ABSTRACT

When Mélie, an enslaved girl, was whipped, raped, and burned, the magistrates of Guadeloupe charged her master, the white François Rivière Sommabert, with murder. A central pillar of Sommabert’s defense strategy was that he was mad, and therefore could not be held responsible for his actions. In contrast, the prosecutors portrayed him as a cannibalistic monster in order to justify allowing the enslaved witnesses to testify against him and the conviction of a white planter for abusing his slaves. Though the claims of madness and monstrosity sought opposite ends for the defendant, both rested upon the premise of his abnormality, as well as a sharp distinction between him and the rest of the white slave-holding Creoles of Guadeloupe. In so doing, the two depictions of Sommabert worked together to absolve the enslavers and the slave system itself of the charge that his crime was in fact commonplace in the colony.

摘要

当被奴役的女孩梅莉遭到鞭打、强奸和焚烧时，瓜德罗普岛的地方法官指控她的主人，白人弗朗索瓦·里维埃·索玛贝尔谋杀。Sommabert 防御策略的一个核心支柱是他疯了，因此不能为他的行为负责。相比之下，检察官将他描绘成一个自相残杀的怪物，以证明允许被奴役的证人作证不利于他以及判定一名白人种植园主虐待他的奴隶是正当的。尽管关于疯狂和畸形的主张为被告寻求相反的目的，但两者都建立在他异常的前提下，以及他与瓜德罗普岛其他持有白人奴隶的克里奥尔人之间的鲜明区别。这样做时，