was in public, these same hands were always not far from my nose” (58). Xuela’s process of discovering herself is an example of introspection afforded to her autonomy of her own body. In Dorothy Robert’s Killing the Black Body: Reproduction in Bondage, she writes about the decades of female African American slaves forced to reproduce.

Black women at the time were forced to reproduce for economic incentives, but not entirely– because black women were victims of rape and sexual assault that did not result in pregnancy. Many mothers were stripped away from their children at birth as the slaveholder would sell the babies for profit. In the case of Xuela, she did not have her mother to guide her growing up, which caused her to be callous to childbearing of her own. As Kincaid wrote, “I believed that I would die, and perhaps because I no longer had a future I began to want one very much” (82). Her lack of childbearing knowledge makes her feel threatened for her own life and she later decides on an abortion.

She also mentions that she carries her life in her own hands– because she places the responsibility of her female identity within her autonomy, similarly to the black slaves who also induced abortions. In performing her own autonomy of having an abortion, Xuela goes by herself to see someone who may provide the service to her. She experiences grueling pain but does so because of her right to not be a mother. Kincaid wrote, “I claimed it in a dream. Exhausted from the agony of expelling from my body a child I could not love and so did not want, I dreamed of all the things that were mine” (89).

Her ability to claim what belongs to her is an example of autonomy– the small form of resistance some black slaves have in their reproductive rights. The rebellion pregnant slaves seek is due to the lack of protection for the pregnant mother and for the fact that her womb does not belong to her but instead, to the colonizer. Xuela refuses motherhood to a point where she declares infanticide provided she actually gives birth– she will refuse motherhood and allow the baby to suffer and eventually die (97). Xuela suffers agonizing pain to claim the right to her body, but also feels intense pleasure and love for her body at the same time. Dorothy Roberts argues in Killing the Black Body: Race and the New Reproduction that reproductive technology is more than an advancement for infertile families, but a form of patriarchal tool.

She acknowledges the way new reproduction technologies has helped many infertile families create families of their own– but she also examines the way it is a detriment to poor communities. Roberts equated the surrogacy with modern day slavery of the womb, where poor women had their wombs ‘bought out’ for rich families. At one point, Xuela is considered to be the womb through which Monsieur LaBette and Madame LaBette would have a child together. Madame LaBette is described by Xuela that, “[Madame LaBette] wanted a child, but her womb was like a sieve; it would not contain a child, it would not contain anything now” (76). Consistently, Xuela would mention how frail Madame LaBette is, equating her to a dried fruit.

Madame LaBette interprets Xuela as a signifier– implying Xuela’s identity as someone who is fertile and fruitful, ready to bear children that Madame LaBette can nurse as her own. Having a fertile young woman live in a household with a couple who cannot conceive, Madame LaBette has intentions of raising a child fathered by Monsieur LaBette– even out of infidelity. When Xuela experiences a confusing morning sickness, she approaches Madame LaBette, to find that, “Her voice had tenderness in it and sympathy, and she said it again and again, that I was having a child, and then she sounded quite happy” (81).

Xuela enjoys the pleasures of her sexuality, but she does not want to carry the responsibility of having a child for someone else– she lives with the LaBettes in exchange for housework, not a child. In relation to slavery, African American women hold wombs that do not belong to them, instead– the child she bears belongs to the slaveholder. Dorothy Roberts connects this with modern day reproduction technologies and the issue of surrogacy. In surrogacy, the womb that the surrogate mother holds does not legally belong to her, but she must give up her baby upon birth to the couple that paid her.

Similar to Xuela, she is granted a place to live as a semi-servant to her father’s friend, and expected to provide surrogacy to the infertile wife. After Xuela’s abortion, the despair exhibited by Madame LaBette shows that she expects Xuela to be the surrogate. Madame LaBette assumes to be the real mother of Monsieur LaBette’s child because she is not able to provide a child for him. She wants to hold a family with him in which she has a surrogate living under their household. The personal harm Madame LaBette takes from the abortion is described as mourning. “Her eyes were black and shiny with tears; the tears were trapped there, they never spilled out.

Her arms would reach out to me– I never stood too near her– then up to the wide-open blue sky as if she were drowning, her mouth open with no sound coming out” (94). This example shows women’s silence under men, and Madame LaBette’s lack of reproduction as a patriarchal tool of her husband. The silence is acknowledged by Xuela and examines a discourse in which knowledge is acquired through the colonized people’s observation. In Andrea Smith’s Conquest: Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide, she narrates the ways in which colonizers view Native women as inherently ‘rapable.’

The sexual attacks are not simply an attack on the female body but an attack of the culture– because of the derogatory and racist attitudes that ‘prompt’ the violence. This notion was believed to be the right given to the colonizers to take sexual advantages over women who were thought of as inferior. When Xuela is sexually attacked by Monsieur LaBette, she admits that it was a mixture of pain and pleasure while losing her virginity. She also mentions that, “[He] had placed his own large hands over my wrists and kept them pinned to the floor; when my cries had distracted him, he had clamped my lips shut with his mouth” (72).

The act of silencing Xuela’s cries is similar to an act of silencing a Subaltern attempting to speak. In silencing her and keeping her pinned to the floor, it is an act of control of Xuela in his house. In relation, Smith writes, “Patriarchal gender violence is the process by which colonizers inscribe hierarchy and domination on the bodies of the colonized” (23). This speaks volumes to the conditions of which Xuela lives under, as she is considered as an outsider and foreign of the LaBette household. Xuela’s refusal to reproduce an heir to her bloodline is a form of rebellion against a voice for her Carib identity. Because her mother who died during childbirth to her only child, Xuela feels that the Carib identity was never passed down to her.

While Andrea Smith’s Conquest: “Better Dead than Pregnant”: The Colonization of Native Women’s Reproductive Health argues that Native American women were not provided with much choice towards abortion; they were instead provided with sterilizations as the only option. Smith challenges the popular academic feminist notion of ‘Pro-Choice’, because Native American women’s choice of an abortion was rarely granted to her. The only option available to Natives was sterilization– which was not much of a choice to begin with. The motives behind sterilization are for racial and cultural genocide– perpetrated by American settlers.

Xuela’s decisions for not reproducing are an example of her autonomy but also a result of colonization in Dominica. Due to colonization, a loveless childhood and not knowing her mother creates a space for Xuela to reject reproducing for her nation. As Kincaid wrote, “[my body,] longing to conceive, mourning my heart’s and mind’s decision never to bring forth a child. I refused to belong to a race, I refused to accept a nation” (226).

According to Smith, this is the example of what reproductive rights and ‘choice’ should sound like, a first person account of an individual making the conscious choice not bear children. But did Xuela communicate a sense of clear, conscious decision or was it shaped by colonization and patriarchal dominance? Hegemonic discourse would argue that Xuela’s consent for sexual relationships with Monsieur LaBette and her abortion is not truly her consent, but only appears to be. According to Antonio Gramsci, hegemony is described as the power of the ruling class over the other classes to convince that their interests are interests for all. Domination is not exerted through force but subtly and at times unknowingly through persuasion.

The sexual relationships Xuela experiences with Monsieur LaBette may be an example of the power the LaBettes have in coercing Xuela to reproduce as a surrogate. However, within Xuela’s defiance and assumed autonomy, her abortion may also be a product of the hegemonic colonizer. The colonizers of Dominica had a goal, which was to control and replace the population of the Caribbean. Xuela’s position in life may be the one viewed as the intersection of Critical Race Theory, whereas blacks were forced to reproduce for slave labor (and modern day surrogacy), and Native Americans were encouraged not to reproduce to ensure population genocide.

Through several times, Xuela makes it clear that she has a choice to bear children. Within her autonomy, she wants her being to belong to herself and no one else. During her lengthy four-day abortion, she was dreaming of walking through her country, Dominica, which symbolizes her identity as a Native Carib. Then Xuela states, “That is how I claimed my birthright, East and West, Above and Below, Water and Land: In a dream. I walked through my inheritance, an island of villages and rivers and mountains” (89). Her abortion symbolizes this dream, an abortion and the cut of her bloodline to a colonized country that lost its culture.

She willfully gave up her culture and her Carib identity to the British and United Kingdom’s colonization of the land, which represents the colonization of her body. According to Smith, Xuela’s decisions may be molded by her loveless upbringing and identity as a ‘rare’ race because Smith wrote, “When a Native woman suffers abuse, this abuse is an attack on her identity as a woman and an attack on her identity as Native” (8). Xuela noted that people of Dominica no longer talk about the way Carib people are, they talk about the way Carib people “were”. The abuse that Xuela felt as a child by the laundress is an example of ostracizing her from any means of a family where she does not belong, which may result to why Xuela states, “I felt I did not want to belong to anyone, that since the one person I would have consented to own me had never lived to do so, I did not want to belong to anyone; I did not want anyone to belong to me” (104).

