Genres of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, and Community, 1970-1983
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2016 Genres of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, and Community, 1970-1983 Meredith A. Benjamin The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1452 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] GENRES OF FEMINIST LIVES: AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ARCHIVES, AND COMMUNITY, 1970-1983 by MEREDITH BENJAMIN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York. 2016 © 2016 MEREDITH BENJAMIN All Rights Reserved ii Genres of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, and Community, 1970-1983 by Meredith Benjamin This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Nancy K. Miller Chair of Examining Committee Date Mario DiGangi Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Nancy K. Miller Carrie Hintz Hildegard Hoeller THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Genres of Feminist Lives: Archives, Autobiography, and Community, 1970-1983 by Meredith Benjamin Advisor: Nancy K. Miller The desire to record lives and the conviction that such recordings would serve an important purpose for other women were the motivations behind much of the autobiographical writing in U.S. feminist writing of the 1970s and 80s. In Genres of Feminist Lives: Autobiography, Archives, and Community, 1970-1983, I argue that feminist writers in this period used autobiographical writing to create a sense of community among their readers: a new feminist public. Realizing the inadequacy of a sense of identification, these writers encouraged their audiences, in the words of Audre Lorde, to transform silence into language and action. While scholars have rightly called for new narratives of feminist history and theory, I argue that an analysis of the literary forms feminists were using during this period makes clear they were already rejecting simplistic linear or narratives of coming-to- consciousness—both thematically and formally—in favor of hybrid texts that attempted to model and create dialogue and action. To make this claim, I explore texts in four different genres—journal entries, poetry, hybrid autobiographies, and anthologies—and include with an epilogue that points to contemporary resonances and challenges. Archival materials—including the unpublished papers of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, the organizational materials of women’s liberation groups and feminist publishers, and copies of feminist newsletters and journals—are both source and subject for this project. My own location in the archive as a researcher has encouraged me to think about the relationship of the writers I’m studying to archives they used, hoped for, and created. As they engaged with the traces of past women’s lives—reading, recovering, and often incorporating into their own work—feminist writers in this era found the motivation and starting point for telling their own stories, as well as the basis of new forms and structures in which to tell them. This engagement with the artifacts of other women’s lives was part of the way that the autobiographical texts of this period modeled ways of depicting the self in relation to other women, of mapping a community or genealogy of women. Rather than as singular interventions, we should view these feminist texts a part of a broader genealogy of autobiographical writing by feminists and women of color that continues to merit consideration today, as our contemporary moment continues to bring challenges about how to create dialogue and community without effacing individual voices, how to move from experience and identification to action, and how to create and develop feminisms that do not entrench singular narratives, but create space for unevenness, hybridity, and multiply-voiced subjectivity. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Nancy K. Miller, who has been an invaluable guide, support, and inspiration from the beginning of my graduate school career. Her work as a feminist scholar has always been a model to which I aspire, and her confidence in me and constant reminders “keep going” have enabled me to complete this project. To Carrie Hintz, for stepping in at the last minute on my oral exam committee, and then becoming a crucial interlocutor in and supporter of my project. To Hildegard Hoeller, for providing and such exemplary models of scholarship and teaching, and insightful commentary that helped me see my work in a new light. The Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) Knickerbocker Awards for Archival Research in American Studies I received were integral in shaping the direction of this project, allowing me to visit the papers of Adrienne Rich and the files of Persephone Press at the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute, and the papers of Audre Lorde at the Spelman College Archives. Thanks also go to the librarians and archivists at these collections, for assisting and guiding me in my research. I am grateful for the fellowship support I received during the completion of this project, particularly for the Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Leon Levy Center for Biography. The space and time the fellowship provided, as well as the support and feedback from such distinguished colleagues was valuable in helping me to think about my project and my writing in a larger context. Thanks to the intellectual community I found at the Graduate Center, where my interactions with faculty and fellow students shaped me into the scholar I am today. Particular thanks to my writing groups, without whom the writing wouldn’t have gotten done. To Sara Remedios and Meira Levinson, thank you for being some of my earliest interlocutors as I began vi this project and thoughtful readers throughout. And to Maggie Galvan and Melina Moore—the M3 grouplet—I have benefitted immensely from your readings, your advice (editorial and otherwise), and your support. Thanks as well to the friends who have listened, distracted me when necessary, and demonstrated far more interest in this dissertation than friendship requires, especially Brianne Dougherty, Ashlee Laielli, Paloma Luisi, and Katie Skrzek. To my family, who have been my supporters throughout the process. I want to thank my parents in particular, for fostering my love of learning and reading from the beginning and for supporting and encouraging me every step of the way. Most of all, thanks to Adam Kaufman, my copyeditor, sounding board, constant support, and partner, who had to live through the writing of this project, and without whom this dissertation never would have been completed. vii Contents Introduction “Putting Our Lives on Paper for Each Other” ................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 “‘That profoundly female, and feminist, genre’: Uses of Journals and Journal Entries in Feminist Texts” ............................................................................................................................................ 34 Chapter 2 Recovery and Reconstitution: Adrienne Rich and the Poetics of the Archive ............................. 71 Chapter 3 Emotional/Political Chronologies and New Genealogies: Feminist Hybrid Autobiographies ... 111 Chapter 4 An Anthology’s Archive: Performing This Bridge Called My Back .......................................... 142 Epilogue Keeping Texts in Movement: Contemporary Resonances and Challenges ................................ 182 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 189 viii Introduction: “Putting Our Lives on Paper for Each Other” In a 1985 letter to Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich wrote: And I feel so strongly that we need to do this more, put our lives on paper for each other, not just over the airwaves, and maybe if I write back now it can continue. I too feel as if I say I miss you more often than the traffic will bear, but I do. And I feel angry sometimes because the nature of separation (distance) is that pieces, whole tracts, sometimes, of our lives go untold, passed-over… (Lorde Papers, Spelman, 1.1.106) This intimate and emotional exchange is one amongst a number of their often-intense letters that Lorde saved and is now preserved with her papers in the Spelman College Archives. Despite its highly personal nature, the letter also evokes a number of themes that would characterize much of the literary output of the feminist movement with which Rich and Lorde were engaged. Rich highlights the importance of the autobiographical for feminist writers—the need to “put our lives on paper for each other.” This desired recording of lives, however, is not an act performed in isolation; it is done “for each other,” and with the hope that it will engender a dialogue, that “if I write back now it can continue.” In the years preceding this letter, feminist writers had begun to turn the type of intimacy and emotional exchange found in this letter toward the public sphere as a way of shaping community. Finally, this letter points to the importance of archives of feminist lives and writing, not only