Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.
Chargement... Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary (2020)par Martin Duberman
Aucun Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Andrea Dworkin is dead. As far as I know, Duberman did not meet her but had exclusive access to her archives, in which there were a lot of letters. The book kicks off by showing Dworkin’s fierce sides as she, nineteen years old, joined a sit-in at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations to protest the escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam: Minutes later, the police suddenly descended, and Andrea was among those carted off to night court. Her legal-aid attorney tried to persuade the presiding judge to free her on her own recognizance, arguing that she posed no danger to society during the period that would precede sentencing. This is not a wishy-washy biography about a simple bougie girl but a nuanced book about a person who desperately fought against injustice, be it real, imagined, against herself, or others. Duberman does the reader a service by contrasting how Dworking was treated with disrespect and even hatred with how she treated others, both with love, hatred, and everything inbetween. She worked and lived in a time and place where feminism was not rated highly, in an extremely patriarchal society. Dworkin met Cornelius Dirk de Bruin, a.k.a. Iwan, who abused her terribly: The beatings escalated to the point where Iwan was kicking her in the stomach, banging her head against the floor, even hitting her with a beam of wood that bruised her so badly she could hardly walk for days. She managed, once, to get herself to a doctor; he told her he could write her a prescription for Valium or have her committed; she chose the Valium. Sometimes Iwan beat her into unconsciousness. To read of de Bruin’s horrific abuse and harassment of Dworkin is harrowing. The pain she suffered is described via her own words, in explicit detail. Gradually, very gradually, the forgotten emotion of anger began to resurface. And “the anger of the survivor” (as she later wrote) “is murderous. It is more dangerous to her than to the one who hurt her. She does not believe in murder; she wants him dead but will not kill him. She never gives up wanting him dead.” Dworkin read a lot of modern feminist theory, formed her own theories, and put her words into action. As Duberman writes, ‘Andrea’s transition from abused hausfrau to formidably independent feminist, had been rapid—and astonishingly absolute.’ 'Woman Hating' contains stories about the history of anti-feminist abuse and Dworkin’s vision about the future. She worked furiously from thereon, establishing herself as a key figure in the American 1970s feminist scene. She spoke out against pornography, gave speeches, moved south (which was a very bad idea), and solidified her (unconventional) partnership with John Stoltenberg. Dworkin was vehement against those who opposed her, and this in spite of some even being her friends. An example, where Gloria Steinem edited Dworkin carelessly: This wasn’t the last time that Andrea made Gloria, in her position as editor-in-chief of Ms., the target of complaint—though what Andrea called the “tenderness” she felt for Gloria to some extent stayed her hand. Over the years their run-ins were few, especially when put in the context of the trench warfare that periodically engulfed the feminist movement. But on at least one other occasion a serious conflict arose over what Andrea regarded as a breach of contract; she went so far—in a letter to Robin Morgan—as to accuse Gloria of “dishonesty” and “repeated lies.” Dworkin could be isolated, destitute, even starving, and would yet express her thoughts in contrast to a massive wall of hatred against her, e.g. as Larry Flynt, owner of Hustler, a porn magazine, made sure that she was ridiculed and hated in many pages of his magazine. There are salient points in the book. Andrea and Kitty felt secure enough in their relationship to read each other’s work with an eye toward improving, not simply admiring, it (though they usually did). When Kitty, for example, read Andrea’s book Pornography in manuscript, she pulled no punches: “You take certain things on the level of their own self-presentation, which is myth, and hold them to that standard, rather than criticizing deeper realities, which in each case are even more open to attack. Example . . . where you say ‘the objective scientists’ find such and such, it is not clear whether you are faulting their objectivity or questioning objectivity itself. It seems more like the former, and I think the latter is more devastating and telling.” The book also goes into her non-explicit feminist work, for example, Scapegoat: Scapegoat is something of an anomaly in Andrea’s body of work. Her long-standing theme of misogyny shares the stage this time around, and is often crowded off it, by her impassioned discussions of anti-Semitism and the militaristic turn taken by the state of Israel. Scapegoat is also the most traditionally academic of Andrea’s books (though her insights go deeper and the pulsating intensity of her prose is more riveting than can be said for most academic works); it seems a surprising anomaly for a writer who in earlier books experimented with twisting autobiography into fiction, and then back again, to end up in Scapegoat with all the scholarly apparatus of