This is a memorial website to Andrea Dworkin which provides biographical details about Andrea Dworkin and the life that she lived, written a year after her death in 2005.
This is the Andrea Dworkin website and online library.
Andrea Dworkin's reputation and legacy is anything but a given, both within the feminist community and outside of it. One of the better reviews of the diversity of her life and career is her obituary in The Guardian, where she worked as a writer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/apr/12/guardianobituaries.gender.
She is as well known for her opposition to pornography from a feminist perspective (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmEsu1TTJ-Y) as she is for her graphic, rape-narrative writings like the book that we are going to read over the course of this semester). There were those who loved her (http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/toandreawithlove.html), those who hated her (including, among others, Larry Flynt, who accused her of endorsing incest), and those who were critical of her strategy of critiquing gender subordination (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/books/review/18egan.html).
The book that we are going to read for this semester, Mercy, has been viewed as "Declaring War on Men" (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/15/books/declaring-war-on-men.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm), important in naming atrocity (http://demonista.livejournal.com/31476.html), as an "event" in gender politics (http://articles.latimes.com/1991-08-27/news/vw-1533_1_andrea-dworkin), as a critique of the current legal orthodoxy on gender (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265442), and as pornographic (http://www.jstor.org/stable/3312343). It is, in theory, a novel; in practice, it is somewhat (if not entirely) autobiographical of Andrea Dworkin (a question played with in both the prologue and the epilogue of the book). On one hand, it is meant to suggest that the main character could be anyone; on the other hand, it is an account of deeply personal experiences that shaped her view of gender politics.
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