Audre Lorde
Ann Vinitsky (2005)
(Source for all quotes: Sister Outsider)
1. Agency- Must communicate that which is important for it is silence
that immobilizes people. Also by recognizing the erotic in all areas of our
lives, we become empowered.
“I have come to believe over and over again that what is
most important to me must be spoken, made verbal, and shared, even at the risk
of having it bruised or misunderstood (40).”
“We have been socialized to respect fear more than our
own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that
final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us (44).”
“Our erotic
knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects
of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of
their relative meaning within our lives (57).”
2. Theory of Human Nature- People, when confronted with difference, have been taught to respond with fear leading to racism,
sexism, homophobia, ageism, etc. Women and people of color and lesbians have
been continuously oppressed.
“Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute
necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As
members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human
differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in
one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think
it is dominant, or destroy it if we think its is subordinate (115).”
Mythical norm. “In
“Racism, the belief in the inherit superiority of one
race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in
the inherent superiority of one race over the other
and thereby the right to dominance, Ageism (by ignoring the past, we are
encouraged to repeat its mistakes-historical amnesia). Heterosexism.
Elitism. Classism (115).”
Women have been taught to suspect and fear the erotic by
the male world. “It has been misnamed and used against women (54).”
3. Theory of Social Relations- Emphasized the need to share our differences
in order to create a basis for understanding. People are not taught patterns
for relating to each others’ differences as equals.
“Certainly there are very real differences between us of
race, age and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are
separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to
examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects
upon human behavior and expectation (115).”
“We do not develop
tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative change within
our lives. We speak not of human difference, but of human deviance.”
The idea that the oppressed should teach the oppressors
their mistakes is only a repetition of racist patriarchal thought. “It is learning
how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common
cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define
and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our
differences and make them our strengths (113).”
4. Theory of History- “Much of Western European history conditions us
to see human differences in simplistic opposition to each other:
dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down, superior/inferior. In a society where
the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need,
there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression,
can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of dehumanized inferior.
Within this society, that group is made up of Black and
5. Theory of Meaning- Meaning of poetry.
“Poetry is the way we help give
name to the nameless so it can be thought (37).”
“Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves, what
we feel within and dare to make real (or bring into accordance with), our
fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors (39).”
“Poetry has been the major voice of poor, working class,
and colored women. (116).”
6. Involvement in Social Movements- Very involved in black liberation,
civil rights, antiwar, gay/lesbian liberation, and feminist movements. Audre
Lorde described herself as “black lesbian, mother, feminist, lover, poet.”
7. Theory of Knowledge- The erotic as a true source of power and
knowledge. And it is everywhere. Whether reading a book or walking up a flight
of stairs, the erotic, the sense of joy in what is being done, is present.
The considered phrase, ‘it feels right to me,’
acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that
means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding…the
erotic is a nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge (56).”
“It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once
we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the
fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and
self-respect we can require no less of ourselves (54).
When we deny ourselves the truth of how we are feeling, we
deny ourselves the experience, thus reducing ourselves to the abused and
pornographic version of the erotic.
8. Theory of Enlightenment Heritage-
Believed in
universal human rights and the Enlightenment ideal of equality; critical of
science and of colonization as patriarchal and white supremacist.
9. Voice.
Felt that poetry
allowed the subject to find the repressed voices inside of us that society has
tried to kill off:
“I
urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside
herself and touch that terror and loathing of any
difference that lives there. See whose form it wears. Then the personal as the
political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” (113)
10. Race, Class,
Gender, Sex, Relation to Colonization-
Of West Indian Heritage,
Audrey Lorde was a Black homosexual female. She first
married a man and had two children. Later came out as a lesbian. She felt
isolated from her own class. Many thought she betrayed her own race since she
surrounded herself with white people. She married a white male and had many
white lesbian lovers.