âThis Sack So Fullâ: Enslaved Womenâs Use of Sacks in Antebellum America

Kathleen B. Casey

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Chapter 3 âThis Sack So Fullâ

Enslaved Womenâs Use of Sacks in Antebellum America

In: The Cultural Construction of Hidden Spaces

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Kathleen B. Casey

Kathleen B. Casey
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 37â51

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004694729_005

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Abstract

In nineteenth-century America, privacy was deeply circumscribed by racial, economic, and gender privilege. In this context, enslaved women were the least likely group to enjoy privacy and most likely to have their bodies violated in myriad ways. This essay examines how enslaved women used sacks to manufacture their own concealed spaces, creating small but critical measures of power and privacy in an environment designed for their brutal exposure and vulnerability. Enslaved women accessed sacks in a variety of ways, but they often repurposed them to create private toolkits which aided in their survival and liberation. Analysing the role these sacks played allows us to see not only how structures of power operated in antebellum America but how enslaved women in particular used textiles in their attempts to disrupt those structures. Arguing that sacks, bags, and purses have been vitally important objects in the histories of disenfranchised people, but especially women of colour, this essay analyses slave narratives and oral history interviews to reveal how enslaved women created and used sacks, bags, and purse-like containers to negotiate the most oppressive conditions of their lives.

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The Cultural Construction of Hidden Spaces

Essays on Pockets, Pouches and Secret Drawers

Series:Â Spatial Practices, Volume: 40

Cover The Cultural Construction of Hidden Spaces

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004694729

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 07 May 2024

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Front Matter

Part 1 Room of Oneâs Own: Bags, Pockets and Boxes

Part 2 Pockets and Transgression

Part 3 Hidden Spaces, Magical and Supernatural

Part 4 Systems of Identity

Part 5 Artefacts: the Production of Hidden Space

Part 6 Hidden Space as Literary Trope

Part 7 Appendix

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Chapter 3 âThis Sack So Fullâ

Enslaved Womenâs Use of Sacks in Antebellum America

Abstract

Citation Info

Share link with colleague or librarian

The Cultural Construction of Hidden Spaces

Essays on Pockets, Pouches and Secret Drawers

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Chapter 3 âThis Sack So Fullâ

Enslaved Womenâs Use of Sacks in Antebellum America