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Many know of Audre Lorde’s quote that caring for herself is “an act of political warfare.”
I have concerns with the narrative of Lorde’s self-care that often circulates. And I think Lorde's analysis and practice of self-care has relevance for current events.
A thread.
I have concerns with the narrative of Lorde’s self-care that often circulates. And I think Lorde's analysis and practice of self-care has relevance for current events.
A thread.
First, Audre Lorde's oft-cited passage about self-care:
"Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference...Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
"Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference...Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
Audre Lorde's passage about caring for herself as an "act of political warfare" is in the epilogue of her book A Burst of Light. For Lorde, the "burst of light" was "that inescapable knowledge, in the bone, of my own physical limitation."
In A Burst of Light, as well as in her book The Cancer Journals and "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," Audre Lorde publicly documented her battle and efforts to survive cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977 and then with liver cancer in 1984.
As Rudolph P. Byrd notes about Audre Lorde's publications, "As a trilogy, these works constitute the first public reflections by an African American woman, and specifically a black lesbian feminist, on the nature of health, disease, mortality, and social struggle."
Often claimed Audre Lorde practiced self-care because she was denied medical treatment for cancer. Here, self-care is posed as a political response to medical apartheid or neglect. This narrative is often deployed to reclaim self-care as political rather than corporate marketing.
But the claim Audre Lorde was refused medical treatment for liver cancer is false. Indeed, she discusses her talks with doctors. One she describes as "The hepatologist who tried to frighten me into an immediate liver biopsy without even listening to my objections and questions."
Audre Lorde describes supplementing what doctors were telling her with her own research on liver cancer and treatment: "I needed information, and pored over books on the liver in Barnes & Noble's Medical Textbook Section on Fifth Avenue for hours."
Conducting her own research played a role in Audre Lorde's decision about how to deal with cancer: "...from all the reading I've been doing these past weeks...I've made up my mind not to have a liver biopsy. It feels like the only reasonable decision..."
Audre Lorde also saw cancer as political: "I’m not being paranoid when I say my cancer is as political as if some CIA agent brushed past me in the A train on March 15, 1965, and air-injected me with a long-fused cancer virus."
Eventually, Audre Lorde chose other treatment than a liver biopsy, which involved seeking treatment outside of the United States. She also made some lifestyle changes, which she wrote about. For her self-care involved doing her own research and seeking alternative treatment.
So what was it that Audre Lorde learned from doctors and her own research that made her forgo a liver biopsy despite doctors aggressively advising her to do so? As she concluded, "western medicine doesn’t have a very impressive track record with cancer metastasized to the liver."
If we read some of the previous tweets in this thread, about Audre Lorde on cancer as political and her research on western medicine, we might conclude Audre Lorde's self-care was indictment of/challenge to medical apartheid. While there's some of that, the story is more complex.
Audre Lorde was not anti-health care nor was she anti-western medicine. Her consideration of cancer as political exemplified what today is known in public health as structural determinants of health. She spoke of needing access to both health care and healthy living conditions.
For example, at a 1977 Black feminist retreat, Audre Lorde said, "...while we organize around the specific issues of abortion, of sterilization, of health care, we must give some of our energies also consistently to defining the shape of the future toward which we are working..."
And in her 1989 commencement address at Oberlin, Audre Lorde said, "...thirty children on this planet earth die every minute from hunger and inadequate health care. And in each one of those minutes, $1,700,000 are spent on war."
And Audre Lorde's "cancer is as political as if some CIA agent brushed past me...and air-injected me with a long-fused cancer virus" in same paragraph with critique of living conditions: "What possible choices do most of us have in the air we breathe and the water we must drink?"
Audre Lorde did have access to medical care but doctors told her "the standard treatments" for liver cancer might give 4-5 more years to live. Without treatment, maybe 3-4. Lorde worried about potential negative impacts of surgery. As she wrote, "I’ve been down that road before."
In sum, Audre Lorde refused "the standard treatments" for cancer. But she didn't claim cancer a hoax and didn't condemn usefulness of western medicine. And she didn't claim “authentic” medical expertise due to her own research and rightful critique of institutions and oppression.
