2023/09/01 by Machtenberg, Julia
#Abomey #American Poetry #Audre Lorde #Intersubjectivity #Mythical Norm #Vulnerability #West African Cosmology
paper · doi:10.5283/copas.374
In her poetry collection The Black Unicorn“ (1987), Audre Lorde shows the ways in which those who do not comply to the normative ideals of her contemporary US culture are especially vulnerable to societal marginalization and violence. Analyzing Lorde’s reconstruction of vulnerability in her poem “125th Street and Abomey,” this paper argues that the poet’s drawing from West African cosmology constitutes one method through which Lorde reconstructs her speaker’s vulnerable socio-cultural position as a potential site for transformative processes of intersubjective self-(re)formation.“