Archivo mensual: abril 2012

Está claro que las mujeres necesitamos una nueva ética; como mujeres, una nueva moralidad. El problema del habla, de la lengua, sigue siendo primordial. Pues si al hablar estamos rompiendo silencios establecidos desde hace tanto tiempo, “nos estamos liberando de nuestros secretos” en palabras de Beverly Tanenhaus, esto en sí mismo es una forma de acción. (…) ¿Cómo escuchamos? ¿Cómo hacemos posible que otra persona rompa su silencio? Éstas son algunas de las cuestiones que siguieron a las que planteé en este artículo.

De “Las mujeres y el honor: apuntes sobre las mentiras” (1975) en su libro Sobre mentiras, secretos y silencio. Prosa de 1966 a 1978 (traducción mía para MP)

Trozo original de “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying” (1975)

… It is clear that among women we need a new ethics; as women, a new morality. The problem of speech, of language, continues to be primary. For if in our speaking we are breaking silences long established, “liberating ourselves from our secrets” in the words of Beverly Tanenhaus, this is in itself a first kind of action. I wrote “Women and Honor” in an effort to make myself more honest, and to understand the terrible negative power of the lie in relationships between women. Since it was published, other women have spoken and written of things I did not include: Michelle Cliff’s “Notes on Speechlessness” in Sinister Wisdom no. 5  led Catherine Nicolson (in the same issue) to write of the power of “deafness,” the frustration of our speech by those who do not want to hear what we have to say. Nelle Morton has written of the act of “hearing each other into speech” in her paper “Beloved Image!” (delivered at the National Conference of the US American Academy of Religion, 1977). How do we listen? How do we make it possible for another to break her silence? These are some of the questions which follow on the ones I haver raised here.