Each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present. This is one of the ways in which women's work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.
Interpretation
This quote reflects how feminist contributions are often viewed in isolation, ignoring their historical context and significance.
Adrienne Rich's quote highlights the tendency to regard feminist works as though they appear in a vacuum, without recognition of the historical and cultural influences that shape them. By suggesting that women's thoughts and works are sporadic and disconnected from tradition, the quote critiques the marginalization of feminist contributions, emphasizing the importance of understanding their roots and the continuous lineage of thought that informs them.
In practice
In a discussion on the evolution of women's rights movements, this quote can illustrate the historical foundation of feminist thought.
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'β
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.
Be Charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and loose not the glory of the Mite.
Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms.
An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.
Every man's death is standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love the man who stands for us.
No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind.
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