The Race for Theory Author(s): Barbara Christian Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, (Spring, 1988), pp. 67-79 Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177999 Accessed: 28/05/2008 01:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=femstudies. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org THE RACE FOR THEORY BARBARACHRISTIAN I have seized this occasionto breakthe silence amongthose of us, critics, as we are now called, who have been intimidated,devaluedby what I callthe racefor theory.I have become convinced that there has been a takeoverin the literaryworld by Western philosophersfrom the old literaryelite, the neutral humanists. Philosophershave been able to effect such a takeoverbecause so much of the literatureof the West has become pallid, laden with despair,self-indulgent,and disconnected.The New Philosophers, eager to understand a world that is today fast escaping their politicalcontrol,have redefinedliteratureso that the distinctions implied by that term, that is, the distinctionsbetween everything written and those things written to evoke feeling as well as to express thought, have been blurred. They have changed literary criticallanguageto suit their own purposesas philosophers,and they have reinventedthe meaningof theory. My first responseto this realizationwas to ignoreit. Perhaps,in spite of the egocentrismof this trend,some good mightcome of it. I had, I felt, more pressingand interestingthings to do, such as readingand studyingthe historyand literatureof blackwomen, a history that had been totally ignored, a contemporaryliterature burstingwith originality,passion,insight,and beauty. But, unfortunately,it is difficultto ignorethis new takeover,becausetheory has become a commodity that helps determinewhether we are hired or promotedin academic institutions-worse, whether we are heard at all. Due to this new orientation,works (a word that evokes labor)have become texts. Criticsare no longerconcerned with literaturebut with other critics'texts, for the criticyearning for attentionhas displacedthe writerand has conceivedof herself or himself as the center. Interestingly,in the first partof this cenReprinted with changes from Cultural Critique6 (Spring 1987): 51-63. 67 68 Barbara Christian tury, at least in Englandand America,the criticwas usuallyalso a writer of poetry, plays, or novels. But today, as a new generation of professionalsdevelops, she or he is increasinglyan academic. Activities such as teaching or writing one's response to specific works of literaturehave, amongthis group,become subordinated to one primarythrust-that moment when one creates a theory, thus fixinga constellationof ideasfor a time at least,a fixingwhich no doubt will be replacedin anothermonth or so by somebody else's competingtheory as the race accelerates.Perhapsbecause those who have effected the takeoverhave the power (although they deny it) firstof all to be published,and therebyto determine the ideas that are deemed valuable,some of our most daringand potentiallyradicalcritics(andby ourI mean black,women, Third World)have been influenced,even co-opted,into speakinga languageand definingtheir discussionin terms alien to and opposed to our needs and orientation.At least so far, the creativewritersI study have resistedthis language. For people of color have always theorized-but in forms quite differentfrom the Western form of abstractlogic. And I am inclined to say that our theorizing(andI intentionallyuse the verb ratherthan the noun)is often in narrativeforms,in the storieswe create,in riddlesand proverbs,in the play with language,because dynamicratherthanfixedideas seem moreto our liking.How else have we managedto survivewith such spiritednessthe assaulton our bodies, social institutions,countries,our very humanity?And women, at least the women I grew up around, continuously speculatedaboutthe natureof life throughpithy languagethatunmaskedthe power relationsof theirworld. It is this language,and the graceand pleasurewith which they played with it, that I find celebrated,refined, critiquedin the works of writers like Toni Morrisonand Alice Walker.My folk, in otherwords, have always been a race for theory-though more in the form of the hieroglyph, a written figure that is both sensual and abstract,both beautifuland communicative.In my own work I try to illuminate and explainthese hieroglyphs,which is, I think, an activityquite differentfrom the creatingof the hieroglyphsthemselves. As the Buddhistswould say, the finger pointingat the moon is not the moon. In this discussion,however,I am moreconcernedwith the issue raisedby my firstuse of the term, theracefortheory,in relationto BarbaraChristian 69 its academic hegemony, and possibly of its inappropriatenessto the energeticemergingliteraturesin the world today. The pervasiveness of this academichegemonyis an issue continuallyspoken about-but usually in hidden groups,lest we, who are disturbed by