A Public Gathering of Thinking With Audre Lorde's Work

The New Inquiry's Keguro Macharia makes a gathering public, and is "trying to think with Audre Lorde’s work, to identify certain keywords." "Difference is one, survival is another," writes Machiara. "Related to those is distortion. And the erotic." Following is an excerpt from the findings, otherwise called "Difference: An Audre Lorde Archive."

As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning ground for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.
—From “Poetry is Not a Luxury”

I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.
—From “The Transformation of Silence into Language”

[...]

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences.
—From “Uses of the Erotic”

When a people share a common oppression, certain kinds of skills and joint defenses are developed. And if you survive you survive because those skills and defenses have worked. When you come into conflict over other existing differences, there is vulnerability to each other which is desperate and very deep. And that is what happens between Black men and women because we have certain weapons we have perfected together that white women and men have not shared.
–From “An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich”

How do you reach down into threatening difference without being killed or killing?
—From “An Interview”

It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians.
—From “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”

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