BLOOD, BREAD, AND POETRY Selected Prose 1979-1985 Adrienne Rich a W. W. Norton & Company, New York LondonNotes toward a Politics of Location (1984) 1am to speak these words in Europe, bat Ihave been searching ‘America. A few yeas ago | to create 2 soiety free of domination, inwhich “seruality poltes,.., wor, intimacy thinking itself wil be transformed.” T would have spoken these word asa feminist who “hap pened” to be a white United States sitizen, conscious of my ‘overnment’s proven capacity for vi power, but as selfseparated from t Notes toned «Pali ofLcation an of los of faith or hope, These notes to keep moving, «struggle for account Beginning to write, the hhave ben bumping my way against glassy panes, ned, gathering myself wp and crawling, then German Henin, to be lying on the table. gilfviend and L used dressed like this ‘Adtenne Rich 14 Bagevale RoadNote ear a obi of Lectin a1 control, forcible sterilization. Of prostitution and marital sex. Of what had been named sexual liberation. OF prescriptive Ietrosexality. OF lesbian existence, nists were often pioneers in this work. But ‘knew, the need to begin with the female ote enn or sooo Bae a closest in—the body, Here at least I oor Abstractions severed from the doings of living people, fed back to peop ‘Theoty—the seeing of patterns, showing the forest as well 48 the trees—theory can be a dew that rises fom the earth and collects inthe tan cloud and retums to earth over and ‘The polis of| orgasm, ‘The politics of rape sd Feige The Cera eli, oC. (Ne 2a Eich a Dee gl Wi san Non A ve lon Rat acme ee ‘itor of ems Hae YO Wes HY Pont Bgau Blood, Bre, en Pty ‘over, Bu iit doesn't smell ofthe earth, reve pope sang int abject he specie rection of women trou curbcsonins anetny,fomtonen hore ‘Thence gon paradigm for “women,” but a place of location, To sy ‘vay from what has given me a primary ‘my body” reduces the temptation to gran female; or female, white. The ft obvious, as born inthe white section ofa hospital ‘Black and white women in labor and of white identity were mystified by the presumption that white people are the center of the To locate myself in my body means more than under standing wha ons and uteas Bld, Brea, ond Paty sin, the places it has taken me, the places it has not let me Bot Prague oF Lda or Amer, the tne ett rte might hve had o aes Had U soe Pus notre dx and the ay satin fo ohh they se Septtn el ese tye My, he quinn "inte so muh, vate of so much toe sen ought ine the gis conged Bring dwn asin a ain he fe mse ever Plng pes ype of conte per Coc eb se, commaring, Begin dem pte. Sa Mant or Left dial of tae ity eve atthe cost of honesty, for an 4 Mee ih On Lt, Sots nd SS Pe 966178 (Nowe Notes toned «Pais of Location ar analysis whick, one given, need not be reexamined. Such isthe deadendednese—for worsen—of Marsiom in our time * tas fet lke @ dead end wherever pois has been from the ongoing lives of women or of ‘men, rarefied into an elite jargon, sects who feed off each other error. But even as we shrugged away Marx aloo defined by ithe Manvists and the sectarian Let, some radical ‘The power men everywhere wield over women, power which has ‘come a model fo every other form tence.” Patriarchy asthe “made!” for other nation—this idea was not orig forward insistently by white Western had quoted from Lévi-Strauss: / would ‘bproach to women that would serve one. ences among us a.” Living for ffty-some years, having watched even minor bits of history unfold, Iam less quik than I once was to search for SW Not tor TER On Li, So nd Sle 84singe “ease ocvgnsin ealgr among ham being Bat oe i back and est patriarchy can get on to the work Ge A Blk Fit Any (Now Ye Noe toward ols of Lecton 219 down to earth again? ‘The faceless, sexless, at. The faceless, racelesy, clases category of th creations of white Wester self centered- woman-seeing eye, the one even as we claim How does the white Western feminist define theory? Is it ide only by white women and only by hich [needed to take respor by contemporary Cuban women thatI began to experience the la Jongh, “he nsngtle Mes Tt Mi, ein ad i i Rk a toh ad mF The Pit fay Toate NY Cringe.[Nate toar Polite of Lecton 2a spoke of the “deadly sameness” of abstraction.) I allows no dliferences among places, times, cultures, conditions, move- ‘ments, Words that should possess a depth and breadth of allusions—words like sociliom, communism, democracy, co- lectvsm—are stripped oftheir historical root, the many faces ‘ofthe struggles for social justice and independence reduced to ion to dominate the word. either/or, we absorb some of it unless we actively take heed. In the United States large numbers of people have been cut ‘off from their own process and movement. We have been ‘caring for forty years that we ae the guardians of freedom, while “behind the Iron Curtain” all is duplicity and manipula, if not sheer tertor. Yet the legacy of feat lingering after