WOMEN PIRATES
And the Politics of the Jolly Roger
by Ulrike Klausmann and Marion Meinzerin,
& Gabriel Kuhn
There have always been women among pirates and sea robbers. Metaphors of mysterious and destructive femininity may have perennially been assigned to the sea and its dangers, but the real women who sailed on ships ¾ steered them, commanded them, sank with them, even commandeered them ¾ have been ignored by a history written by and for men.
Ample evidence of women pirates and even feminine piracy nonetheless abounds: beginning with ancient legends of Amazon sailors in several cultural traditions, and continuing uninterrupted through a wealth of confirmed historical figures, up to the present.
Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger is an account of piracy through three millennia, in histories of women and men sailing on four seas: the Chinese Straits, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Caribbean. Writing with passion and humor, but without romanticizing or ignoring the unsavory side of some of their heroines, the authors turn history on its head. Nor do they forget the practical details, even including genuine recipes for shark and other delights.
Gabriel Kuhn's concluding essay on anarchism and piracy, "Life Under the Death's Head,"
creates a framework of understanding for pirate life based on its own conditions, rules, and body of thought. pirates obeyed nothing and no one, they had no nation to defend, no leader, no God, no government, no state. Kuhn draws on Deleuze and Guattari and Stirner among others to describe a "breaking out of structured obedience," an "escape from perpetual supervision,"
a "plunge into unpredictability, danger, everything that makes strong, free action."
There's more going on with the distaff Bounding Main than is generally realized, and Women Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger is the definitive work on the subject.
1997, 5¼ x 8¼,
280 pp, illustrated, soft cover.
WOMEN PIRATES: $23.99
(ORDER NUMBER 94290)
GO TO ORDER FORM
MORE BOOKS
LOOMPANICS UNLIMITED 1998 Online Retail Catalog
Order Toll-Free 1-800-380-2230, Monday Through Friday, 8am to 4 pm
YOUR ORDER IS SHIPPED WITHIN 24 HOURS
OF RECEIPT!