Re-Reading Audre Lorde Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist

RE-READING AUDRE LORDE: DECLARING THE ACTIVISM OF BLACK FEMINIST THEORY S. A. NAYAK PhD 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my PhD supervisors, Professor Erica Burman and Dr. Daniela Caselli, for enabling me to move beyond genuflection. The intellectual integrity, rigour, care and commitment that Erica and Daniela gave to me created an experience of the activism of Black feminist theory as supervision that will stay with me. My gratitude goes to ‘Eagle Eyes’ Ru for her gentle, persistent thoroughness in helping me to proof-read this thesis. I would like to say a special thank you to my beloved brother, Krisna Nayak, for his fast intelligence and for staying alongside me in my journeys. I would like to acknowledge the determined courage of women survivors of sexual violence and the privilege of working with feminist activists that are core to my living. I would like to thank all those who made the ‘Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Theory Convention’ possible. This was a truly humbling and affirmative experience. Finally, my appreciation goes to my family and the network of friends and comrades who sustain me on a daily basis. In particular, my gratitude goes to Christine Sheehy for never giving up on the impossibility of hospitality with me. I dedicate this thesis to my daughters, Sophia, Misha and India Abstract Re-Reading Audre Lorde: Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Theory Early in January 2013, whilst I was at home in the middle of the day writing this thesis, I was subjected to an armed burglary. The experience resonates with themes that preoccupy this re-reading of Audre Lorde, specifically with regards to: the timing, place and impact of ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak, 1988:280) visited on Black feminisms; the theft of thinking; and the disregard for, and appropriation of, the temporal and spatial dimensions of historical and socio-economic contexts that constitute Black women’s lives. Armed with weapons of authenticity, historical amnesia, hierarchies of oppression, the ‘always already’ (Althusser, 1971) and categories of identity designed to suppress Black feminism, the violations of Black women are unannounced and uninvited. My starting point is that ‘[t]he shadow obscuring this complex Black women’s intellectual tradition is neither accidental nor benign’ (Hill Collins, 2000:3). This thesis picks up on the idea of the impossibility of hospitality (Derrida, 2000) and the ‘critic as host’ (Hillis Miller, 1979) to frame a critical analysis of the occupation and location of Black feminist praxis. This thesis negotiates ‘…a channel between the “high theoretical” and the “suspicious of all theories”’ (Boyce Davies, 1994:43). The challenge of ‘Re-Reading Audre Lorde: Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Theory’ is to maintain a persistent, hypervigilant sensitivity towards the hostility of ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak, 1988:280). I think it is possible to re-read Spivak’s (1988) question, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in terms of, ‘Can Black feminist theory speak?’ The question of what is read and utilised and what is not, particularly when the ‘what is not’ refers to Black feminist scholarship in general, and to the work of Lorde in particular, is fundamental to this thesis. This thesis produces new re-readings of Lorde’s work that go beyond a literary textual analysis. The Kristevan idea of intertextuality as intersubjectivity (Kristeva, 1969:37) is used to show that the space and place between the words in ‘Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface’ (Lorde, 1979a:60) function as the space and place between Black and white feminisms. The predicaments of positionality reiterated throughout this thesis mirror the predicaments within feminism. How can feminist theory present authoritative, metanarrative claims (and they need to be authoritative in the face of a racist, homophobic patriarchy that denies the legitimacy of Black women) whilst being implicated? The quandary is that of how to establish and communicate any sense of a comprehensible, coherent re-reading of Lorde when each re-reading destabilises and contests any notion of an ‘established.’ The quandary takes on particular significance in relation to Black feminist political writings and communication of political imperatives. In other words, is there a possibility of ‘the transformation of silence into language and action’ (Lorde, 1977a:40) in the condition of the impossibility of language? Re-reading Lorde is both to occupy the margin and to make use of the margin so that the impossible, the unavailable, and the fissures of re-reading Black feminist theoretical communications are the conditions of the activism of Black feminist theory. Three principles of Black feminist methodology that underpin the work of this thesis include: 1. Lorde’s Black feminist ‘uses of the erotic’ (Lorde, 1978a); 2. The dialogical and dialectical relationship between experience, practice and scholarship (Hill Collins, 2000:30); 3. That methodology is contingent upon, and constituted through, Black feminist activism. Throughout this thesis, I make a concerted effort to transfer the text of Black feminist critical theory from the page to the day-to-day struggles of Black feminist activism. For example, I demonstrate the relevance of Lorde in terms of constructing Black women-only reflective spaces and service provision, interventions to confront sexual violence against Black women and the ‘…psychological toll…’ (The Combahee River Collective, 1977:266) of ‘…learn[ing] to lie down with the different parts of ourselves…’ (Abod, 1987:158). This thesis is a work of re-membering; it is a deliberate transgression of fixed, theoretical and disciplinary borders, which reinvigorates the activism of theory. Contents Preface Foundations i The Launch of Trafford Rape Crisis Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Women’s Service iii The Convention v Who Count as Theorists? vii Reaching Out to ALL Women viii Launch Speech: ‘Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Theory' x Chapter 1. Introduction Re-Reading Audre Lorde 3 Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Theory 6 Audre Lorde: The Aporia of Positionality 10 Implicated 13 Black Feminist Methodology 14 Writing Genres 19 Politics of Pronouns: The Matter of Who Is Speaking 22 The Critic as Host 25 Historical Amnesia 26 Suspicion of Lorde, the Icon 29 Black Feminist Theory: The Function of Absence and Presence 32 Hybridity 35 Borderlands of the Dialectic 37 Black Feminist Author Function 40 Question of the Name 43 Summary of Chapters 50 Chapter 2. ‘Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface’ Introduction 55 Epistemology Is Flattened 57 Constitutive Contexts 60 Black Feminism without White Feminism? 62 Tolerance: The Grossest Reformism 63 The Yardstick of Fictive Universality 65 The ‘not’ 71 The Politics of Location 73 The Problem of the ‘Native Informant’ 75 The Constitutive Interstices of Feminisms 78 Intersectionality 80 Injurious Interpellations 83 The Performative Regime of Visibility 87 ‘blackface’ 91 Mimicry 92 Do the Manners of Black Feminists Need Reforming? 95 The Slippage of ‘not’ 98 Racist Social Structures Create Racist Psychic Structures 101 Fanon and Lorde 102 Resisting the Terms of Oppression 108 Re-Reading of the Re-Reading: The Indeterminacy of Reiteration 109 Black Women-Only Spaces and Services? 110 The Conversation 111 The First Lens: The Word ‘feminism’ 121 The Second Lens: The Word ‘not’ 123 The Third Lens: The Word ‘in’ 127 The Fourth Lens: The Word ‘blackface’ 130 Conclusion 131 Chapter 3. An Analysis and Application of ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’ Introduction 133 The ‘Always Already’ 134 Tensions of the ‘Beyond’ 138 Constitutive ‘Uses of the Erotic’ 140 Critical Social Theory of ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’ 143 Precarious Positionality 148 Eros 149 ‘Uses of the Erotic’: Fear 151 ‘Uses of the Erotic’: Fear and Proximity 154 ‘Uses of the Erotic’: The Spatial Politics of Fear 158 ‘Uses of the Erotic’: Binaries 162 ‘Uses of the Erotic’ in Confronting Violence against Women 167 Objectify Myself: Objectify Her 168 Interconnections: Relations of Proximity 170 Lorde and Hill Collins’ Encounter 172 Productions of Distortion 173 The Totalizing Effect of Distortion 177 The Invitation 179 Disconnection and Connection 183 Moving from Generality to Specificity 185 Conclusion 188 Chapter 4. The Aporetics of Intersectionality Introduction 191 Intersectionality: An Experience of Aporia 194 The Aporia of Intersectionality as Method and Content 197 Inhabiting Intersectionality 200 The Psychological Toll of Intersectionality 202 Learning from the Combahee River Collective 204 Intersecting Encounters between Black Women 208 The Excess of Black Women 210 The Relation without Relation 211 Intersectionality: The Unavailable Solution 213 Intersectionality: A Theory about Borders 215 Intersectionality: The Impossibility of Hospitality 220 The ‘Pervertible or Perverting’ Law of the Hatch 223 Hostile Strangers: Black Women Go Around to the Back Door 225 The Inward Disturbance of Intersectionality 227 Intersectionality and the Foreigner 229 Pandora’s Box 231 Black Women: The ‘Absolute, Unknown, Anonymous Other’ 233 Conclusion 236 Chapter 5. Zami: The Epilogue as ‘Myself Apart from Me’ Introduction 241 The Aporia of the Epilogue as Method 242 Mapping Out the Tensions 246 Transgressive Textual Practices 252 Another Meeting 255 Bearing Witness 259 The Problematic of Confrontation 267 Intertextuality 269 Print, Tattoo, Trace 271 The Origin of the Origin 276 ‘My Mother’s Mortar’ 280 Electrical

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