it, appearignorantto the reigningacademicelite. Among the folk who speak in muted tones are people of color, feminists, radical critics, creative writers, who have struggled for much longer than a decade to make their voices, their various voices, heard, and for whom literatureis not an occasion for discourse among critics but is necessarynourishmentfor their people and one way by which they come to understandtheir lives better. Cliched though this may be, it bears, I think, repeatinghere. The race for theory-with its linguisticjargon;its emphasison quoting its prophets;its tendency toward '"biblical" exegesis; its refusaleven to mentionspecificworks of creativewriters,far less contemporaryones; its preoccupationswith mechanicalanalyses of language,graphs,algebraicequations;its gross generalizations about culture- has silenced many of us to the extent that some of us feel we can no longer discuss our own literature,and others have developed intense writingblocks and are puzzledby the incomprehensibilityof the language set adrift in literary circles. There have been, in the last year, any number of occasions on which I had to convince literarycriticswho have pioneeredentire new areasof criticalinquirythat they did have somethingto say. Some of us are continuallyharassedto invent wholesale theories regardlessof the complexityof the literaturewe study. I, for one, am tiredof being askedto producea blackfeministliterarytheory as if I were a mechanical man. For I believe such theory is prescriptive-it ought to have some relationshipto practice. Because I can count on one handthe numberof people attemptingto be black feminist literarycritics in the world today, I considerit presumptuousof me to invent a theory of how we oughtto read. Instead,I think we need to read the works of our writers in our variousways and remainopen to the intricaciesof the intersection of language,class, race, and genderin the literature.And it would help if we share our process, that is, our practice, as much as possible because, finally, our work is a collective endeavor. The insidiousqualityof this racefor theoryis symbolizedfor me by a term like "minoritydiscourse,"a label that is borrowedfrom the reigningtheoryof the day but which is untrueto the literatures 70 Barbara Christian being producedby our writers, for many of our literatures(certainlyAfro-Americanliterature)are central,not minor.I have used the passivevoice in my last sentence construction,contraryto the rules of black English,which like all languageshas a particular value system, because I have not placed reponsibilityon any particular person or group. But that is precisely because this new ideologyhas become so prevalentamongus thatit behaveslike so many of the otherideologieswith which we have had to contend. It appearsto have neitherheadnor center.At the least,though,we and "discourse" can say thatthe terms"minority" are locatedfirmly in a Westerndualisticor "binary" framewhich sees the rest of the world as minorand tries to convincethe rest of the world that it is major,usuallythroughforceand then throughlanguage,even as it claims many of the ideas that we, its "historical" other, have known and spoken about for so long. For many of us have never conceived of ourselves only as somebody'sother. Let me not give the impressionthat by objectingto the race for theoryI ally myself with or agreewith the neutralhumanistswho see literatureas pure expressionand will not admitto the obvious control of its production,value, and distributionby those who have power, who deny, in other words, that literatureis, of necessity, political.I am studyingan entirebody of literaturethat has been denigratedfor centuriesby such termsas political.Foran entire centuryAfro-Americanwriters,from CharlesChestnuttin the nineteenthcenturythroughRichardWrightin the 1930s, Imamu Barakain the 1960s, Alice Walkerin the 1970s, have protested the literaryhierarchyof dominancewhich declareswhen literatureis literature,when literatureis great,dependingon what it thinksis to its advantage.The blackartsmovementof the 1960s, out of which black studies,the feministliterarymovementof the 1970s, and women's studies grew, articulatedprecisely those issues, which came notfromthe declarationsof the New Western Philosophersbut fromthese groups'reflectionson theirown lives. ThatWesternscholarshave long believedtheirideas to be universal has been stronglyopposedby many such groups.Some of my colleaguesdo not see black criticalwritersof previousdecadesas eloquent enough. Clearly they have not read RichardWright's "Blueprintfor Negro Writing,"Ralph Ellison'sShadowand Act, Charles Chesnutt's resignation from being a writer, or Alice Walker's"Searchfor ZoraNeale Hurston."There are two reasons Barbara Christian 71 for this generalignoranceof what our writer-criticshave said. One is that black writing has been generallyignored in this country. Becausewe, as Toni Morrisonhas put it, are seen as a discredited people, it is no surprise, then, that our creations are also discredited.But this is also due to the fact that, until recently, dominant critics in the Western world have also been creative writerswho have had access to the upper-middle-class institutions of education,and, until recently,our writershave decidedlybeen excluded from these institutionsand in fact have often been opposed to them. Becauseof the academicworld'sgeneralignorance about the literatureof black people, and of women, whose work too has been discredited,it is not surprisingthat so many of our critics think that the position arguingthat literatureis political begins with these New Philosophers.Unfortunately,many of our young critics do not investigate the reasons why that statement - literature is political -is now acceptable when before it was not; nor do we look to our own antecedentsfor the sophisticated arguments upon which we can build in order to change the tendency of any establishedWesternidea to become hegemonic. For I feel that the new emphasison literarycriticaltheory is as hegemonic as the world it attacks.I see the languageit createsas one that mystifies ratherthan clarifies our condition, making it possible for a few people who know that particularlanguageto control the critical scene. That language surfaced, interestingly enough,just when the literatureof peoplesof color,blackwomen, LatinAmericans,and Africansbeganto move to "thecenter."Such wordsas centerandperiphery arethemselvesinstructive.Discourse, canon, texts,words as Latinateas the traditionfrom which they come, are quite familiarto me. BecauseI went to a Catholicmission school in the West IndiesI must confessthatI cannothearthe word "canon"without smelling incense, that the word "text"immediately brings back agonizingmemories of biblical exegesis, that "discourse"reeks for me of metaphysics forced down my throatin those coursesthat tracedworldphilosophyfromAristotle too is a word I heard throughAquinasto Heidegger."Periphery" if for was seen as being at the throughoutmy childhood, anything was small it those Caribbeanislands that had neither periphery, land mass nor militarypower. Still I noted how intensely important this periphery was, for U.S. troups were continually invading one island or another if any change in political control ever seemed 72 Barbara Christian to be occurring.As I lived amongfolk for whom languagewas an absolutelynecessaryway of validatingour existence,I was toldthat the mindsof the worldlived only in the smallcontinentof Europe. The metaphysicallanguageof the New Philosophy,then, I mustadmit, is repulsive to me and is one reason why I raced from philosophyto literature,because the latterseemed to me to have the possibilitiesof renderingthe world as largeand as complicated as I experiencedit, as sensual as I knew it was. In literatureI sensedthe possibilityof the integrationof feeling/knowledge,rather than the split between the abstractand the emotionalin which Westernphilosophyinevitablyindulged. Now I am being told that philosophersare the ones who write literature;that authorsare dead, irrelevant,mere vessels through which their narrativesooze; that they do not work nor have they the faintest idea what they are doing- rather,they producetexts as disembodied as the angels. I am frankly astonished that scholars who call themselves Marxists or post-Marxistscould seriouslyuse such metaphysicallanguageeven as they attemptto deconstructthe philosophicaltraditionfrom which their language comes. And as a studentof literature,I am appalledby the sheer uglinessof the language,its lack of clarity,its unnecessarilycomplicated sentence constructions,its lack of pleasurableness,its alienatingquality.It is the kind of writingfor which composition teacherswould give a first-yearstudent a resoundingF. Because I am a curiousperson, however, I postponedreadings of black women writers I was working on and read some of the prophets of this new literaryorientation.These writers did announce their dissatisfactionwith some of the cornerstoneideas of their own tradition,a dissatisfactionwith which I was born.Butin their attempt to change the orientationof Western scholarship, they, as usual, concentratedon themselves and were not in the slightestinterestedin the worlds they had ignoredor controlled. AgainI was supposedto know them,while they were not at all interestedin knowing me. Instead,they sought to "deconstruct" the tradition to which they belonged even as they used the same forms, style, and languageof that tradition,formsthat necessarily embody its values. And increasinglyas I readthem and saw their substitution of their philosophicalwritings for literary ones, I began to have the uneasy feeling that their folk were not producing any literature worth mentioning. For they always harkened BarbaraChristian 73 back to the masterpiecesof the past, again reifyingthe very texts they saidthey were deconstructing.Increasingly,as theirway, their