The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the stagnation in political movements regarding women's liberation, suggesting that progress is superficial and confined by male authority.
Adrienne Rich's quote reflects on the concept of revolution in the context of politics and gender. She asserts that despite the rhetoric of progress and change, the reality is that women's liberation often ends up being constrained by male-dominated systems, likening it to a wheel that merely spins in place without genuine advancement. This metaphor of a 'revolving door' underscores the cyclical nature of societal change that ultimately fails to break free from established patriarchal norms.
In practice
This quote is great for discussions in gender studies classes.
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'β
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.
Sometimes I used to think that one day i should wake up, and all that had been would be over. forgotten, sunk, drowned. Nothing was sure - not even memory.
The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.
I love the old way best, the simple way of poison, where we too are strong as men.
Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.
As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.
An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.
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