I just want to be clear on my use of Audre Lourde's quote.
For the record, the quote comes from a four-page essay in Audre Lourde's book Sister Outsider "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House."
The tools that she writes about in the essay (which was about her involvement in a feminist seminar) and which I was referring to were:
1) The demand that the master/oppressor have his concerns answered first. We had an example of this on the list with Wojtek's postings on race. His felt that the proper concern that needed attention was black people searching out and presenting representatives of certain stereotypes of his choosing/approval. He felt that the concerns being brought forward (the death of a black man at the hands of the police) were not the proper ones.
2) The attempt to prevent the growth of human interdependency (in this case specifically that between black women). The tool in this case is the promotion of individualism (which ties in with my own Buddhist concerns) as an attempt to weaken solidarity.
I did not mean (nor do I think Lourde meant) math, logic, grammar, physics, bowling pins, etc when she/I spoke of master's tools.
The two tools -- the privileging of master/oppressor concerns over all others and the breaking of solidaity through the promotion and fetishization of individualism -- are tools of oppression. In my opinion you cannot end oppression by using the tools that foment it.
I did like the post about using the term "personality (I think it was Charles). The development of personality should be encouraged. I just think it becomes counter-productive and dangerous when it is taken to the extreme of individualism where people are led to believe that they possess stable, distinct natures wholly separate from all others.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister