The poetics of Decolonizing: Audre Lorde's writing of Black Motherhood

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Title:	The poetics of Decolonizing: Audre Lorde's writing of Black Motherhood
Authors:	古綺玲;Chi-Ling, KU
Contributors:	外國語文學系
Keywords:	奧黛蘿德;非裔美國女詩人;第二波女性主義;黑人母性/女性;母系傳承;Audre Lorde;African American female poet;Second-wave feminism black motherhood/womanhood;Decolonization matrilineage
Date:	2004-06
Issue Date:	2012-11-23 07:04:24 (UTC+0)
Abstract:	後現代由肯定差異之理念對身份政治的批判給了非白人女性一個質疑傳統女性史誌中之本質論點的空間。正如後殖民論述對「東方主義」一詞的挑戰，質疑此一用詞的殖民及收編意涵，控訴其乃係方便白種人權力運作之論述工具，黑人及第三世界女性主義者也展開了對第二波女性主義者所建構之「女人」一詞的質疑，揭露此一簡化的同質身份主要是以白種中產階級女性之性別訴求對其他女性種族、階段及文化上的異質進行殖民並收編。相當具意義的是，平行於這些女性主義者的努力，亦有一些非裔美國女性詩人透過書寫，尤其對黑人母性的書寫，抗拒自己異質身份的被收編，被殖民。本文以非裔美國女詩人奧黛蘿德的書寫為主，探討此類去殖民化的詩學。文中首先檢視其肯定差異的理念。其次探討其鄉詩作中如何透過非裔母親及女兒的矛盾關係，衝突，愛來呈現其非裔女性多重異質身份，企圖重新評價及定義其多重邊緣的黑人女性身份。在此探討過程中主要檢視其如何藉由痛苦、憤怒、及飢餓意象來解構被白人中產女性價值及訴求所殖民的同質化女人身份。 To some extent, by privileging difference postmodern critique of politics of identity enables non-white women to interrogate the essentialism of traditional white feminist historiography which posits a universalizing and hegemonizing notion of global sisterhood. For one thing, with the same attitude that postcolonial discourse challenges the legitimacy of the colonized coherent identity in the term “orientalism”, Third World feminists are adding and expanding this interrogation to the colonized easy generalization in the term “women” constructed by second-wave feminism in the 60’s. These feminists attack the term as an overly simple division by exposing its construction as white feminist discourse to exercise its power in a varieety of political contexts. Specifically, they challenge the so-called “herstory,” white feminist historiography, colonizing by exuding a white feminist theory and practice which erases black and Third World women’s racial and cultural background and experience, and thus, denies their womanhood. Significantly, with the notion that the ambivalence and complexity of black womanhood is largely determined by motherning either on the level of individual or community, other African American writers in a different way also strive to free their decolonized womanhood by foregrounding the black motherhood in their writing. This paper aims at examining such kind of text as a poetics of decolonizing and matrilineage inscribed by black motherhood/womanhood together with its effort to resist colonized totality by redefining one’s own sex with racial and class difference. Mainly, it deals with the writing of the African American female poet, Audre Lorde. In general, it focuses on studying Lorde’s identity as “woman”, and the ways she defines her gendered self in terms of her racial and class context. In particular, it emphasizes how Lorde deconstructs the unitary gender category “woman” together with its implication of middle-class and white experience by presenting in her poems the penetrating, saturating, everlasting and repeating images of pain, anger, and hunger with which she, as an African American mother and daughter, is entrapped in her daily survival. As a whole, it suggests that Lorde’s writing of black motherhood/womanhood as a poetics of decolonizing could be conceived of as a postcolonial re-valuation of the contradictions of the colonized, their conflicts, and the vision of constructing a potent fusion of multiple outsider identity with difference.
Relation:	國立中興大學人文學報, N.34 pp.0541-561.
Appears in Collections:	[Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures] Journal Article

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