>But that wasn't the version I was responding to that Jenny Brown
>quoted. It read:
>
>>"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.)
>
>The "academic skill" reference made me suspect it was aimed at a
>more academic audience. I don't have the full text at hand, but
>I'll pick a version up soon.
Survival "is _not_ an academic skill," Lorde said (emphasis added). She didn't exclude feminist college teachers and students, whom she encouraged to get involved in struggles, from actual and potential agents for "genuine social change," but she nowhere suggested that academy is the main site of the struggles for her and her audience.
>Postcolonial "reason" (i) miseducates itself by downplaying the
>ignorance that makes its claims possible (ii) spends little to no
>effort in trying to understand what it does not know (iii) when
>challenged, reinscribes otherwise ignored knowledge as belonging to
>others. Spivak calls these processes "sanctioned ignorance",
>"foreclosure of the Native Informant", and "benevolent appropriation
>and reinscription of the third world as an Other."
"Sanctioned ignorance," as a matter of fact, was one of the main topics that Lorde examined in her essay that I cited. It appears, though, that Lorde herself has become an object of "sanctioned ignorance" for those who borrow or revile the "master's tools" metaphor while sidestepping what Lorde actually discussed. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>