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Audre Lorde: Textual Authority and the Embodied Self

Audre Lorde: Textual Authority and the Embodied Self Audre Lorde Textual Authority and the Embodied Self margaret kissam morris Audre Lorde likes to refer to herself as black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet, and warrior. Later in life, she also identifies herself as a survivor of cancer. She refuses absolutely to confine herself, even temporarily, to any one aspect of her heterogeneous identity, whether to support a political program or to make others feel comfortable. And each part of the self she constructs is based on a sense of corporeal materiality that she attempts to render in both her prose and poetry. Her writing calls to mind Rosi Braidotti's vision of the embodied self. In Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy, Braidotti explains, "The body, far from being an essentialist notion, is situated at the intersection of the biological and the symbolic; as such it marks a metaphysical surface of integrated material and symbolic elements that defy separation." 1 When speaking of Lorde's use of embodiment to reverse the balance of power between the oppressed body and the written text, we must ask how the body relates to a text. On the one hand, there is no way to discuss the body as http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies University of Nebraska Press

Audre Lorde: Textual Authority and the Embodied Self

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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by Frontiers Editorial Collective.
ISSN
1536-0334
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Abstract

Audre Lorde Textual Authority and the Embodied Self margaret kissam morris Audre Lorde likes to refer to herself as black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet, and warrior. Later in life, she also identifies herself as a survivor of cancer. She refuses absolutely to confine herself, even temporarily, to any one aspect of her heterogeneous identity, whether to support a political program or to make others feel comfortable. And each part of the self she constructs is based on a sense of corporeal materiality that she attempts to render in both her prose and poetry. Her writing calls to mind Rosi Braidotti's vision of the embodied self. In Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy, Braidotti explains, "The body, far from being an essentialist notion, is situated at the intersection of the biological and the symbolic; as such it marks a metaphysical surface of integrated material and symbolic elements that defy separation." 1 When speaking of Lorde's use of embodiment to reverse the balance of power between the oppressed body and the written text, we must ask how the body relates to a text. On the one hand, there is no way to discuss the body as

Journal

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies – University of Nebraska Press

Published: Jan 4, 2002

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