This is evidence that her upbringing has shaped her view of family, community, kinship and reproduction. In the reader Feminist Postcolonial Theory, edited by Lewis and Mills, it examines several roots of oppression through Western eyes. The several narratives demonstrate examples of women in their own academic settings, writing about their experiences of marginalization by the Western culture. As a third world woman, Xuela’s voice may be muted under colonialism, because Western perspective lacks in gaining knowledge of the hegemonic discourse. As Chandra Mohanty wrote in Under Western Eyes, “Western feminist writing on women in the third world must be considered in the context of the global hegemony of western scholarship– i.e., the production, publication, distribution and consumption of information and ideas” (52).

The information and ideas are created within the context of the colonized people’s culture and distributed in a manner in which they will understand. The novel, written as The Autobiography of My Mother, an ironic statement, because Xuela is writing about a life that is not hers– moreso, she is writing for her mother who she never met and is deceased. Kincaid makes this her statement that the Western eyes will never understand the position of those who are colonized. Gayatri Spivak discusses the route of colonization through interests and desires and the manipulation of power. Spivak writes, “We never desire against our interests, because interest always follows and finds itself where desire has placed it. And undifferentiated desire is the agent, and power slips in to create the effects of desire” (68).

The hegemonic control uses power and manipulates interests of individuals to follow their desires. Xuela’s perceived autonomy may in a sense be manipulated by the colonizer’s hegemonic power and guide her desire to no longer bear children. The power afforded to Xuela may be her ability to “speak for” herself, as Spivak argues that it will, “restore the category of the sovereign subject within the theory that most seem to question it” (73). With her decisions amongst herself with her sexual partners and with her abortion, Xuela speaks for herself and acts in a manner that is autonomous.

However, because of her choice of silence instead of being assertive in changing minds or voicing her opinions, she becomes a Subaltern that does not speak. The Subaltern is defined by Antonio Gramsci as anyone who is of the ‘inferior rank’ outside of the hegemonic power structure. The term is redirected by post-colonial studies against the overtly Westernized academic studies with an emphasis of the intersectionalities of race, gender, nationality, class and sex. A special feature of Subaltern within post-colonial studies is the notion of resistance the marginalized communities exert over the elite domination. While Xuela is viewed as the fertile surrogate for Madame LaBette, there is also a silence about reproduction that Xuela describes as vulnerability for women.

The silent Subaltern, between Madame LaBette– Xuela notes that, “vulnerability I felt was not of the body, it was of the spirit, the soul” (69). Xuela also mentioned that, “it was just at the moment when the creatures of the day are quiet but the creatures of the night have not quite found their voice. It was that time of the day when all you have lost is heaviest in your mind: your mother, if you have lost her; your home, you have lost it; the voices of people who might have loved you or who you only wish had loved you” (69). Spivak would argue that the relationship of Xuela to her mother is the voice of her mother, within Xuela is where her mother’s blood runs, and by not speaking Xuela would fail in representing her mother.

Because as Spivak wrote, “Representation is ‘speaking for’ as in politics, and representation as ‘re-presentation’ as in art of philosophy”(70). Xuela fails for representing her mother by blood, because she refuses to reproduce, the last of her mother’s racial group ends with Xuela. Xuela’s refusal to reproduce is a form of silent protest. She represents a Subaltern that does not speak. Xuela describes this as, “to confess your bad  deeds is also at once to forgive yourself, and so silence becomes the only form of self-punishment: to live forever locked up in an iron cage made of your own silence, and then, from time to time, to have this silence broken by a designated crier” (60).

The Subaltern is lost between what is described by Spivak as the womens consciousness, women’s being, women’s being good, and women’s desire– she is witnessed unfixed as the signifier, the inscription of the social individual (95). The silent cage Xuela describes is the evident of the Subaltern as a signifier, one who is interpreted by everyone outside of the cage. While Xuela is within the cage she cannot speak but she is afforded her ability to gaze from within. Her identity is lost between her autonomy of having children and reproducing for another couple– or the hurtful effects of colonization which makes her not want to reproduce.

Spivak argues that the Subaltern cannot speak. She mentions the practice of widow immolation, known as Sati in India. Because of this provoked the attention of many British settlers, they mandated policies and created a space where Spivak declared the case of, “White men saving brown women from brown men” (93). This was collectively analyzed by Ania Loomba in Dead Women Tell No Tales determining whether or not Subaltern women have agency of their own. Similar to Xuela– her attempt at agency and autonomy in choosing not to bear children may be a product of colonizers.

