The Uses Of The Erotic - SAGE Publications Ltd

05-Lovaas-5001.qxd7/8/200612:11 PMPage 875The Uses of the EroticThe Erotic as PowerAUDRE LORDEAudre Lorde died in November, 1992.Audre Lorde was author of more than adozen books of poetry and prose, recipient ofnational and international awards, and afounding member of Kitchen Table: Womenof Color Press. Her most recent poetryincludes Undersongs: Chosen Poems Old andNew Revised (1992) and Our Dead Behind Us(1986); in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name(1982) she writes her own bio-mythography,and her recent essays and speeches can befound in A Burst of Light (1988) and SisterOutsider (1984), which includes the chapterreprinted here. Anti-ascetic in her demandsthat desire be made conscious and sensualityaffirmed, Lorde responds in this 1978 essay toSecond Wave Feminists’ debates over whetheror not pornography creates and maintains sexual oppression. By disentangling women’seroticism from its cultural misuse and callingfor a realization of the erotic as the most selfresponsible source of women’s power, Lorde,locating that power in women’s acknowledgment of desire, blurs the boundaries betweenthe erotic, on the one hand, and political, creative, and everyday activities, on the other.And in issuing her call to all women, regardless of their sexual identity, Lorde erases eroticdifferences between straight, bisexual, and lesbian desire in order to promote such desire asa creative force for revolutionary change.There are many kinds of power, used andunused, acknowledged or otherwise. Theerotic is a resource within each of us that liesin a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmlyrooted in the power of our unexpressed orunrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuateitself, every oppression must corrupt or distortthose various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energySOURCE: This chapter was originally a paper presented at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the Historyof Women, Mount Holyoke College, August 25, 1978, and was later published as a chapter in SisterOutsider. Copyright 1984 Audre Lorde and The Crossing Press, a division of Ten Speed Press, Berkeley,CA. Reprinted by permission.87

05-Lovaas-5001.qxd7/8/200612:11 PMPage 8888for change. For women, this has meant asuppression of the erotic as a considered sourceof power and information within our lives.We have been taught to suspect thisresource, vilified, abused, and devalued withinWestern society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign offemale inferiority; on the other hand, womenhave been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.It is a short step from there to the falsebelief that only by the suppression of the eroticwithin our lives and consciousness can womenbe truly strong. But that strength is illusory,for it is fashioned within the context of malemodels of power.As women, we have come to distrust thatpower which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warnedagainst it all our lives by the male world,which values this depth of feeling enough tokeep women around in order to exercise it inthe service of men, but which fears this samedepth too much to examine the possibility of itwithin themselves. So women are maintainedat a distant/inferior position to be psychicallymilked, much the same way ants maintaincolonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.But the erotic offers a well of replenishingand provocative force to the woman who doesnot fear its revelation, nor succumb to thebelief that sensation is enough.The erotic has often been misnamed by menand used against women. It has been made intothe confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have oftenturned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power andinformation, confusing it with its opposite,the pornographic. But pornography is a directdenial of the power of the erotic, for it representsthe suppression of true feeling. Pornographyemphasizes sensation without feeling.The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of ourSEXUALITIES AND COMMUNICATIONstrongest feelings. It is an internal sense ofsatisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For havingexperienced the fullness of this depth of feelingand recognizing its power, in honor and selfrespect we can require no less of ourselves.It is never easy to demand the most fromourselves, from our lives, from our work. Toencourage excellence is to go beyond theencouraged mediocrity of our society is toencourage excellence. But giving in to the fearof feeling and working to capacity is a luxuryonly the unintentional can afford, and theunintentional are those who do not wish toguide their own destinies.This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must notbe misconstrued as demanding the impossiblefrom ourselves nor from others. Such ademand incapacitates everyone in the process.For the erotic is not a question only of whatwe do; it is a question of how acutely and fullywe can feel in the doing. Once we know theextent to which we are capable of feeling thatsense of satisfaction and completion, we canthen observe which of our various life endeavors brings us closest to that fullness.The aim of each thing which we do is tomake our lives and the lives of our childrenricher and more possible. Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, mywork becomes a conscious decision—a longedfor bed which I enter gratefully and fromwhich I rise up empowered.Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the eroticdemand from most vital areas of our livesother than sex. And the lack of concern for theerotic root and satisfactions of our work is feltin our disaffection from so much of what wedo. For instance, how often do we truly loveour work even at its most difficult?The principal horror of any system whichdefines the good in terms of profit rather thanin terms of human need, or which defineshuman need to the exclusion of the psychic

05-Lovaas-5001.qxd7/8/200612:11 PMPage 89Chapter 5: The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Powerand emotional components of that need—theprincipal horror of such a system is that it robsour work of its erotic value, its erotic powerand life appeal and fulfillment. Such a systemreduces work to a travesty of necessities, aduty by which we earn bread or oblivion forourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then tellingher to improve her work, and to enjoy the actof painting. It is not only next to impossible, itis also profoundly cruel.As women, we need to examine the ways inwhich our world can be truly different. I amspeaking here of the necessity for reassessingthe quality of all the aspects of our lives and ofour work, and of how we move toward andthrough them.The very word erotic comes from the Greekword eros, the personification of love in all itsaspects—born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak ofthe erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion ofthe lifeforce of women; of that creative energyempowered, the knowledge and use of whichwe are now reclaiming in our language, ourhistory, our dancing, our loving, our work,our lives.There are frequent attempts to equatepornography and eroticism, two diametricallyopposed uses of the sexual. Because of theseattempts, it has become fashionable to separatethe spiritual (psychic and emotional) from thepolitical, to see them as contradictory or antithetical. “What do you mean, a poetic revolutionary, a meditating gunrunner?” In the sameway, we have attempted to separate the spiritualand the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual toa world of flattened affect, a world of the asceticwho aspires to feel nothing. But nothing is farther from the truth. For the ascetic position isone of the highest fear, the gravest immobility.The severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes theruling obsession. And it is one not of selfdiscipline but of self-abnegation.The dichotomy between the spiritual andthe political is also false, resulting from an89incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge.For the bridge which connects them is formedby the erotic—the sensual—those physical,emotional, and psychic expressions of what isdeepest and strongest and richest within eachof us, being shared: the passions of love, in itsdeepest meanings.Beyond the superficial, the consideredphrase, “It feels right to me,” acknowledges thestrength of the erotic into a true knowledge, forwhat that means is the first and most powerfulguiding light toward any understanding. Andunderstanding is a handmaiden which can onlywait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeplyborn. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid ofall our deepest knowledge.The erotic functions for me in several ways,and the first is in providing the power whichcomes from sharing deeply any pursuit withanother person. The sharing of joy, whetherphysical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual,forms a bridge between the sharers which canbe the basis for understanding much of what isnot shared between them, and lessens thethreat of their difference.Another important way in which the eroticconnection functions is the open and fearlessunderlining of my capacity for joy. In the waymy body stretches to music and opens intoresponse, hearkening to its deepest rhythms,so every level upon which I sense also opens tothe erotically satisfying experience, whether itis dancing, building a bookcase, writing apoem, examining an idea.That self-connection shared is a measure ofthe joy which I know myself to be capable offeeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling.And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge ofmy capacity for joy comes to demand from allof my life that it be lived within the knowledgethat such satisfaction is possible, and does nothave to be called marriage, nor god, nor anafterlife.This is one reason why the erotic is so feared,and so often relegated to the bedroom alone,when it is recognized at all. For once we begin