Sisterly Solidarity: Politics and Rhetoric of the Direct Address in US Feminism in the 1970s

Abstract

The wide circulation of the terms ‘sister’ and ‘sisterhood’ in the 1970s suggests the extent to which the idea and practice of sisterhood shaped US feminism at that time. Four decades later sisterhood is often referred to within the context of critique, namely that primarily white, middle-class women imagined sisterhood in a way that reproduced racism, homophobia, classism and US-centrism, and that erased differences among women. Without dismissing these critiques, I contend that a close reading of the different deployments of the term ‘sister’ reveals some of sisterhood's complexity and power, as well as additional limitations of the term that are rarely discussed.

In particular this article analyses instances in which ‘sister’ occurs within a direct address in feminist periodicals. The direct address is an interpellation, a speech act that both hails the reader, naming her as a sister, and produces a community of women who are sisters. Looking at various examples in which readers are addressed as sisters, I consider facets of interpellation, such as the interdependence of the addressor and addressee, the simultaneity of subject and community formation, the affective quality of an address, and the different effects of a name when it is written rather than oral. An investigation the rhetorical force of interpellation points to the importance of the direct address in social movement communities, the challenge of negotiating and producing one's audience, and that which obstructs the formation of a community identity that produces subjects who are also activists.

Keywords:

• interpellation
• print culture
• sisterhood
• social movements
• subjectivity
• US twentieth-century history
• women's liberation

Notes

¹Gayle Henry, ‘Defining Our Parameters’, Lancaster Women's Liberation, July 1976, np. Angela Jeannet Papers, box 1, ‘Lancaster Publications, LWL, 1976–1977’. Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (hereafter, Duke University). In order to reflect the content of newsletters as it appeared in the publication, I retain the original capitalisation, punctuation and emphases in my quotations throughout the article.

²‘Insane, in Grain, in Pain, in Vain’, no author, Ain't I a Woman?, 25 September 1970, p. 8. Iowa Women's Archives, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.

³Third World Women's Alliance, ‘Goals and Objectives’, Triple Jeopardy, Sept–Oct 1971, p. 8. Periodicals Collection, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (hereafter, Sophia Smith Collection).

⁴‘Hijas de Cuauhtémoc’, mission statement, circa early 1970s. Oral History Collection, Los Angeles Women's Movement (Chicana Student Publications), box 1, California State University, Long Beach Special Collections and University Archives, Long Beach, California.

⁵‘PYS Sister's [sic] Group’, Asian Women's Center Newsletter, Summer 1973, p. 4. California State University, Dominguez Hills Collection, box 2, folder ‘Asian Women’, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles, California (hereafter SCLSSR). Note that this collection was uncatalogued when I conducted research in autumn 2008.

⁶Mary M. Petrinovich, ‘Abortion Taxpayers Suit: Unite with Sisters in a Joint action for our Constitutional Rights to a Free Choice and to Medical Care for All Women’, LA Women's Liberation Newsletter, October 1970, p. 5. Register of the Los Angeles Women's Liberation Movement Collection, 1970–1976, SCLSSR.

⁷Priscilla J. Warner, ‘Some Thoughts of a Sister’, Valley Women's Center Newsletter, 8 October 1971, p. 4. Valley Women's Center Records, 1971–1977, box 4, folder 1, Sophia Smith Collection.

⁸Jane adams, ‘Factionalism Lives’, Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement, February 1969, p. 10. Annie Popkin collection, box 3, folder 46, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (hereafter Schlesinger Library).

⁹‘Introduction to the Newsletter’, by Kathleen, Women's Liberation Newsletter, December 1970, p. 2. Periodicals Collection, Schlesinger Library.

¹⁰‘What We're up to’, Indianapolis Women's Liberation Newsletter, January 1971, p. 3. Periodicals Collection, Schlesinger Library.

¹¹Letter from Sara M. Evans published in Feminist Newsletter, 28 July 1974, p. 5. Periodicals Collection, Schlesinger Library.

¹²Editorial announcement, Sister, June 1973, back page. SCLSSR. Note that this periodical was separated from the Los Angeles Women's Liberation Movement Collection.

¹³See Barbara Johnson (1987) for a discussion of the ways a direct address acts as a rhetorical trope that animates, or gives life to, that which addresses.

¹⁴Editorial statement, Second Coming, 15 July 1971, p. 9. Periodicals Collection, Schlesinger Library.

¹⁵Daily log entry, 27 January 1972, Valley Women's Center Records, 1971–1977, box 1, folder 9, Sophia Smith Collection.

¹⁶Announcement, Sister, October 1973, p. 10. SCLSSR.

¹⁷‘Read with Care’, by Jody Raphael, Lancaster Women's Liberation, 24 September 1972, p. 6. Angela Jeannet Papers, box 1, folder ‘General Publications’, Duke University.

¹⁸Letter from Bobby Darwall, Female Liberation Newsletter, 23 May 1971, p. 1. Periodicals Collection, Sophia Smith Collection.