terms, theirapproachesremainedcentraland became the means by which one defined literarycritics,many of my own peers who had previouslybeen concentratingon dealingwith the other side of the equation-the reclamationand discussionof past and present Third World literatures- were diverted into continuallydiscussing the new literarytheory. From my point of view as a criticof contemporaryAfro-American women'swriting,this orientationis extremelyproblematic.In attemptingto find the deep structuresin the literarytradition,a majorpreoccupationof the new New Criticism,many of us have becomeobsessedwith the natureof readingitselfto the extentthat we have stopped writing about literaturebeing written today. Since I am slightlyparanoid,it has begun to occur to me that the literaturebeing producedis preciselyone of the reasonswhy this new philosophical-literary-critical theory of relativityis so prominent. In other words, the literatureof blacks, women of South America and Africa, and so forth, as overtly "political" literature was being preempted by a new Western concept which proclaimedthat realitydoes not exist, that everythingis relative,and that every text is silent about something-which indeed it must necessarilybe. There is, of course, much to be learnedfrom exploringhow we know what we know, how we readwhat we read,an exploration which, of necessity, can have no end. But there also has to be a "what,"and that "what,"when it is even mentioned by the New Philosophers,are texts of the past, primarilyWesternmale texts, whose norms are again being transferredonto Third World and female texts as theories of readingproliferate.Inevitablya hierarchy has now developedbetween what is calledtheoreticalcriticism and practicalcriticism,as mind is deemed superiorto matter. I have no quarrelwith those who wish to philosophizeabouthow we know what we know. But I do resent the fact that this particularorientationis so privileged,and has divertedso many of us from doing the first readingsof the literaturebeing writtentoday as well as of past works about which nothinghas been written. I note, for example,that there is little work done on GloriaNaylor, that most of Alice Walker's works have not been commented on despite the rage around The ColorPurple-that there has yet to be 74 Barbara Christian an in-depthstudyof FrancesHarper,the nineteenth-centuryabolitionist poet and novelist. If our emphasison theoreticalcriticism continues,criticsof the futuremay have to reclaimthe writerswe are now ignoring,that is, if they are even awarethese artistsexist. I am particularlyperturbedby the movementto exalttheory,as well, becauseof my own adulthistory.I was an activememberof the black arts movement of the sixties and know how dangerous theory can become. Manytoday may not be awareof this, but the black arts movement tried to create black literarytheory and in doing so became prescriptive.My fear is that when theory is not rootedin practice,it becomes prescriptive,exclusive, elitish. An example of this prescriptivenessis the approachthe black arts movementtook towardlanguage.Forit, blacknessresidedin the use of blacktalkwhich they definedas hip urbanlanguage.So that when Nikki Giovanni reviewed Paule Marshall'sChosen Place, TimelessPeople,she criticizedthe novel on the groundsthat it was not black, for the languagewas too elegant, too white. Blacks, she said, did not speak that way. Having come from the West Indieswhere we do, some of the time, speakthatway, I was amazedby the narrownessof her vision. The emphasison oneway to be blackresultedin the worksof Southernwritersbeing seen as nonblackbecausethe blacktalkof Georgiadoes not soundlike the black talk of Philadelphia.Because the ideologues, like Baraka, came fromthe urbancenters,they tendedto privilegetheirway of speaking,thinking,writing,andto condemnotherkindsof writing as not beingblackenough.Wholeareasof the canonwere assessed accordingto the dictumof the blackartsnationalistpoint of view, as in Addison Gayle's The Way of the New World,and other works were ignoredbecause they did not fit the scheme of culturalnationalism. Older writers like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin were condemnedbecause they saw that the intersectionof Western and African influences resulted in a new Afro-American culture, a position with which many of the black nationalist idealoguesdisagreed.Writerswere told that writing love poems was not being black. Furtherexamplesabound. It is true that the black arts movement resultedin a necessary and importantcritiqueboth of previousAfro-Americanliterature and of the white-establishedliteraryworld. But in attemptingto take over power, it, as Ishmael Reed satirizesso well in Mumbo Jumbo,becamemuch like its opponent,monolithicand downright repressive. BarbaraChristian 75 It is this tendency toward the monolithic,monotheistic,and so on, that worriesme aboutthe race for theory. Constructslike the centerand the peripheryrevealthat