scholarly journals Rape victims and victimisers in Herbstein's Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-111
Author(s):  
Oluyomi Oduwobi
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Sexual Aggression ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Literary Discourse ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
The Past ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

This paper examines how Manu Herbstein employs his fictionalised neo-slave narrative entitled Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade to address the issue of sexual violence against women and to foreground the trans-Atlantic rape identities of victims and victimisers in relation to race, gender, class and religion. An appraisal of Herbstein's representations within the framework of postcolonial theory reveals how Herbstein deviates from the stereotypical norm of narrating the rape of female captives and slaves during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade by creating graphic rape images in his narration. This study therefore shows that a postcolonial reading of Herbstein's novel addresses the representations of rape and male sexual aggression in literary discourse and contributes to the arguments on sexual violence against women from the past to the present.

scholarly journals Marital Rape: The Long Arch of Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 326-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Goodwin
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
Marital Rape ◽  
The Public ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Severe Degree ◽  
Affirmative Defense

If no permanent injury has been inflicted, nor malice, cruelty nor dangerous violence shown by the husband, it is better to draw the curtain, shut out the public gaze, and leave the parties to forget and forgive.State v. Oliver, 70 N.C. 60, 62 (1874)Prologue: The ContextSadly, sexual violence against women and girls remains deeply entrenched and politicized around the globe. Perhaps no other allegation of crime exposes a woman’s credibility to such intense hostility and imposes the penalties of shame and stigma to a more severe degree than alleging rape. Factors irrelevant to sexual violence, including the victim’s choice of clothing, hairstyle, and time of the attack frequently serve as points of searching inquiry, and scrutiny. Such extraneous points of critique further compound an atmosphere of shaming and stigmatization associated with sexual violence, but are seen as crucial in bolstering an affirmative defense and inevitably building the case against rape victims.

Many Seasons Gone: Memory, History, and the Atlantic Slave Trade

2009 ◽  
Vol 83 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-104
Author(s):  
Ted Maris-Wolf
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Ayi Kwei Armah ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

[First paragraph]African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame. Anne C. Bailey. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. 289 pp. (Cloth US $ 26.00)Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route. Saidiya Hartman. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. xi + 270 pp. (Cloth US $ 25.00)In Two Thousand Seasons, the great Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah describes the effects of centuries of European exploitation and violence in Africa and the alienation and death that separated Ghanaians in 1973 (when the book was published) from those before them. “Pieces cut off from their whole are nothing but dead fragments,” he laments. “From the unending stream of our remembrance the harbingers of death break off meaningless fractions. Their carriers bring us this news of shards. Their message: behold this paltriness; this is all your history” (Armah 1973:2). It is this seeming paltriness, this history of meaningless fractions that Anne C. Bailey and Saidiya Hartman explore in their latest works, identifying and mending shards of memory and written and oral fragments into recognizable and meaningful forms. As with Armah in Two Thousand Seasons, for Bailey and Hartman, “the linking of those gone, ourselves here, those coming ... it is that remembrance that calls us” (Armah 1973:xiii). Both of them, haunted by remembrance and driven by a personal quest for reconciliation with the past and a scholarly desire for the truth, are unwilling to accept the past as passed, or to settle for the scattered silence that so often substitutes for the history of Africans and those of the diaspora.

Measuring the Immeasurable: The Atlantic Slave Trade, West African Population and the Pyrrhonian Critic

1986 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Population ◽  
Global Estimate ◽  
Regional Characteristics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Difference Of Opinion ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

No problem has exercised Africanists for so long and so heatedly as the slave trade. Now that any difference of opinion as to its morality has ended, debate tends to concentrate on its economic and political aspects, particularly on its magnitude and regional characteristics. In the past few scholarly generations, sophisticated statistical manipulations have supplied more evidence, but it has been concentrated on the number of slaves who arrived in the New World. Nonetheless, dearth of evidence (sometimes total) regarding the other components of the trade has not seemed to discourage efforts to arrive at global figures and, by extension, to determine its effects on African societies.The present paper asks why this should be so, and wonders how any defensible conclusions can ever be reached about almost any facet of the trade that can go beyond ideology or truism. It concludes that no global estimate of the slave trade, or of any ‘underdevelopment’ or ‘underpopulation’ it may have caused, are possible, though carefully constructed micro-studies might provide limited answers. Under the circumstances, to believe or advocate any particular set or range of figures becomes an act of faith rather than an epistemologically sound decision

scholarly journals Assessing the Effects of Myths about Sexual Aggression on the Verisimilitude of a Victim-Complainant of Sexual Assault

