>I, too, find this quote endlessly annoying. One useful thing about a class
>analysis is that it allows us to see that in different hands and used for
>different purposes, the outcomes can be quite different, in short,
>the master's
>tools aren't. We don't have to smash the looms, as it turns out. But if I
>recall correctly--it's been a long time and I'm away from my books,
>too--Lorde is
>talking more about the structure of academia and also how the terms
>of a debate
>can be set (for example we're constantly supposed to tell men precisely how
>to shape up) but that we shouldn't fall into this kind of trap. I remember
>disagreeing with her, but to be fair her quote is put to many bizarre and even
>more indefensible uses. Here's more context:
>
>"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of
>acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of
>difference-those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are
>Black, who are older-know
>that survival is not an academic skill. 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 strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the
>master's house.
>They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will
>never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only
>threatening
>to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of
>support." (Lorde, 1979.)
Hmm, a different context. Getting along in academia means sucking up to The Man, when instead all The Excluded should be sticking together (not that they necessarily have much in common other than being excluded). So does this mean that black lesbian academics should't strive for tenure? I'm confused.
Doug