tendency to want to make the world less complexby organizingit accordingto one principle,to fix it throughan idea which is reallyan ideal. Manyof us are particularly sensitive to monolithismbecause one majorelement of ideologies of dominance, such as sexism and racism, is to dehumanize people by stereotypingthem, by denying them their variousnessand complexity. Inevitably,monolithismbecomes a metasystem, in which there is a controllingideal, especially in relation to pleasure. Languageas one form of pleasure is immediately restrictedand becomes heavy, abstract,prescriptive, monotonous. Variety, multiplicity,eroticism are difficult to control. And it may very well be that these are the reasonswhy writersare often seen as personanongrataby politicalstates, whatever form they take, because writers/artistshave a tendency to refuse to give up their way of seeing the world and of playingwith possibilities;in fact, theirvery expressionrelieson that insistence.Perhapsthat is why creative literature,even when written by politically reactionary people, can be so freeing, for in having to embody ideas and recreatethe world, writerscannotmerely produce"oneway." The characteristicsof the black artsmovementare, I am afraid, being repeatedagaintoday, certainlyin the other areato which I am especially tuned. In the race for theory, feminists, eager to enter the halls of power, have attemptedtheir own prescriptions. So often I have readbooks on feministliterarytheorythat restrict the definitionof what feministmeans and overgeneralizeabout so much of the world that most women as well as men are excluded. And seldom do feministtheoriststake into accountthe complexity of life-that women are of many races and ethnic backgrounds with different histories and cultures and that as a rule women belongto differentclassesthat have differentconcerns.Seldomdo they note these distinctions,becauseif they did they could not articulate a theory. Often as a way of clearingthemselves they do acknowledgethat women of color, for example,do exist, then go on to do what they were goingto do anyway, which is to invent a theory that has little relevancefor us. That tendency toward monolithismis precisely how I see the Frenchfeministtheorists.They concentrateon the femalebody as 76 BarbaraChristian the means to creatinga female language,because language,they say, is male and necessarilyconceives of woman as other.Clearly many of them have been irritatedby the theories of Lacan for whom languageis phallic. But suppose there are peoples in the world whose language was invented primarily in relation to women, who afterall arethe ones who relateto childrenandteach language. Some native American languages, for example, use female pronounswhen speakingaboutnon-gender-specific activicreated to Who knows who, according gender, languages.Furty. as the source of the ther, by positing body everything, French feminists return to the old myth that biology determineseverything and ignore the fact that gender is a social rather than a biologicalconstruct. I could go on critiquingthe positionsof Frenchfeminists who are themselvesmore variousin their pointsof view than the label used to describethem, but that is not my point. What I am concerned about is the authority this school now has in feminist scholarship-the way it has become authoritativediscourse, monologic,which occurs preciselybecause it does have access to the meansof promulgatingits ideas.The blackartsmovementwas able to do this for a time becauseof the politicalmovementsof the 1960s-so too with the Frenchfeministswho could not be inventif a space had not been createdby the women'smoveing "theory" ment. In both cases, both groupsposited a theory that excluded many of the people who made that space possible.Hence, one of the reasonsfor the surge of Afro-Americanwomen'swritingduring the 1970s and its emphasison sexism in the black community is preciselythat when the ideologuesof the 1960ssaid black,they meant blackmale. I and many of my sistersdo not see the worldas beingso simple. And perhapsthat is why we have not rushed to create abstract theories.Forwe know thereare countlesswomen of color,both in Americaand in the rest of the world, to whom our singularideas would be applied.Thereis, therefore,a cautionwe feel aboutpronouncing black feminist theory that might be seen as a decisive statementaboutThirdWorldwomen. Thisis not to say we are not theorizing.Certainlyour literatureis an indicationof the ways in which our theorizing,of necessity, is based on our multiplicityof experiences. There is at least one other lesson I learnedfrom the black arts BarbaraChristian 77 movement. One reasonfor its monolithicapproachhad to do with its desireto destroythe power that controlledblack people, but it was a power that many of its ideologueswished to achieve. The natureof our contexttodayis such that an approachwhich desires power single-mindedlymust of necessity become like that which it wishes