the professoriate and a prose style all but free of onrushing proclamation. This is, strangely, both an impersonal book and a personal one; while Duberman goes through the motions of Dworkin’s life, he does not seem to have interviewed a single person to contrast what he is writing about. This kind of armchair biography brings light, but not enough, in my experience, and this book suffers because of it. When Duberman gets personal, some weird stuff pours through. An example of this: The New York Times, weighing in a month after the publication of Scapegoat, managed to put a damper—as only the Times can—on whatever momentum might have been building for the book I most certainly agree that The New York Times has a lot to answer for, but this type of writing sidetracks Dworkin in a way that I feel she does not deserve. The weirdness aside—of which there are really only remnants—this book does delve into Dworkin’s life and her interactions with others, mainly thanks to Duberman’s exclusive access to Dworkin’s archives. The book does breathe and is quite exciting to read at times. Dworkin was an unabashed firebrand, a beacon of modern feminism: brash, outrageous, angry, and free. We all have things to learn from her and this book reminds us to do just that. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Prix et récompenses
"Fifteen years after her death, Andrea Dworkin remains one of the most important and challenging figures in second-wave feminism. Although frequently relegated to its more radical fringes, Dworkin was without doubt a formidable and influential writer, a philosopher, and an activist-a brilliant figure who inspired and infuriated in equal measure. Her many detractors were eager to reduce her to the caricature of the angry, man-hating feminist who believed that all sex was rape, and as a result, her work has long been misunderstood. It is in recent years, especially with the rise of the #MeToo movement, that there has been a resurgence of interest in her ideas. This biography is the perfect complement to the widely reviewed anthology of her writing, Last Days at Hot Slit, published in 2019, providing much-needed context to her work. Given exclusive access to never-before-published photographs and archives, including her letters to many of the major figures of second-wave feminism, award-winning biographer Martin Duberman traces Dworkin's life, from her abusive first marriage through her central role in the sex and pornography wars of the following decades. This is a vital, complex, and long overdue reassessment of the life and work of one of the towering figures of second-wave feminism"-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucun
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)305.42092Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Women Role in society, status History, geographic treatment, biography BiographyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
Est-ce vous ?Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing. |
I should probably admit upfront to having appreciated Dworkin's work for a long time so I came to this with a positive opinion of her and her ideas. I didn't always agree 100% with her thoughts but she never failed to make me reconsider my position and often shift it or outright change it.
Duberman did know Dworkin so his analysis and narrative are not strictly from his access to archives, though mostly so. It is subtly mentioned in the book that they met during the days of the Vietnam protests, but if someone just cherry-picked long quotes rather than read the book they would miss that. But such is what passes for certain types.
Duberman has written a critical biography here, not to be confused with a biography that is critical of Dworkin. He presents her ideas and tries to explain what she was arguing for and what she advocated for. In such a biography it is not necessary to present every counter argument, this is not a book of theory, this is a biography, so an explication of Dworkin's ideas to correct misunderstandings (all intercourse is rape, for example), intentional or not, is part of telling her story. Biography, yes, book of theory, no. The only people who will be upset that counter arguments weren't presented in greater detail will be those who likely disagree with Dworkin. Understandable but disingenuous as well.
This work presents Dworkin as an often difficult person though generally not from being mean or uncaring but from her approach to feminism and life itself. She sometimes saw things as easily distinguishable between right and wrong and gave no harbor to those she believed advocated, even unconsciously, for wrong. Yet reading her with an open mind, trying to understand what she was saying on her terms, was always a rewarding experience, even when she didn't persuade you. And if you're not reading any thinker to understand them on their terms, then you're really just halfway reading, you're looking for little bits that you can counter regardless of the accuracy of those bits to the larger argument. Dworkin did, and still does, make many readers take that approach because her truths are often uncomfortable.
I would recommend this to anyone who wants to better understand both the person and her ideas. Whether you're new to her or have read all of her work, this makes many connections that have previously been hidden.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )