BLOOD, BREAD,
AND POETRY
Selected Prose 1979-1985
Adrienne Rich
a
W. W. Norton & Company, New York LondonNotes 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 RoadNote 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 Bgau 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 uteas 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 84singe “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 beyexperience 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 helps2 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 meme236 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 A20 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