the witch hunts ofthe iis hangs on ike the aftersmell of 3 ‘burning, The sense of obliquity, mystery, paranoia surounding the American Communist party after the Khrushchev Report ‘And, thoogh parts of the North American feminist move- ‘ment actually sprang from the Black movements of the sites Lila Seth, "Aug a Dal wes Kg and Core The Wine Rone hed Sek ee Tol WE Re ath beyexperience of in “Ha Gano ain od et Sein, XR Fac al th ee Sas ee eet hers has nothing as yet to do with the liberation of wemen. A female proletariat—uneducatd, and largely from the Thied World— and white, the strict and sober presence of it the tre intuition of relativity battering the heart; “American.” Yet how, ‘except through ourselves, do we discover what moves other People to change? Our old feas and denials—what helps2 Bled, Brel, and Poy us let go of them? What makes us decide we have to re educate ourselies, even those of us with “good” educations? ‘A politicized life ought to sharpen both the sense and the ‘memory The diffeulty of saying Ia phrase from the East German novelist Christa WolE But once having said it, a we realize the necessity to go further, ist there 2 dificult of saying: " ime I cannot speak for us. Two Jem! ‘An approach which traces miltarom back to patriarchy and patriarchy back tothe fundamental quality of maleness can be demorlising and even paralyzing... Pethaps itis posible to ‘e les ied on the discovery oj “orignal causes." It might be ch Sie Ua Pe er i 7 Coe Maen Ser Mp Sx Bee Regn “Teg te Cn,” nS, 96-36; Bin, 6 alr of May oh, aks to th War Rees eg tested Polit of Letion 25 ‘more useful to ask, How do these values and behaviors get repeated generation after gener ite izatn of maslns ‘The archaic idea of women ‘mises are deployed in the back langen. The growing urgency that rist movement must bea femi ing to give or: of pure annshistion. ‘The anti-nuclear, antimilitary movement cannot sweep away the ‘isles as 4 movement to save white civilization in the West. ‘We who are not the same. We who are many and do not Want tobe the same. ‘Toying to watch myself in the proces of writing thi, I keep coming back to something Sheila Rowbotham, the British socialist feminist, wrote in Beyond the Fragments ‘A movement eps ou to onrome some ofthe oppresiv diene {ng of theo and this has Ben a cantnsng creative evdasrour of women’ iberation. But some pate are not mopped and our foothlds vanish. Foe what Tim wring pot of ¢ idee 22 inhi El, De Ka Bc Yu The sen Line (odes oso meme236 Bln, Bre, an Poy lang which Beinning. Lam pa ofthe dif ml. The ‘dif inot ot thre 3k out there except in the social 1 doo ay ge My dificulies, to, conditions that belove—my feelings 1 Sha Rote, Lyme Sep sd Hay Wari, Boe th Pg sn Pi ey of ce aoe Soa ek‘And I turn to Etel Adnan's brief, extraordinary novel Sitt Marie Rose, about middleclass Christian Lebanese ots toned Pai of Location no ‘woman tortured for joining the Palestinian Resistance, and ead ‘Acros th the earth, there are women gett blackness before the pont of ; ‘up with ind sick and frightened atthe hour when death i supposed to do its work, Ash and grind spices in small mor at the market and cook cheap, nutritious soups. They repai clothes until they will not sustain another patch. They 2 A20 Blod, Bra, nd Poy ‘out the cheapest school uniforms, payable in the ‘They trade old magazines for alk ng dtr oid spo trexd at ight oer isthe woking dy tat as never hangs he ups female abr which means the snl of he po. heavy and maybe painful into her stove, her house, her widely avalable—whic rmulatng the political theory of Black American feminism: the CCombahee River Collective statement, the assays and speeches 2 Bae Perm eine deo “Won ei i! Re pe Wn 2 ay elt) Sine tered Chey, Nas tor Plies of Lsation a of Gloria 1. Joseph, Audre Lorde, Bemice Reagon, Michele ‘Rossel, Barbara Sith, June Jordan, to name afew ofthe most obvious. White feminists have read and taught from the ay thology This Bridge Called My Back: Wiitings by Radical Women of Color, yet often have stopped at perceivhg it simply as an angry attack on the white women's movement So white Feelings outward from the base and center of my Feeling, but with 3 comectve sense that my felings are not the center of femic And if we read Aude Lorde of Gloria Joseph or Barbara Smith, do we understand that the inte ite liberalism or white Burc-Amer- of Afro-American experience W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B, ‘Well Bamnett,C. L. R, James, Malcolm X, Loraine Hans. berry, Fannie Lou Hamer, among others? That Black feminism ized and circumscribed as simply a response traci or an augmentation of white femi- inte feminism from ‘mination and justice ourselves, (Once again: Who is we? ‘This i the end of these notes, but it ie not an ending, and against which women define 23,0 Amalie wo Che Mag wh, Ts Bie Clty Ba ei Aa me of CW aa as a (td y Kin Tbe Wonen ol Gna a, Mey Rene