ABSTRACT
This chapter delves into the archival record of the conference—including recordings of the event preserved in the records of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, conference ephemera at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and correspondence in Audre Lorde's papers at Spelman College—in order to situate “The Master's Tools” in its historic context, offering a history in which Lorde moves on and off center stage. Harbingers of trouble to come followed the pre-circulated papers, as they made their way to registered attendees across the United States and Europe. As well as reducing historical complexity, the idea that feminism became intersectional in the late 1970s and 1980s too easily places white feminism in the past, thwarting our ability to analyze present-day manifestations of racism that Lorde critiqued at the Second Sex conference.
