In her honour

[ide_cyan]

One of the many, many things I value of Joanna Russ's writing is the connections she makes to other women's works. (Also her footnotes are often hilarious.) If keeping an oppressed population in ignorance is one of the major tools of oppression, then keeping memory alive, forging links between generations and restoring a sense of history to people who are written out of history by their oppressors is a vital tool of resistance. Knowledge is power. Anamnesis is empowering. Connections make us stronger, and those between the past and the future are as important as the ones that exist between us in the present.

Russ wrote:

"Experience alone is unintelligible. Theory alone is empty. Consciousness-raising is whatever brings the two together, formally or informally, in a classroom, in a house, on the street, in an apple orchard in Sonoma. It is research." (What Are We Fighting For? p. 436-437.)

I heard about Dale Spender through Joanna Russ's work, and I'd like to quote something Spender herself quoted (in There's Always Been A Women's Movement This Century), which was said by Hazel Hunkins Hallinan in commemoration of her friend, Alice Paul. The words are:

"In her honour we should dedicate ourselves anew to finishing our own liberation."

Comments

[ithiliana]

You're right--I brought WAWFF to the motel tonight and was just looking at the huge list of acknowledgements for copyright, and all the quotes and connections made from the very start--and yes, yes, her footnotes are a work of art! When I started reading feminist works (on my own), I used her notes, bibliographies, and others notes and bibliographies to find readings--it was wonderful (and completely outside an academic context).

[ide_cyan]

I never got to meet Russ, but I got to (briefly, at a conference she was giving; I asked for her autograph) meet Christine Delphy (who is still alive), whose work Russ led me to.