Black Women's Writing Revisited

11      Audre Lorde's and Afro-German women's activism has helped to make the experience of Blacks in Germany visible and to publicly discuss racism and the history of Black presence in Germany. In this sense, it has contributed to a growing awareness that German culture and society are affected by the African Diaspora and its implications. Additionally, Lorde calls for the different communities of the African Diaspora to recognize each other and to show solidarity while at the same time respecting and appreciating differences. Black internationalism and Black solidarity movements across national borders are certainly not a new phenomenon and have been studied extensively as, for example, Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic or Brent Hayes Edwards' The Practice of Diaspora demonstrate. However, Lorde's participation in the Atlantic cultural traffic and her seminal role for Afro-German women foregrounds an important aspect of the notion of the African Diaspora, which has received less theoretical and analytical attention: gender. As Sandra Gunning, Tera W. Hunter, and Michele Mitchell state in 2004:

[…] the use of gender as a category of analysis remains something of a challenge for African Diaspora studies. […] too many studies past and present have addressed the experience of black masculinity as a collective identity without a self-conscious assessment of the continual transformation of gender roles and sexuality within a black diasporic framework. (2-3)

Lorde's transatlantic cultural work as well as the Afro-German movement which emerged during the 1980s both attest to the fact that the category of gender has to be taken into account when theorizing and analyzing African Diasporas. The rise of Afro-German communities and Lorde's contribution to this development have initially been shaped by and linked to feminism and feminist concerns. Afro-Germans entered intellectual and public discourses and became a visible and active group within a larger African diasporic community through the (often feminist) activism of women. In this regard, the German community of the African Diaspora intrinsically resists being conceptualized along the parameters of Black masculinity. The diasporic path of Audre Lorde, the Afro-German movement, and their interactions cannot be generalized towards a theory of African Diasporas at large, but since, as Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur remark, "[t]heorizations of diaspora need not, and should not, be divorced from historical and cultural specificity" this particular diasporic community can strengthen the focus on gender within discourses about African Diasporas (3). Obviously, the interactions between Lorde and Afro-German women cannot be viewed outside their specific historic socio-cultural framework but they also remind us that dialogues between different groups within the African Diaspora, which is itself fractured by nationality, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender, sexuality etc., also require translation and mediation.

12      In this particular case, "[t]he interactive relations between black communities worldwide are reflected in the profound influence that African decolonisation struggles and the US black liberation movement had on the development of an Afro-German sense of identity" (El-Tayeb 66). In this quote, another important aspect is mentioned for the dialogue between Afro-America and Afro-Germany, namely that it is also related to Africa and African issues and, in fact, often involves Africa as a reference point. However, this dialogue seems to privilege the common experiences of oppression, marginalization, and resistance over a historical or mythical point of origin or return. And it is this common diasporic experience which is decidedly understood as being shaped by race/ethnicity and gender alike. This focus, though it certainly is important, should not obscure the numerous other aspects like religion, sexuality, or nationality, which make the African Diaspora or rather African Diasporas a multi-facetted and heterogeneous group. Including Germany and the Afro-German (women's) movement into notions of what Claire Alexander and Caroline Knowles put forward as the "other archetypal diaspora" alongside the Jewish (8), does not only help to create a more differentiated picture of the African Diaspora but also to understand Germany as a diasporic nation. This can make the Diaspora experience as Stuart Hall defines it - and as it certainly suits Lorde's vision - become part of German history and experience; for Hall, the Diaspora experience "is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity" (244). In a sense, this also holds true for the understanding and solidarity between women as Lorde postulates it. The author herself struggled to claim every part of her identity without denying any one and to live with the differences within herself - along these lines, she encouraged women of the African Diaspora to consciously deal with every part of identity and to recognize each other not despite but through their differences. Joan Wylie Hall situates Lorde's interactions with Afro-German women within the context of Lorde's "sense of responsibility toward the Black Diaspora" which "extended to women of African descent in Germany" (ix). In return, Lorde's conception of the Black Diaspora was shaped decisively by her meeting and discussing with Afro-European women. However, considering Lorde's vision of global sisterhood, one could also invert Hall's causality and state that Lorde's sense of responsibility towards feminist or womanist concerns extended to Black and white women in Germany. Just as she perceived of her own identity as fractured but whole, Lorde's notion of the African Diaspora and a global community of women never assumes homogeneity but rather celebrates difference and hybridity. Her 'sisterly (inter)actions' with Afro-German women exemplarily attest to the diversity of African diasporic experiences and draw attention to the fact that these experiences are also necessarily gendered.