to destroy. Ratherthan wanting to change the whole model, many of us want to be at the center.It is this point of view that writerslike JuneJordanand AudreLordecontinuallycritique even as they call for empowerment,as they emphasizethe fearof difference among us and our need for leaders rather than a relianceon ourselves. For one must distinguishthe desire for power from the need to become empowered-that is, seeing oneself as capableof and having the rightto determineone'slife. Suchempowermentis partially derivedfrom a knowledgeof history.The blackartsmovement did result in the creationof Afro-Americanstudies as a concept, thus givingit a place in the universitywhere one might engagein the reclamationof Afro-Americanhistory and cultureand pass it on to others.I am particularlyconcernedthat institutionssuch as black studiesand women'sstudies,foughtfor with such vigorand at some sacrifice,are not often seen as importantby many of our black or women scholarsprecisely because the old hierarchyof traditionaldepartmentsis seen as superior to these "marginal" groups. Yet, it is in this context that many others of us are discoveringthe extent of our complexity,the interrelationshipsof different areas of knowledge in relation to a distinctly AfroAmericanor female experience.Ratherthan having to view our world as subordinateto others,or ratherthan havingto work as if we were hybrids,we can pursue ourselves as subjects. My majorobjectionto the race for theory, as some readershave probably guessed by now, really hinges on the question, "For whom are we doing what we are doing when we do literary criticismT'It is, I think, the centralquestiontoday, especiallyfor the few of us who have infiltratedthe academy enough to be wooed by it. The answerto thatquestiondetermineswhat orientation we take in our work, the languagewe use, the purposesfor which it is intended. I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in orderto save my own life. And I mean that literally.For me, literatureis a way of knowingthat I am not hallucinating,that 78 Barbara Christian whatever I feel/know is. It is an affirmationthat sensualityis intelligence,that sensuallanguageis languagethatmakes sense. My response,then, is directedto those who write what I read and to those who read what I read-put concretely-to Toni Morrison and to people who read Toni Morrison(amongwhom I would count few academics).Thatnumberis increasing,as is the readership of Alice Walkerand Paule Marshall.But in no way is the literatureMorrison,Marshall,or Walkercreate supportedby the academicworld. And, given the politicalcontextof our society, I do not expect that to change soon. For there is no reason, given who controlsthese institutions,for them to be anythingotherthan threatenedby these writers. My readingsdo presupposea need, a desire among folk who, like me, also want to save their own lives. My concern,then, is a passionateone, for the literatureof people who are not in power has always been in danger of extinction or of co-optation,not because we do not theorize but because what we can even imagine, far less who we can reach,is constantlylimitedby societal structures. For me, literary criticism is promotion as well as understanding,a responseto the writerto whom there is often no response, to folk who need the writing as much as they need anything. I know, from literaryhistory, that writing disappears unless there is a responseto it. BecauseI write aboutwriterswho are now writing,I hope to help ensurethattheirtraditionhas continuity and survives. to use a new "lit.crit."word, is not fixed but So my "method," relatesto what I read and to the historicalcontextof the writersI read and to the many criticalactivities in which I am engaged, which may or may not involve writing. It is a learningfrom the languageof creative writers, which is one of surprise,so that I might discover what languageI might use. For my languageis very much based on what I readand how it affectsme, that is, on the surprisethat comes from readingsomethingthat compelsyou to read differently,as I believe literaturedoes. I, therefore,have no set method, anotherprerequisiteof the new theory, since for me every work suggestsa new approach.As risky as that might seem, it is, I believe, what intelligencemeans-a tuned sensitivity to that which is alive and thereforecannot be known until it is known. Audre Lorde puts it in a far more succinct and sensual way in her essay, "PoetryIs Not a Luxury." Barbara Christian 79 As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds 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. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of "it feels right to me." We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.' NOTES 1. Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury," in Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Trumansburg,N.Y.: CrossingPress, 1984), 37. 
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