This project examines the struggles many feminists encounter with traditional forms of academic writing and attempts to understand the work of Audre Lorde as offering a potential alternative mode of writing. The difficulties experienced include disciplinary conventions and expectations and the violent nature of argument as it is currently taught. Freedom of voice and the significance and role of audience also figure into this discussion. By focusing my close reading of Lorde’s work on “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” and “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” I examine her use of the erotic as a mode of writing which allows us to connect to ourselves and to one another. These connections enable us to eliminate difference, hatred and discrimination within the text, thus further enabling any feminist thesis or project within it. Finally, by way of offering some sort of a conclusion, I propose the following three tools as crucial to enacting an erotic mode of writing: multiple subjectivity, embodied knowledge and a rhizomatic understanding of knowledge production. While each feminist subject must inhabit hir writing in hir own way, by honoring each difference in the process and writing through love, we allow feminist work to not only articulate but also embody the fight to end all oppressions.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
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Women's and Gender Studies
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TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
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License
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Author Agreement License
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I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.