As Loomba writes, “By combining a philosophical scepticism about recovering any Subaltern agency with a political commitment to making visible the positioning of the marginalized” (251). Xuela’s attempt in writing an autobiography of her mother is confirmed in Loomba’s piece where Dead Women Tell No Tales. Xuela’s dead mother cannot tell her story– the colonized people’s voices cannot be heard. Even if the West is concerned with hearing their voice, as much as Xuela is being interpellated– she cannot respond for the colonizer to understand her position.

Xuela, the powerful protagonist of Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother has no agency of her own. As much as she appears to be autonomous in her decisions upon reproduction and sexual relationships with men– she lacks a voice and does not reproduce. Her lack of reproduction is lacking in reproducing the culture of Carib peoples and Carib bloodline. Xuela is the Other and she remains one as much as she writes in her mother’s autobiography. She is hailed to tell her story and her side of experiences as a Carib indentity– but the patriarchal tool of her reproduction has shown that she cannot speak.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the Subaltern Speak? Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Lewis, Reina, and Sara Mills. “Dead Women Tell No Tales.” Feminist Postcolonial Theory: a Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003. 241-62. Print. Lewis, Reina, and Sara Mills. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Postcolonial Theory: a Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003. 49-62. Print. Roberts, Dorothy E. “Reproduction in Bondage.” Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Pantheon, 1997. 22-55. Print.

Dorothy Roberts narrates the two basis for Reproduction in Bondage in Killing the Black Body, which includes: dehumanizing African American men and women and controlling women’s sexuality and reproduction. The control of black women’s reproduction was through economic incentive but not entirely (as sexual assault/rape was reported high with not as many births resulting from them).

The control of men was based on reproduction as well, because some slave-owners owned what they called ‘studs’, muscular black men who would be forced to reproduce with fertile black women. Male slaves who were not as muscular or fit were at times castrated to prevent them from passing on their ‘genes.’ This illustrates how slave-breeding came to knowledge because slaves were treated similarly to livestock– whereas ‘breeding’ was a concern of the slave-owners. Roberts includes a note on maternal-fetal conflict, in cases where slave-owners would beat/whip their pregnant slaves but knowing not to harm the fetus– this created an atmosphere that already separated the mother from her unborn child.

Many mothers were stripped away from their children at birth, as the slaveholder would sell the babies for profit. This example of the lack of protection for the pregnant mother and unlikelihood of keeping her newborn led to many self-induced abortions and infanticide.

Alexander Crummel, a Black Nationalist writer noted that the rape of black women by slave-owners was ‘grossest of passions’ because of the incentive for future generations of slavery. Roberts narrates the fury of white women, who blamed the black women for their husbands’ unfaithfulness to them. Because black women were seen as biologically lascivious, they were blamed by white women for sexually seducing their husbands. Either way in cases—black women were not supported for but scapegoated for many faults of the slave-owners families.

Roberts, Dorothy E. “Making Reproduction a Crime.” Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Pantheon, 1997. 150-201. Print. Roberts argues that reproduction is seen by Americans as a form of crime committed by black women. She introduces the concept of “crack babies” and shows how law enforcement criminalizes against black women. More so, Roberts shows how crack (comparatively to other drugs) is a tool of racism against black women.

Because of the association of crack to black women– they are far more penalized and imprisoned for abusing it. Roberts was able to show that the judicial system punishes black women for having children– not necessarily for being crack addicts or the health/welfare of the baby. The healthcare system does more to screen black women for drug use during pregnancy while ignoring to report abuse of marijuana, opiates and barbiturates by white women.

The attempt to eliminate social problems becomes a racist issue as Roberts considers a 20th century eugenics movement. This is seen as eugenic because of the judges mandating black women to use Norplant, or public defenders representing pregnant black crack users to have abortions. Because having an illegal third-trimester abortion will grant her a lesser sentence than giving birth to a crack baby. These are examples that highlight the punishment for black women having babies that society would deem as a burden.

Roberts, Dorothy E. “Race and the New Reproduction.” Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Pantheon, 1997. 246-293. Print. Roberts argues that reproductive technology is more than an advancement for infertile families, but a patriarchal tool. She examines how race shapes the way technology assists with births and the features of surrogacy and in vitro fertilization (IVF). The use of surrogacy is done in place of infertile mothers but for fertile fathers to pass their bloodlines. The surrogacy program is an example of those in the upper socioeconomic class and standing to reproduce– while those who are paid surrogate mothers are at an economic disadvantage.

