Audre Lorde, Myth, and the Problem of the Other

Abstract

The presence of blacks in the United States of America today constitutes one of the most peculiar phenomena in the history of modern man. Never had such a significant abduction of a people from their fatherland been recorded. Blacks were considered beasts of burden and property but did not create the language or metaphors by which they were defined. Having neither logos nor identity, they craved the motherland. To perpetuate slavery and colonialism, the white imperialists made up fallacious philosophical arguments that negated the selfhood of blacks. The white subject defined them as the “Other” and objectified them. Racist theorists like Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Hegel, and Comte de Gobineau posited the black person as the antithesis of the white man. In “Notes on the State of Virginia”, Jefferson sets the “Negro” as an evil force within the nation. In Philosophy of History, Hegel argues that the “negro” stands outside the history of intellectual, technological, moral and cultural progress driven by reason. The history of the Negro stands outside of intellectual history, and so only by colonisation can the black be civilised. As Michelle Wright makes us understand, however, Senghor was to draw heavily from Gobineau in theorising negritude. Gobineau did concede the emotional and artistic component to blacks.