Reproductive Violence Across Time: Trans-Temporal Boundaries in Kindred and Corregidora

Abstract

This paper examines reproductive violence as a trans-temporal structure of oppression in Kindred by Octavia Butler and Corregidora by Gayl Jones. Drawing on Loretta J. Ross’s theory of reproductive violence and Hortense Spillers’s concept of “ungendered flesh”, the study explores how slavery transformed Black women’s bodies into sites of sexual coercion, forced reproduction, economic exploitation, and kinship rupture. In Kindred, Butler portrays reproductive violence through Dana’s time travel, revealing how Alice Greenwood’s body and reproductive capacity are controlled to sustain lineage under slavery. In Corregidora, Jones presents reproductive violence as an inherited trauma transmitted across generations through memory, bodily violation, and reproductive obligation. The paper argues that reproductive violence extends beyond physical abuse into psychological, historical, and social dimensions, linking past and present through embodied trauma. Ultimately, the study demonstrates how both novels expose the enduring legacy of slavery in shaping Black women’s sexuality, identity, memory, and reproductive autonomy.