Liabilities of Language: Audre Lorde Reclaiming Difference

Distortions around the naming and the misnaming of human differences are the central foci of Audre Lorde's speech entitled ''Age, Race, Class, Sex: Women Redefining Difference, "which she delivered at Amherst College in Massachusetts on April3, 7 980. Lorde's speech at Amherst exemplifies her deep understanding of what she refers to in an earlier speech as "that language which has been made to work against us. " Paradoxically, by scrutini<jng some liabilities that language may pose for members of subordinated communities, Lorde's speech enacts specific and often subtle means for reclaiming language, exemplified by "difference." Lorde's speech undertakes a fUndamental transformation in a commonplace understanding of "difference" as domination by redefining it as resource, while calling attention to how complicity inheres in language. She contends that a focus upon relational practices across human differences is more fUndamental than demographic categories for people in promoting the human liberation of diverse subordinated communities.