The IVF is popularized in the past by media that advertise keeping strong ‘bloodline’ families and racial purity. The cost of IVF and advanced healthcare system tailors this to the predominantly white families. Whereas the use of ‘advanced’ reproductive technology by healthcare systems is to promote birth control, sterilization and abortion. The commoditization of the ‘womb’ is linked to the era of slavery—where slave-owners placed a value on their female slave’s fertility. Similar to surrogacy, whereas surrogate mothers are more than likely to be minorities in the lower socioeconomic class—they must give up their babies to someone who ‘bought’ it.

The baby becomes an economic appropriation, similar to the days of slavery as the mother would serve only as a womb. As stated in Chapter 1, this reinforces the maternal-fetal conflict where mothers are detached from their baby prior to birth because of legal, government and economic reasons. Roberts gives the example of Sickle-Cell Anemia which genetically affects blacks more so than any other race.

The disease is passed on by parents who both carry a trait– a gene that healthcare professionals have been screening them for. Roberts gives the example of abuse through the healthcare system in cases whereas doctors sterilized or implanted Norplant on non-consenting patients with the recessive sickle-cell trait. In the 20th century, advancement in healthcare technology furthermore attempts to increase the fertility of white women but decrease/prevent the fertility of black women.

Smith, Andrea. “Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide.” Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2005. 7-33. Print. Andrea Smith argues that sexual violence is not simply a form of patriarchal control over women– but a form of colonial and racist control. She examines why Native American women are treated as “rapable” by their colonizers and how they have been terrorized for centuries. Understanding postcolonialism, Smith articulates the overlapping of intersectionality faced by Native American women and women of color.

The fact that they are a minority group, colonized and female puts them in several positions deemed as inferior or subordinate to the colonizer. In these cases, the colonizers deem these women as “rapable” and used for exploitation– because they are already deemed inferior with ‘dirty bodies.’ The sexual attacks are not simply an attack on the female body but an attack of the culture– because of the derogatory and racist attitudes that ‘prompt’ the violence. This type of cultural violence creates a culture that internalized the only way for redemption was self-hate within the Native American culture.

This completes the genocidal project of self-destruction, something the colonizers aimed to do to eliminate the Native American population for the sake of colonizing more land. The theory of ‘disappearing’ Indians was taken into consideration, as Smith notes the Western view where there are less Indians equals more land to colonize. The raping of Native women lessened the blood-quantum ratio in Native Americans which decreased their eligibility for land. The conflict amongst Native Americans and Westerns over land is seen as a continuous social warfare that is permeated through sexual violence of women. It is a form of patriarchal control that reinforces the power of one culture over another.

Smith, Andrea. “Better Dead than Pregnant: The Colonization of Native Women’s Reproductive Health.” Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2005. 79-107. Print.

Andrea Smith challenges the mainstream Pro-Choice movement because of the lack of attention to women of color reproductive rights. Her blunt but straightforward quote of ‘better dead than pregnant’ is voiced amongst many settler colonialists. Whereas a high bounty was paid for those who killed Native American women and children in order to exterminate the culture. Smith examines the sterilization/long term birth control abuse of Depo-Provera and Norplant by the Indian Health Services (IHS) who assumed that sterilization and long term birth controls were the cure to social problems.

In many cases Native American women were sterilized without written or oral consent by the federally funded HIS. Smith reinforced Dorothy Robert’s argument that women of color were more likely to be criminalized and tested for drug abuse during pregnancy—because they lack the resources and privileges awarded to white women. In the cases of drug abuse or alcohol abuse during pregnancy, many mothers are coerced into having their tubes tied in exchange for a decreased jail sentence.

Depo-Provera and Norplant was tried on many women of color shortly after assuming the approval of the FDA. These long term birth control were paid for by Medicaid for insertion but were not free to remove, thus women were kept on birth control for the full five year terms. The side effects of Norplant included irregular and long term bleeding/spotting during the course of the first year. These side effects affected Native women’s participation in tribal activities because the culture did not recognize menstruating women—a case that judges healthcare professionals did not take into consideration when ordering Norplant on Native women.

Due to the policies on the reservation and legal issues with healthcare, the Hyde Amendment pulled funding of abortions for the IHS. In these cases, women were forced to have sterilization where abortion was not available to them. Smith is beyond the pro-choice agenda because of its eugenic history and association for privileged middle-class women, instead—she asserts that she supports reproductive rights for all. She critiques the pro-choice groups’ true meaning of “free” choice with non-consenting abusive histories.