Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Sister Outsider
"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" — Lorde's 1984 collection of essays on race, gender, sexuality, age, and class as inseparable dimensions of identity and struggle
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Sister Outsider (Mid (the major prose collection of Lorde's career)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Sister Outsider
1976-1983 composition; 1984 publication. Lorde was 50 at publication; she would die of cancer in 1992 at age 58.
Space
Sister Outsider
Northeast US / Caribbean / international lecture-circuit. Lorde was teaching at Hunter College (City University of New York) and travelling extensively for lectures and speaking engagements.
Matter
Sister Outsider
Essay and speech collection (~190 pages). Form is essayistic-rhetorical-political; many of the pieces had been originally delivered as public lectures or conference speeches.
Observer
Sister Outsider
Middle Lorde. The observer is the Black-lesbian-feminist poet-essayist working at the intersection of multiple marginalised positions and articulating the philosophical-political resources distinctive to that intersection.
Energy
Sister Outsider
Black-feminist-political energies. The collection's rhetorical force comes from Lorde's distinctive prose voice — confessional, polemical, lyrical, philosophically careful.
Information
Sister Outsider
Single essay collection. 'The Master's Tools' and 'Uses of the Erotic' are the most-cited individual entries.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Most influential non-poetic Lorde work; founding text of late-twentieth-century intersectional Black-feminist theory. The 'master's tools' aphorism has been continuously cited (sometimes abused — Lorde was making a specific argument about the limits of reform through dominant institutions, not a generic anti-tools claim); the 'Uses of the Erotic' essay has been foundational for queer-of-color and feminist-affect-theoretical work.