On Audre Lorde’s Legacy and the “Self” of Self-Care, Part 1 of 3

 

[Please do not be that ass who reblogs this image and deletes the text below.]

Update: Part Two here.

We’re still learning to read Audre Lorde, who should have been 79 today. We’re still learning to become the collectivity, the “we,” that would make reading Audre Lorde possible. The Audre Lorde that I think is especially worth reading is not the Audre Lorde that reads like a bumper sticker.  Nor is it the Audre Lorde that settles the score, once and for all, the Audre Lorde who puts the full stop on the conversations we’ve needed to have before we’ve had them.  The Audre Lorde I’m interested in is perhaps too queer to set things straight for us politically.  Which also means that it’s also not the Audre Lorde who exists as an alibi.  The Audre Lorde that’s most interesting to me is the Audre Lorde who is a complex, often contradictory historical figure, a figure whose brilliance resides not in her individual insight but in her capacity to creatively animate and inhabit the very contradictions in which she lived.  It is that kind of brilliance that makes her A. Lorde and not, well, a Lord; that is, not a god-like figure whose authority is to be deferred to once and for all, but someone whose life and work provide an rich world of problems, questions, and ideas worth thinking with, borrowing from, confronting, and, of course, disagreeing with.  I’m interested in claiming Audre Lorde as a human. Which is to say that in many ways, she was not, ultimately, that much unlike you or me.  Even in her radical difference.  Even because of it.

What makes the master’s tools the master’s tools, after all? Is it the system of social relations that secures the exclusivity of the master’s ownership of them?  Or do we mean to say that the master’s signature is written into the body of the tool itself, such that upon handling it, one becomes the master’s accomplice?  Is it possible to repurpose the master’s tools and the master’s house to different ends?  Does it remain the master’s house when one finds oneself squatting there?

I initially found it strange, and later a bit suspect, and even later, rather frustrating, that out of Lorde’s entire formidable body of essays and poetry, it is the above quotation of hers that so many comrades have latched onto, or seen their struggles and desires reflected in.  Upon asking a series of friends over the past few days, I have yet to find one who actually knows which essay of hers it’s from.  You won’t find a source on that quotation on the above image, which I’ve now seen circulating countless times on tumblr and facebook. That’s a fact worth remarking upon: it means you also won’t find an invitation to read the context in which it emerges.  Rather, the quotation is so decontextualized that readers can simply pour into it any context we might like, and thereby confer some Lordlike authority onto a whole range of things that might actually not be very Lordelike.  And even if such things, such ideas, such politics were Lordelike, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right, or right now, or that they’re going to generate the kinds of political effects we might want.  The Audre Lorde I’m interested in is the one who has taught me to be a persistent critic of authority, a questioner of what gets to wear the mantle of truth at the end of the day, even if hers is the voice from which such authority and truth-telling emanates.

What kind of political warfare?  What context?  What effects does it produce?  What strategic function does it serve?  Does understanding self-care as political warfare mean that self-care is therefore “good”?  Political warfare toward what end?    If “political warfare” is to be anything other than a metaphor, these questions seem necessary.

But this isn’t exclusively about Audre Lorde, even though I am regularly frustrated at how she and other black women are fashioned into avatars in order to confer authority on projects they might very well (have) disagree(d) with.  (Even though, also, I am in equal measures amazed and terrified at how the gestures that we make to honor people often also express our aversion to the complexity of their personhood, an aversion that might serve as a semi-reliable index of our aversion to the complexities and contradictions of our own personhood, as well. At the same time, there is so much to celebrate in the fact that there is an Audre Lorde whose life and work so many of us can access, read, be radicalized by, fall in love with. And such celebration should never be seen as luxury or extravagance or parenthetical—black feminism is never not the outcome of hard work.  Celebration, however, is not the only strategy we learn from black feminism, nor is it the only way that we can inhabit it, work with and alongside it, learn from it, critically embrace it.)   Rather, this is about the language that Lorde’s name is marshaled to co-sign—specifically, that of self-care.  It’s that contradictory, fraught legacy that the second part of this post, which I’ll post in the next few days will deal with.  The question is, what is the self that we’re talking about when we’re talking about self-care?  What is the community that we’re talking about when we move toward the language of community care?  And what is the nature of the selves and communities that we invoke in order to politicize care, that necessary work that makes survival and flourishing possible?  And what lessons can black feminism teach us about the limits of the language of self and community–even if, sometimes, in spite of itself?

1. tokenbg1 reblogged this from footybedsheets
2. footybedsheets reblogged this from lowendtheory
3. footybedsheets liked this
4. mothersofmyheart liked this
5. reincarnatedskies liked this
6. temper-tantrumz reblogged this from lowendtheory
7. mybarricades liked this
8. fuzzlepiece reblogged this from lowendtheory
9. featherofeeling liked this
10. haunting-of-hill-house reblogged this from queercomicsconnection
11. seldomnaughty liked this
12. canonbiwonderwoman liked this
13. queercomicsconnection reblogged this from lowendtheory
14. laurellynnleake liked this
15. stayathomenotdad reblogged this from lowendtheory and added:

    fantastic.

16. stayathomenotdad liked this
17. cr3v reblogged this from lowendtheory
18. tinykihumedyvepa784398-blog liked this
19. inanimate-smiles liked this
20. halimacandy reblogged this from naijaboi
21. halimacandy liked this
22. naijaboi reblogged this from susegadnz
23. susegadnz reblogged this from lowendtheory
24. allthatcomestome liked this
25. sugarcube1997 liked this
26. thetrashyaunty-blog liked this
27. thetrashyaunty-blog reblogged this from lostcoherence
28. contrabandheart reblogged this from lostcoherence
29. bbbelovedd liked this
30. marsbykelis liked this
31. afainttraceofsomething reblogged this from lowendtheory
32. b-ittermelon liked this
33. afainttraceofsomething liked this
34. elestirelgunluk liked this
35. olodumare liked this
36. lostcoherence reblogged this from lowendtheory
37. tooyoungforthelivingdead liked this
38. xipe88totec reblogged this from g2evera
39. xipe88totec liked this
40. g2evera reblogged this from lowendtheory
41. graciewillow liked this
42. aabfaab liked this
43. lowendtheory posted this
44. Show more notesLoading...