Linguistic Elitism

Saminasha

What do you mean by saying I am transparent? I really dont know what you mean. Please explain.

Baldy,

As you dont know who Lorde is, how are you qualified to gauge her relevance to our literary world? She is considered indispensable to contemporary literature.

And are you suggesting that ideas are not important to all people? Defend this specious position NOW.

Missy Sammy who cares who Lorde`s is? It could be the person who built and funded the cricket ground, it could be the pretty lady, our virgin of the Lourdes fame....who cares...I see you do ...so tough. You are the one who brought her up so you need to fill in the gaps.

Knowledge of Lorde`s doesnot provide people with their daily bread nor does it provide them with a roof over their heads - this knowledge is essentially useless and a luxury of the well heeled and well fed.

So take a walk and jump into your own Infernus...

baldy,

As you dont know who Lorde is, abstain from comparisons. Anyone who did would situate Lorde`s position in tandem with similar conceptualizations. Also, learn how to spell ``language``.

Missy sammy, if you read the Guardian you will find an interesting article by that closet catholic fanatic William Dalrympimple - he uses the english lanugage to good effect - he suggest that the arts and culture in the subcontinent has no depth and that it is like the bollywood and lollywood movies. He sorts of suggest in an oblique manner that the western (euro stuff) is better and more long lasting. Its an infernal cycle. You have to beat them with a stick using a larger one everytime this thing rears its ugly head. For you dont do it you will soon be put down - and that road is as slippery as hell and there is no way you can stnd up again and say YOU ARE EQUAL OR BETTER.

Is that an S&M type order from Missy Sammy? If so let me tell you I am not into it!

On the other hand I would suggest that the likes of R. K. Narayan, Rushdie, Hanif dude, that Kunzru guy, Jadie Smitth, Bapsi Sidwa, that other parsi guy canadian resident but a bombay man yes - Rohinton Mistry, Arundhatti Roy etc do show a way of of doing it and turning the tables. Indeed people from the Indian Sub-continent have been doing it for a sometime now we can add Desai, Radhakrishnan, Jinnah (up to a point), Gandhi, and there are more who have done it long before the Lorde`s lady said this ... perhaps the great teacher of the english language would be kind enough to do some research on the desis to realise that Lorde`s lady was not the first an dthat there are others who said it more beautifully and succintly.

how could I forget divakaruni......

Some of the other groups have been slow at picking up the tricks, but are doing it now, some have still not learnt the tricks.

And Baldy,

Rather than evading the issue, why dont YOU explain Lorde`s phrase?

Do it NOW.

READ:

Sister Outsider`` is a collection of essays focusing on race/racism, gender/sexism, sexual identity, and social class as these are enacted in a white-supremist, heterosexist, capitalist patriarchy (i.e. the United States). As a Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet, essayist, and political activist, Lorde`s essays in this collection include her often quoted ``The Master`s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master`s House,`` an essay that radically challenges how white people ``learn about`` racism, or how men ``learn about`` women: ``Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master`s concerns . . . .``

Her essay ``Poetry is Not a Luxury`` suggests that poetry is ``illumination,`` and is a way to wed ideas and feeling, a way ``we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.`` Other titles include ``Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface,`` ``Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist`s Response`` (on being the lesbian mother of a son), and ``The Uses of Anger: Women Respond to Racism.``


Commentary I would recommend this book in part or whole for discussions of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism. Lorde`s narrative is radical, often angry, always confrontational, and this makes readers--especially middle-class, well-educated medical students (and faculty) uncomfortable and often defensive.





The most provocative issue raised in the book may be her belief that those of us who are in the position of oppressor (white people, for example), must EDUCATE OURSELVES and not wait for or expect persons of color to do it for us, to tell us ``how it is.`` This means reading, listening, watching, critiquing ourselves and our culture (including the culture of medicine)--and recognizing that unlearning racism is a life-long task, that no one is immune, including those who take an oath to provide health care to others. The power of the book for medical professionals is its confrontation with the racism in all of us, which forces us to find the hidden, nuanced ways racism is enacted in medicine.


Publisher Crossing (Freedom, Calif.)
Edition 1984

Blasp,

You dont deserve to know what I thought. And you are transparent.

Saminasha

I thought you were busy? Anyway, you have regurgitated, not answered my question. I asked what YOU thought. You gave me a cut price cut and paste response. Lazy and crude.

ana

[do the terms metaphor and irony escape you?]

Hold on, let me look them up in the dictionary...

blasphemer:

do the terms metaphor and irony escape you? using the master`s tools to dismantle HIS house in the case of english does not make one a nihilist and a vandal. it does in the dismantling rearrange the space and the manner in which we have discourse in english.

it means that we use the tool of the white male-oriented english language to widen its scope as g.v desani has, as rushdie has, as jean toomer has, as audre lorde has, as many writers who have in their writings written back to the empire such as hanif kureishi or kazuo ishiguro. as women such as helene cixous who talk about women writing from their bodies suggest. as african-american writers have. with the exception of cixous who writes in french, many of these writers have had a hand in ``dismantling`` the language of their former masters and making it their own in the process. and there is nothing nihilistic or vandalistic about a desani, or a kureishi, or a lorde, or a shange (ntozake shange).

this is what one can infer by reading a statement such as audre lorde`s in ways other than literally as you have done. perhaps you will find a way to read it differently, or not.

Blasphemer,

1. You didnt know who Audre Lorde was, but asked a bunch of questions that assumed that Lorde`s and Said`s comments had not taken into account your theory of ``many rooms``.

2. You couldnt be bothered to google Lorde, but had to be told to google her.

3. You were able to glean only that she was a ``lesbian`` which actually was a simplification of her personal politics, and not her politically racial identity as a Trini Black American woman poet.

4. You refused to look up the what her phrase meant and wanted me to explain it to you.

5. You demanded THREE times that I explain it to you.

6. The irony of your last comment is that all three texts that I did you the favor of posting answer your questions-you cant be bothered to figure out how!

Saminasha

Thanks for telling me that you dont like intellectual laziness. Thats very interesting. What does that have to do with me? I was asking you what you thought, as an individual. All you have done is cut and paste someone elses words....which is very...lazy.

3.

Sister Outsider`` is a collection of essays focusing on race/racism, gender/sexism, sexual identity, and social class as these are enacted in a white-supremist, heterosexist, capitalist patriarchy (i.e. the United States). As a Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet, essayist, and political activist, Lorde`s essays in this collection include her often quoted ``The Master`s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master`s House,`` an essay that radically challenges how white people ``learn about`` racism, or how men ``learn about`` women: ``Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master`s concerns . . . .``

Her essay ``Poetry is Not a Luxury`` suggests that poetry is ``illumination,`` and is a way to wed ideas and feeling, a way ``we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.`` Other titles include ``Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface,`` ``Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist`s Response`` (on being the lesbian mother of a son), and ``The Uses of Anger: Women Respond to Racism.``


Commentary I would recommend this book in part or whole for discussions of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism. Lorde`s narrative is radical, often angry, always confrontational, and this makes readers--especially middle-class, well-educated medical students (and faculty) uncomfortable and often defensive.





The most provocative issue raised in the book may be her belief that those of us who are in the position of oppressor (white people, for example), must EDUCATE OURSELVES and not wait for or expect persons of color to do it for us, to tell us ``how it is.`` This means reading, listening, watching, critiquing ourselves and our culture (including the culture of medicine)--and recognizing that unlearning racism is a life-long task, that no one is immune, including those who take an oath to provide health care to others. The power of the book for medical professionals is its confrontation with the racism in all of us, which forces us to find the hidden, nuanced ways racism is enacted in medicine.


Publisher Crossing (Freedom, Calif.)
Edition 1984

Blasphemer,

I cant stand intellectual laziness...why should you be spoonfed? Do the work.