The following is an excerpt of another passage from Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider: essays and speeches. In response to radical lesbian feminist Mary Daly's book Gyn/Ecology, Lorde wrote a scathing letter to Daly, attacking Daly's "choice" to ignore non-european women in her text. I have included an excerpt of the letter. Though a full version does not exist online, you can read most of the letter on Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=r3Ct8Qw3de8C&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=audre+lorde+letter+mary+daly&source=bl&ots=Xhvkp2EpF8&sig=zXybGUGAdKKjqFZx0LDUXcPyNkQ&hl=en&ei=TQplTr68C-uAsgKJ26iRBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=audre%20lorde%20letter%20mary%20daly&f=false
An Open Letter to Mary Daly
May 6, 1979
To dismiss our Black foremothers may well be to dismiss where european women learned to love. As an African-american woman in white patriarchy, I am used to having my archetypal experience distorted and trivialized, but it is terribly painful to feel it being done by a woman whose knowledge so touches my own.
When I speak of knowledge, as you know, I am speaking of that dark and true depth which understanding serves, wiats upon, and makes accessible through language to ourselves and others. It is this depth within each of us that nurtures vision.
What you excluded from Gyn/Ecology dismissed my heritage and the heritage of all other noneuropean women, and denied the real connections that exist between all of us.
It is obvious that you have done a tremendous amount of work for this book. But simply because so little material on non-white female power and symbol exists in white women's words from a radical feminist perspective, to exclude this aspect of connection from even comment in your work is to deny the fountain of noneuropean female strength and power that nurtures each of our visions. It is to make a point by choice.
[...]
So the question arises in my mind, Mary, do you ever really read the work of Black women? Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted connection between us? This is not a rhetorical question.
Scathing, eh? Lorde writes with such eloquent conviction, that one would think it inconceivable not to respond to such a powerful questioning of intention. However, Daly does just that. Lorde never hears from Daly in response, and indeed Daly never makes any public or private response to the letter that we know of. Whether it was indifference or cowardice that influenced Daly's silence, Lorde refused to let Daly's ignorance slip by, and therefore published the letter for the general public.
It is interesting to watch the interworkings of feminism, especially during this time period, when even the strongest minds in feminism could not seem to wrap their heads around a solid definition of the movement. Despite Daly's silence, here we have an excellent example of feminists disagreeing on what feminism actually is.
Wow, I agree this is really interesting. This really shows the difficulty among women to solidify their ideas about this movement, "What you excluded from Gyn/Ecology dismissed my heritage and the heritage of all other noneuropean women, and denied the real connections that exist between all of us"
ReplyDeleteI am very curious about her reason for not responding...
See Mary Daly's reply to Audre Lorde:
ReplyDeletehttp://feminismandreligion.com/2011/10/05/mary-daly%E2%80%99s-letter-to-audre-lorde/
September 22, 1979
Dear Audre,
First, I want to thank you for sending me The Black Unicorn. I have read all of the poems, some of them several times. Many of them moved me very deeply – others seemed farther from my own experience. You have helped me to be aware of different dimensions of existence, and I thank you for this.
My long delay in responding to your letter by no means indicated that I have not been thinking about it – quite the contrary. I did think that by putting it aside for awhile I would get a better perspective than at first reaction. I wrote you a note to that effect which didn’t get mailed since I didn’t have your address. Then there was a hope of trying to get to Vermont in August, but the summer was overwhelmingly eventful.
Clearly there is no simple response possible to the matters you raise in your letter. I wrote Gyn/Ecology out of the insights and materials most accessible to me at the time. When I dealt with myth I used commonly available sources to find what were the controlling symbols behind judeo-christian myth in order to trace a direct line to the myths which legitimate the technological horror show. But of course to point out this restriction in the first passage is not really to answer your letter. You have made your point very strongly and you most definitely do have a point. I could speculate on how Gyn/Ecology would have been affected had we corresponded about this before the manuscript went to press, but it doesn’t seem creativity-conducing to look backward. There is only now and the hope of breaking the barriers between us – of constantly expanding the vision.
I wonder if you will have any time available when I come to New York for the Simone de Beauvoir conference? Since I have a lot to do here, I had thought of just flying down Friday morning and returning that night. Are you free Friday afternoon or evening? Or will you be in Boston any time soon? I called and left a message on your machine. My number is …. Hope to see you and talk with you soon.
[Handwritten] I hope you are feeling well, Audre. May the strength of all the Goddesses be with you – Mary