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yurena Gancedo ◽  
Jéssica Sanmarco ◽  
Adriana Selaya ◽  
Andrea González-Dapía ◽  
Mercedes Novo
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Sexual Aggression ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Standard Of Proof ◽  
Provocative Clothing

Sexual violence against women is one of the most underre­ported criminal offences, and has one of the lowest con­viction rates. The main standard of proof is the victim’s-complainant’s testimony and the evaluation of credibility. In order to assess the effects of myths about sexual aggres­sion on the credibility of women and their testimony, a field study was performed. The study consisted of 353 par­ticipants (235 women), aged 16 to 72 years, who evaluated the credibility of a testimony of a victim-complainant of sexual assault where the type of narrative was manipulated (neutral, provocative clothing, and alcohol consumption), and responded to a measure of the acceptance of myths about sexual aggression. The results revealed the type of narrative had no effect on the evaluation of testimonial credibility, but an effect was found in the factors gender, and myths about sexual aggression. Succinctly, men con­ferred less credibility to a victim’s-complainant’s testi­mony (i.e., less victim-complainant honesty, and testimo­nial credibility), whilst attributing less responsibility to the aggressor-defendant. However, both men and women equally attributed responsibility to the victim-complainant for the sexual assault. Moreover, individuals sanctioning myths about sexual aggression attributed less honesty and credibility to the victim-complainant, and their testimony, whilst attributing less responsibility to the aggressor-de­fendant, and more to the victim-complainant. The impli­cations of the results on judgement-making are discussed.

scholarly journals Songs of Praise and Invocation: The Orisha Sacred Songs of Trinidad

Elements ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Paul
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
The Past ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Sacred Songs ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

The purpose of this project is to study and translate recorded Yoruba chants and praise songs of Trinidad over the past 65 years. Because of the horrific conditions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, almost all Orisha devotees have lost the meaning of the chants, and consequently, the emphasis is on the rituals. I seek to determine to what degree the chants sung in Trinidad have remained the same or changed and to what degree they have all departed from continental Yoruba. Acquiring the translations allows devotees to attain a philosophical understanding of the religion, and in doing so, this study aims at reconstructing and uplifting the Orisha religion of Trinidad.

Ok lá þar at óvilja hennar: A Reconsideration of Sexual Violence in the Old Norse World

2021 ◽  
pp. 036319902110532
Author(s):  
Jacob Bell
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade

Despite the popularized image of the raping and pillaging Viking warrior, the culture of sexual violence in Old Norse society has remained surprisingly understudied. This article uses skaldic verses, a literary genre produced in Iceland and Norway, mainly from the ninth through the fourteenth centuries, to suggest a reconsideration of sexual violence in the Old Norse world. It suggests that skaldic verses can help scholars discern a spatial and cultural geography of sexual violence against free men, women, and slaves, which suggests it was widespread and multidimensional and had ties to a pan-north Atlantic slave trade in the Viking Age.

scholarly journals Greek students’ attitudes toward rape

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 130
Author(s):  
Aikaterini Gari ◽  
George Georgouleas ◽  
Artemis Giotsa ◽  
Eleni Anna Stathopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Applied Sciences ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Rape Myths ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Students Attitudes ◽  
The University

Literature on sexual harassment and violence against women describes a variety of myths and stereotypes regarding partial or total responsibility of rape victims and their “enjoyment” of sexual violence. Rape stigma and rape myths are aspects of generalized attitudes toward victims of rape and rapists, while it seems that sexual violence remains a taboo in today’s western societies. This study explores Greek university students’ attitudes towards rape. A questionnaire created for the purpose of this study was administered to 950 Greek students at the University of Athens and at the University of Ioannina, divided into three groups: a group of students from the Faculty of Law, a group from Departments orientated to Humanistic and Social Sciences and a group of students from other Faculties and Departments of Applied Sciences. Factor analysis revealed four factors: “Rape victim’s responsibility”, “Defining the concept of rape”, “Rape motivation” and “Rapist’s characteristics”. In line with previous research findings, the results indicated that women were less accepting of conservative attitudestowards rape than men; they also seemed to reject attitudes of “blaming the victim” more, and to hold negative views of rapists. Additionally, the results showed that students of rural origin retain more conservative attitudes with respect to the victim’s responsibility and the rapist’s characteristics than students of urban origin. Finally, students in Law Departments seemed to have accepted more moderate attitudes than the other two groups of students; they mostly disagree with conservative attitudes regarding victim’s responsibilities along with the Social Science students, but they agree more with Applied Sciences students in defining rape.

scholarly journals The Crime of Rape and Sexual Violence against Women in Nigeria: A Comparison with Other Common Law Countries

Rechtsidee ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Ngozi Alili
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
The Law ◽  
Corroborative Evidence ◽  
Alleged Victim

This discourse is a comprehensive look at the offence of “rape” as a legal concept, taking into consideration, the premodial, mythical and legal beliefs and meanings associated therewith. It analysed recent statutory changes and developments in this area of the law, particularly under the English common law in contradistinction from the almost static provisions of some African penal statutes relating to the offence of rape. The propelling aim was to appreciate the difficulties associated with efforts to convict persons accused of committing the offence of rape and the legality of calling in aid corroboration in amelioration of these difficulties. It was observed that, the statutory ingredients of the offence do not accommodate such a practice. It became significant that the myths and traditional beliefs surrounding the claim of an alleged victim of rape imported the burden of a rebuttal on the accused. It was observed that sympathy on the part of the courts for alleged rape victims sway their decisions in favour of such victims. This emotional consideration by the courts may have informed he demand for corroborative evidence to seal all escape routes for the accused even when not statutorily provided for. Absence of corroborative evidence may on the reverse, favour the accused though the prosecutrix may concoct one to secure conviction. It was concluded that rape cases should be determined on the basis of the dry provisions of the relevant penal statutes devoid of extraneous considerations, such as corroboration.

scholarly journals Church Involvement in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Its Biblical Antecedent vis-à-vis the Society’s Attitude to Wealth

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Kojo Ennin Antwi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Church Involvement ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The Church

Slavery existed in most ancient cultures and continues to exist indirectly in some societies in its various forms. Though slavery was used openly in the past by ancient cultures to create wealth, it is today regarded as an act of injustice against humanity. The trans-Atlantic slave trade between the fifteenth and nineteenth century is no exception. Christians who claimed to have the love of God and humanity at the centre of their religion were involved in such atrocious trade practices to create wealth. The church’s involvement in this economic venture seems paradoxical and contrary to its mission of love for all humanity. This paper assesses the church’s involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade to unravel the motives of such a paradox. It traces the biblical antecedent to the slave trade vis-à-vis the society’s attitude to wealth. It explores how the Judaeo-Christian scriptures and the Greco-Roman world shaped the church’s understanding of slavery to see how the church perceived its practice and the motives for its involvement.

scholarly journals “Obey My Will Or Suffer”:1 Violence Against Women in Icelandic Folk Legends

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-43
Author(s):  
Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gender Based

AbstractThis article* will look at how domestic and sexual violence against women is presented in the Icelandic folk legend collections from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Gender-based violence is a subject relatively absent in Icelandic legend collections which were mostly told, collected and published by men (the exception being the collection of Torfhildur Þorsteinssdóttir Hólm). Violence plays a role in the subordination of women, and there is good reason to consider how violence against women is portrayed in the oral legends of the past. I will among other things consider the effect these particular legends might have had on those who heard them and examine the roles of the legends in maintaining and shaping a discourse which in many cases may well have attempted to normalise this violence.

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