>>Does that mean that Lorde's metaphor is "simply wrong"? That's a
>>very odd response. Surely, you can use the phrase to mean whatever
>>you want it to mean, but that doesn't make her different use of it
>>"wrong," does it?
>>--
>>Yoshie
>
>Personally, I oppose the left's tendency to toy too much with
>language. I believe that habit stunts our analyses and makes us
>look like shysters to outsiders. Metaphors either work or don't
>work, to varying degrees. I'd put this one from Lorde way on the
>"doesn't work" end of the scale, for the reasons I've stated.
>
>Meanwhile, I didn't say the whole phrase is simply wrong. I said
>its relationship to slavery (the language and reality of which are
>the material from which the metaphor tries to get its power) is
>simply wrong. Almost by definition, slaves must use the master's
>tools to attack the master. They have nothing else available. And,
>now that you mention it, the metaphor is also _doubly_ simply wrong
>as it relates back to slavery. Reading and writing were the
>master's tools. Acquisition and use of these was strictly
>suppressed by masters, as we all know.
>
>Lorde's metaphor simply sucks. It throws out the baby with the
>bathwater. It deserves to be buried and forgotten.
Have you actually read Lorde's essay? You haven't, have you? Nowhere in the essay does Lorde suggest that reading and writing -- or anything else that we care to use -- are the master's tools that must be thrown out.
Your response to Lorde doesn't sound logical to me. You are essentially advancing your argument (such as it is) thus:
1. Audre Lorde used the phrase "the master's tool" to mean X.
2. I, Michael Dawson, think that the phrase must be used to mean Y.
3. Therefore, I am not going to pay attention to X, what Lorde actually meant by the phrase, and scold her for having used the term for a purpose other than discussing Y -- never mind what Lorde actually thought and said about Y.
Time to call in a feminist sociolinguist, it appears. -- Yoshie
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