Female Affiliation/Irigaray/Audre Lorde 3

Faith: I’ve been reading Audrey Lorde’s SISTER OUTSIDER with my graduate seminar. I’m really moved by what she was saying and writing about difference and about female affiliation among black women in the 70s - often it really reminds me of Irigaray’s writings. For example in one essay she is speaking about the anger Black women have toward the world and each other, and how they need to learn to be kind to each other as a way of beginning to heal from this profound anger: “When last did you compliment another sister, give recognition to her specialness? We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other. But we can practice being gentle with ourselves by being gentle with each other.” In the context of the essay it is very clear that she is not talking about being “nice” to each other, but she is talking about that profound love and recognition of the other who has suffered as you have suffered and who needs to somehow relearn her humanness. Because, she continues, when we can love the bruised girlchild within each of us then we can recognize how much “she is doing to keep this world revolving toward some livable future….As we arm ourselves with ourselves and each other, we can stand toe to toe inside that rigorous loving and begin to speak the impossible - to one another.” (p. 175). It seems to me that I would like to learn to do this across genders and across racial and all other divides. It is an embodied action of affiliation.