INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN COLONIALITY AND GENDER IN THE NOVEL I TITUBA: BLACK WITCH OF SALEM

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the conviction of Tituba, the central character in the novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem, by Caribbean writer Maryse Condé, in the context of the witch hunt that took place in Salem in 1692. The fictional narrative, anchored in historical facts, reconstructs the trajectory of Tituba, a black woman from Barbados who, after becoming involved with John Indien — an enslaved indigenous man —, migrates to the colony of Massachusetts, where she is accused of practicing witchcraft, also known at the time as “hoodoo”. Despite her initial status as a free woman, Tituba was arrested, convicted, and later hanged, and was captured again and executed in her homeland under new charges of conspiracy against the colonial system. Condé’s work serves as a basis for discussing fundamental theoretical frameworks on the African diaspora, the coloniality of power, and the intersectionality of race and gender in the slave system. The study, of a bibliographic and qualitative nature, is based on the theoretical contributions of Walter Mignolo (2010), María Lugones (2023), Lélia Gonzalez (2020), and Stuart Hall (2023), to demonstrate how colonizing rhetoric operated through physical, discursive, and religious mechanisms in the consolidation of the figure of the black person — especially the black woman — as a representation of evil. It is thus argued that Condé’s narrative contributes to destabilizing the “myth” of European modernity by giving voice to historically silenced subjects.

Keywords: coloniality; gender; Tituba; Salem; bruxism.