Willful hermeneutical Ignorance: The case of Anna Maria Falconbridge

​Willful hermeneutical ignorance, according to Gaile Pohlhaus is: ‘refusing to learn to use epistemic resources developed from marginalized situatedness.’ ((2012). Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of “Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance.” Hypatia, 27(4), 715–735,  722)

​‘I have often wondered how English people can go out into the West Indies and act in such a beastly manner. But when they go to the West Indies, they forget God and all feeling of shame, I think, since they can see and do such things. They tie up slaves like hogs-moor*them up like cattle, and they lick them, so as hogs, or cattle, or horses never were flogged; -and yet they come home and say, and make some good people believe, that slaves don't want to get out of slavery. But they put a cloak about the truth. It is not so. All slaves want to be free-to be free is very sweet. I will say the truth to English people who may read this history that my good friend, Miss S- is now writing down for me. I have been a slave myself—I know what slaves feel-I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery-that they don't want to be free-that man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so. I never heard a Buckra man say so, till I heard tell of it in England.’ 23

​Who were the English people who, according to Prince, thought slavery was a happy condition? One of them was Anna Maria Falconbridge, the wife of an operative of SEAST. The Falconbridge couple had been part of the first two voyages to Sierra Leone, where Clarkson and Sharp wanted to create a colony for the previously enslaved people who were languishing in London. The project was very badly managed, and Falconbridge died there, leaving his wife to team up with a local slave owner. Having been less than enthusiastic about her husband’s anti-slavery views (and about her husband), Anna Maria Falconbridge now felt she could offer up her honest view on the matter. Not only was slavery quite a pleasant condition for the slaves, but the trade itself was more like a luxury cruise than anything that had been written by SEAST. 

‘All the slaves I had an opportunity of seeing in Jamaica, seemed vastly well satisfied, their conditions appeared to be far preferable to what I expected, and they discovered more cheerfulness than I ever observed the Black shew in Africa, unless roused by liquor.’
 
‘Having heard such a vast deal of the ill treatment to slaves during the middle passage, I did not omit to make the nicest observations in my power, and was I to give upon oath what those observations were, I would declare I had not the slightest reason to suspect any inhumanity or malpractice was shewn towards them, through the whole voyage; on the contrary, I believe they experienced the utmost kindness and care, and after a few days, when they had recovered from sea sickness, I never saw more signs of content and satisfaction, among any set of people, in their or any other country. We had not our compliment of slaves by one-third, consequently there was an abundance of room for them. Regularly every day their rooms were washed out, sprinkled with vinegar, and well dried with chafing dishes of coal; during this operation the slaves were kept on deck, where they were allowed to stay the whole day (when the weather would permit) if they liked it; in the morning before they came up, and in the evening, after they retired to rest, our deck was always scrubed and scowered so clean that you might eat off it.’
​
Anna Maria Falconbridge, Two Voyages to Sierra Leone, Letter XIII, 11th October, 1793, p.81.

​We now find it easier (most of us, I hope) to believe the testimony of the enslaved, such as that of Mary Prince, than we do that of those who denied their perspective, such as Anna Maria Falconbridge. It’s a mystery how anyone witnessing slavery could have thought that the enslaved were happy. And one is tempted to think that, in fact, they couldn’t. Saying they could was an instance of willful ignorance, a choice to put the evidence to one side and embrace a view that was clearly false, if convenient.