Rich, Adrienne (1987) ‘Notes Towards a Politics of Location.’ Blood, Bread and Poetry. London: Virago, 210-232.
"As a woman, I have a country; as a woman I cannot divest myself of that country merely by condemning its government or by saying three times "As a woman my country is the whole world."" p.212
The body is the beginning - "Begin, though, not with a continent or a country or a house, but with the geography closest in - the body."
The politics of location - ""always" blots out what we really need to know: When, where, and under what conditions has the statement been true?" p.214
-"The absolute necessity to raise these questions in the world: where, when, and under what conditions have women acted and been acted on, as women?" p.214
"To write "my body" plunges me into lived experience, particularity: I see scars, disfigurements, discolorations, damages, losses, as well as what pleases me." p.215
Race precedes gender - "I was born in the white section of a hospital which separated Black and white women in labor... I was defined as white before I was defined as female." p.215
The politics of location: "When I was carried out of the hospital into the world, I was viewed and treated as female, but also viewed and treated as white - by both Black and white people." p.215
"And it felt like a dead end wherever politics has been externalized, cut off from the ongoing lives of women or of men, rarefied into an elite jargon, an enclave, defined by little sects who feed off each others' errors." p.217
"[radical feminists] never meant anything less by women's liberation than the creation of a society without domination; we never meant less than the making of all relationships. The problem was that we did not know whom we meant when we said "we."" p.217
"The faceless, raceless, classless, category of "all women." Both creations of white Western self-centeredness." p.219
"Marginalized though we have been as women, as white and Western makers of theory, we also marginalize others because our lived experience is thoughtlessly white, because even our "women's cultures" are rooted in some Western tradition." p.219
"there is confusion between our claims to the white and Western eye and the woman-seeing eye, fear of losing the centrality of the one even as we claim the other." p.219
"We are not urged to help create a more human society here in response to the ones we are taught to hate and dread." p.220
"there is no liberation that only knows how to say "I"; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through." p.224
"The growing urgency that an anti-nuclear, anti-militarist movement must be a feminist movement, must be a socialist movement, must be an anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement." p.225
"I am the woman who asks the questions." p.226
"feelings are useless without facts, that all privilege is ignorant at the core." p.225
"We can't build a society free from domination by fixing our sights backward on some long-ago tribe or city." p.227
"This is the working day that has never changed, the unpaid female labor which means the survival of the poor." p.230
White theory - "only certain kinds of people can make theory; that the white-educated mind is capable of formulating everything; that the white middle-class feminism can know for "all women"; that only when a white mind formulates is the formulation to be taken seriously." p.230
"Black feminism cannot be marginalizsed and circumscribed as simply a response to white feminist racism or an augmentation of white feminism; that it is an organic development of the Black movements and philosophies of the past, their practice and their printed writings?" p.231
"As a woman, I have a country; as a woman I cannot divest myself of that country merely by condemning its government or by saying three times "As a woman my country is the whole world."" p.212
The body is the beginning - "Begin, though, not with a continent or a country or a house, but with the geography closest in - the body."
The politics of location - ""always" blots out what we really need to know: When, where, and under what conditions has the statement been true?" p.214
-"The absolute necessity to raise these questions in the world: where, when, and under what conditions have women acted and been acted on, as women?" p.214
"To write "my body" plunges me into lived experience, particularity: I see scars, disfigurements, discolorations, damages, losses, as well as what pleases me." p.215
Race precedes gender - "I was born in the white section of a hospital which separated Black and white women in labor... I was defined as white before I was defined as female." p.215
The politics of location: "When I was carried out of the hospital into the world, I was viewed and treated as female, but also viewed and treated as white - by both Black and white people." p.215
"And it felt like a dead end wherever politics has been externalized, cut off from the ongoing lives of women or of men, rarefied into an elite jargon, an enclave, defined by little sects who feed off each others' errors." p.217
"[radical feminists] never meant anything less by women's liberation than the creation of a society without domination; we never meant less than the making of all relationships. The problem was that we did not know whom we meant when we said "we."" p.217
"The faceless, raceless, classless, category of "all women." Both creations of white Western self-centeredness." p.219
"Marginalized though we have been as women, as white and Western makers of theory, we also marginalize others because our lived experience is thoughtlessly white, because even our "women's cultures" are rooted in some Western tradition." p.219
"there is confusion between our claims to the white and Western eye and the woman-seeing eye, fear of losing the centrality of the one even as we claim the other." p.219
"We are not urged to help create a more human society here in response to the ones we are taught to hate and dread." p.220
"there is no liberation that only knows how to say "I"; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through." p.224
"The growing urgency that an anti-nuclear, anti-militarist movement must be a feminist movement, must be a socialist movement, must be an anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement." p.225
"I am the woman who asks the questions." p.226
"feelings are useless without facts, that all privilege is ignorant at the core." p.225
"We can't build a society free from domination by fixing our sights backward on some long-ago tribe or city." p.227
"This is the working day that has never changed, the unpaid female labor which means the survival of the poor." p.230
White theory - "only certain kinds of people can make theory; that the white-educated mind is capable of formulating everything; that the white middle-class feminism can know for "all women"; that only when a white mind formulates is the formulation to be taken seriously." p.230
"Black feminism cannot be marginalizsed and circumscribed as simply a response to white feminist racism or an augmentation of white feminism; that it is an organic development of the Black movements and philosophies of the past, their practice and their printed writings?" p.231
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