Abstract

Power and Marginality is an interdisciplinary, comparativist, and theoretical work concerned with the social production of knowledge about Black and/or lesbian identity through writing. I argue that contemporary use of the keywords "marginality", "invisibility", and "silence" are highly problematic when used to represent Black or lesbian identity, whether the terms are embraced as tools for radical possibility change, or whether they are repudiated. For through the use of these three keywords, "theoretical knowledge" and "experiential" knowledge are placed in binary opposition, reifying the very social constructs of dominance that the terms are employed to oppose. I map a methodology for using discursive space, time, and bodies in order to socially construct "positional knowledge" from which we can represent Black and/or lesbian power rather than marginality, invisibility, or silence. ;In Chapter One I engage the work of Audre Lorde, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, George Chauncey, and Donna Haraway as I define the terms: "the discursive"; "hegemony"; "common sense"; and "keywords". In Chapter Two I assess the ways in which the margins are theorized as a material place, similar to a ghetto, rather than as a discursive space. In that chapter I ask: what is the perceived danger for discourses of Black and/or lesbian marginality of claiming cultural theory? In Chapter Three I argue that the use of the terms "invisibility" and "silence" defines lesbian and/or Black identity as "invisible" when a white and/or heterosexual hegemonic presence refuses to "see" and as "silent" when it refuses to hear. In Chapter Four I argue that we must unite the binary of experiential and theoretical knowledges as "positional knowledge" by using the tool of discursive time in conjunction with overt representation of discursive spaces and bodies. Finally, in Chapter Five I "rewrite" the margins as a location of "positional power" through an interwoven reading of the theories of Audre Lorde, Michel Foucault, and James C. Scott