Surviving the Academy: Why Audre Lorde's Radical Self-Care Remains Important for Black Women and Marginalised Communities in Academia
I recently came across an Instagram reel that talked about the connection between self-care consumerism as a tool systems in power utilise to distract women from continuing to fight against those systems. A very thought provoking video by (@PhDWithSucho on Instagram)!
The video raised important point about consumerism and self-care, all of which I do not refute. However, there is an added perspective to be considered. The relationship between self-care, Race and how in many instances self-care can become an inextricable tool to navigate systematic oppression/power and navigate a world that is built to destabilase you.
For this I think we should start at the very beginning, what is self-care? what does it look like? and who decides what it looks like?
What is self-care?
According to Rosenbaum and Talmor, the term “Self-care” can be found everywhere.1 They acknowledge rather swiftly that the term self-care circulates as a marketing tool - as elucidated by @/PhDWithSacho’s video - an escape from consumer goods that contradictorily rely on a person’s escape in them to partake. According to Rosenbaum and Talmor, Self-care is peddled as a means to tend to one’s body, self, and or soul moments of tenderness that as they highlight are often achieved through consumerasim.2 Interestingly, Rosenbaum and Talmor discuss the role of self-care in Black feminist thought as a means of self actualisation, they pull from the work of Anna Julia Cooper an educator, writer, intellectual and activist3 who wrote “as a political practice connected to the pursuit of a sovereign mind, heart and body”4 Rosenbaum and Talmor describe as her critiquing of the dominance of romantic love and its hegemony over the ways in which the topic of love is defined and approached.
Rosenbaum conclude their paper by asserting that the term self-care be recognised as a feminist keyword, claiming that it lies between the intersection of central issues both in feminism and in anthrpology5 They point to the ways in which other theorists such as Chomsky and Foucault in their understandings of self-care positioning it simply as a by-product of power. However, through the application of Black feminist thought, Rosenbaum and Talmor, indicate just how crucial self-care can be to those deliberately excluded from said systems.6 In the 1960s Bacharach and Baratz theorised that systems of power actively shape who can and cannot participate within decision making forums (spaces where decisions that actually affect groups are made), they labeled such groups as “outsiders” while others are “insiders”. Their study aimed to understand Race relations in Baltimore (U.S.).7 Their study depicted how the interests of the Black minority in that area were edged out systematically.8
Through this understanding of power, we see how certain groups - in this case “outsider groups” as Bahcarach and Barataz categorise them - those without power are caught in a system in which live in, and so mustn’t they find means of taking care of self?
This brings me back to the understanding of Radical Self-care by Audre Lorde.9 Her conceptualisation deliberately places the word ‘Radical’ in front of it to illustrate that tackling systems of oppression cannot come from an empty or depleted vessel. Specifically within the contexts of Black women in the U.S, this can be applied more widely to Black women in spaces where they frequently experience racism and micro aggressions. For Black women, self-care becomes a non-negotaible in the wake of systematic oppression and an essential tool before it to adequately prepare. Therefore, by passing such understandings of self-care and their contributions towards navigating and surviving tumultuous political climates destabilises any hope of reaching an intersectional feminism that works. Therefore in her view, self-care becomes not as means to ignore systems of oppression or the volatile nature of politics and the groups they subjugate, but rather as a way of reclaiming autonomy and conscientiously healing self through practices that act as a release or serve as a moment of calm.
Now whether such modes of self-care are inextricably linked to consumerism, brings us back to how we define or identify self-care. What strategies for coping with the world are being utilised? is it a face-mask? buying that bag that will probably take half your savings? more make-up? or are those very understandings anti-feminist? they skewed? could they be broadened?
But importantly: Must-self care cost money?
If we take the academy as an example (academia) navigating it as a Black woman can scarcely be thought of as an easy feat, between continual questioned/doubted intelligence, blatant and micro aggressions, systematic attempts to remove you from spaces of power (be they personal or realised), each day can be exhausting. And so in such spaces, self-care could simply be taking a walk out at the courtyard after such moments, it can simply be listening to your music inbetween lectures, it can simply be saying no to a “favour”, it can simply be making an iced matcha latte. Conversely, the latter modes of self-care could certainly bleed into overconsumption.
In the end, I do not believe that the connections between consumerism and self-care do not exist, they do. I also do not refute that they could act as curated distractions from bigger goals of dismantling systems of oppression. However, I hope that we may further consider that in our feminism, we are intersectional and acknowledge that such systems of oppression may often necessitate intentional and conscientious self-care practices particularly for certain groups that face added exclusions and why radical self-care strategies remain important in how they navigate the world in spaces not built for them in bodies in perpetual states of hypervigilance. I argue that self-care can act as a refueling, a reprieve and perhaps an arguably sacrosanct space (physical, emotional, or mental) that can aid in whether we even have the energy to approach issues and engage constructively. Radical self-care as posited by Audrey Lorde is an intentional practice that can be implemented across feminist thought.
For full list of references please see bibliography below
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Self-Care, Susanna Rosenbaum and Ruti Talmor, Feminist Anthropology, Volume 3, Issue 2
Ibid (As above)
‘Anna Julia Cooper: Educator, Writer and Intellectual’, National Museum of African American History of Culture, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/anna-julia-cooper-educator-writer-and-intellectual
The Intellectual progress of the Colored Women in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation: A response to Fannie Barrier Williams (1893)
Self-Care, Susanna Rosenbaum and Ruti Talmor, Feminist Anthropology, Volume 3, Issue 2
Ibid
Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, decisions and non-decision: An Analaytic Framework’, The American Political Science Review.
John Hudson and Staurt Lowe, Understanding the Policy Process: Analysing Welfare Policy and Practice
Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light
This is such a valuable contribution to the conversation. The academy can be a stark and harmful place for women and people of color. I hadn’t thought to view it through Lorde’s self-care, but now I can’t unsee it. The empty preaching of work-life balance when there’s no room for such, or even sending students to counseling to get patched up after being abused by supervisors, aren’t real self-care, they mask the environment’s corrosive aspects. Finding deeper self-care in such spaces is indeed radical.
When I saw the video you referenced, I felt like “finally, people are having this conversation.” I have a lot of ideas about this conversation but one of the very first that comes to mind, as a black African woman, is what is “taking care of myself” when my people are not well? Is it not selfish to be so deeply concerned about the self when my community is not well? This is a concept I’ve come across when reading about mothers in African literature written by the African women. And I deeply resonated with it because of my view on consumerism, not necessarily from my life as an African woman myself. When people talk about “self care” and that “self care” is in the form of a purchased product, I often challenge people to look at the full product line of whatever it is they have purchased. I can guarantee that something in that product has come from the exploitation of another woman of color somewhere across the world. And that should bother us all. That should bother us deeply. But it doesn’t, because inherently “self” is the opposite of a collective and “self” has been marketed to us under the idea of “if you don’t take care of self, how do you pour into another’s glass” but what people don’t seem to realize is in a hyper consumeristic world, the catch is most of us will only ever have enough to only get to the first part of the statement, take care of the self. By the time you’ve done that, you’re in need of more money to survive, so we don’t always get to the “pouring into another’s glass” part.