Mutilated Historicity

Mutilated historicity is the condition in which enslaved people — especially women — enter the archive only through the force that acted upon them: through scars, brands, criminal accusation, runaway advertisements, punishment logs, and sexualized descriptions. They do not simply "appear" in the historical record; they appear in fragments already shaped by violence. The concept, developed by Marisa Fuentes, names the archival condition that historians must contend with rather than paper over when writing about enslaved women's lives.