Identity in the House of Difference Constructing the Situational Subject in Audre Lorde's Zami
Date of Award
2006
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Humanities
First Advisor
Wallace, Miriam
Keywords
Lorde, Audre, Lesbian, Butler, Judith, Zami, African-American Feminist Theory, Feminism, Queer Theory
Area of Concentration
British and American Literature
Abstract
Audre Lorde's biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) is a key text from the interventions made by women of color and lesbians within the feminist movement in the 1980s. In this thesis, I argue that significant trends in recent feminist and queer theory, particularly the theories of positionality, performativity and embodiment, are responses to the need to retheorize identity and difference in the wake of these interventions. I argue that in Zami, Lorde establishes a constant tension between the fixed, stable model of identity characteristic of identity politics and a model that embraces the fluidity and multiplicity of identity. Specifically, in her formulation of racial identity as performative and in her depiction of the creation of identities within the lesbian bars of 1950s New York, Lorde synthesizes positionality, performativity and embodiment to create a situational, contingent model of identity that accounts for the positionalities of the mobile body embedded in the contexts of space and time.
Recommended Citation
Balon, Rebecca, "Identity in the House of Difference Constructing the Situational Subject in Audre Lorde's Zami" (2006). Theses & ETDs. 3611.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/3611
Rights
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