Before class on Tuesday (October 23), please read the selections from Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde that are posted on WorldClass. (There are five short essays.) In "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," Lorde writes, "There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling" (53).
In your comment to this post, I'd first like you to explain what this passage means and define the term the "erotic," in the way that Lorde presents it. As you do so integrate at least one additional quotation from this essay to help you explain this concept more fully. Then, connect your discussion of the erotic from this essay to a related point that Lorde raises in one of the other essays you read for today. For example, what does the erotic have to do with poetry? Or, anger? Different and multiple and interlocking experiences of oppression? Or, power and liberatory transformation? As you explore these connections, make sure to integrate at least one additional quotation from one of these other essays. As usual, aim for at least 250 words. Thank you!
In your comment to this post, I'd first like you to explain what this passage means and define the term the "erotic," in the way that Lorde presents it. As you do so integrate at least one additional quotation from this essay to help you explain this concept more fully. Then, connect your discussion of the erotic from this essay to a related point that Lorde raises in one of the other essays you read for today. For example, what does the erotic have to do with poetry? Or, anger? Different and multiple and interlocking experiences of oppression? Or, power and liberatory transformation? As you explore these connections, make sure to integrate at least one additional quotation from one of these other essays. As usual, aim for at least 250 words. Thank you!
To me, this passage is explaining that the erotic is a natural feeling that many women have been taught to not bring out. Society teaches young girls to not be erotic and if they were to be sexual, it would be with one man for the rest of their lives, resulting in marriage. Audre Lorde disagrees with those teachings. She then defines the term “erotic” as a form of strong affection in all things that all people, regardless of gender, should be able to freely experience. She writes about how women are taught to suppress those feelings while men are accepted to have erotic behaviors. Lorde continues to write that “The erotic is a measure between the beginning of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” (54). Audre Lorde encourages women to not follow those norms on the erotic that society places on them.
ReplyDeleteThis also has to do with the overall treatment of women. In The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, she writes that “Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative.” (111). Audre Lorde is saying through this quote that women must work together to overcome the obstacles society has placed on them in various areas, specifically white straight men. When feminists come together, there will be fewer gender expectations placed, which includes topics such as erotica and sexuality for any woman, regardless of racial and ethnic identity/identities.
In Audre Lorde’s essay, “Uses of Erotic,” I believe Lorde is using the word “erotic” to describe the power to feel deeply within ourselves and our (love) experiences. According to Lorde, “For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing” (Lorde, 54). Learning to recognize our feeling can be a tool to “provide energy for change” (Lorde, 53). However, Lorde points out the fact that in western societies, the word erotic oftentimes gets mistaken for pornographic. Because pronographic focuses on sensation, it fails to acknowledge the “feelings.” Lorde discusses how we have become detach from the erotic and how that is extremely dangerous.
ReplyDeleteI associated “erotic” to Audre Lorde’s essay, “Uses of Anger.” In this short essay, Lorde uses anger as a way to express her frustration towards racism. Lorde notes that she used to “fear anger” but she quickly learned that fear will teach us nothing, and she learned to utilize this feeling to help her grow. Lorde states, “anger is loaded with information and energy,” anger can help turn our frustration into action and service (Lorde, 127). By using anger, it is a source of power that is capable of creating change and growth within our society. We should no longer fear anger, but we must learn to use it to fight the oppressive systems. In a way by expressing our feelings and utilizing it, we are building a connection with the erotic.
Lorde presents an idea of the 'erotic' writing "There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise…" (53). I believe she tries to define erotic as a "source of power within a culture (that has been systemic and sexist driven) of the oppressed that can provide energy for a change" (53). I believe erotic is a term that has been attached to a dirty, plagued way of thinking how to, in a sense, go against any type of patriarchy.
ReplyDeleteThe argument and defending of erotic as power shares a similar parallel in how Lorde defends the power of erotic in both anger and the interlocking experiences of oppression and intersectionality. She calls in and acknowledges how the emotion of anger that turns into hatred stems from "the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction" (129). There has been a push and pull within the fight to calling out white feminism and more specifically racism only being a 'black girl problem'. Lorde reiterates her idea and urge of recognizing the power that is used and unused in how "anger is loaded with information and energy" (128). The connection from her initial argument about a resource being rooted in all feelings we encounter is seen through the journey of expressing and translating anger into action for a common goal and future which, in turn, allows for the liberation of clarification of who are our allies with whom we have differences. Once we succeed in putting our anger into action, we create a community and coalition against all of us who are seeking to examine the particulars of our lives as we resist out oppressors.
In the writing, “The Uses of Erotic: The Erotic as Power”, Audre Lorde describes what women have in their own erotic and how they’re lacking feeling and life when they don’t tap into it. From what I understand in reading Lorde’s work is that “erotic” is that feeling deep down that gives us intense power and pleasure in what we do. The problem with erotic now is that we associate it with being sexual so much that the word has become taboo to today’s society. However, in the way that Lorde uses it, it can be associated with things like our jobs and hobbies and passions in life. Lorde begins to explain why being empowered by our erotic by saying, “For once we begin to feel deeply in all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of” (Lorde, 57). By holding ourselves to such high standards, this could set us up for disappointment later on. A common phrase used in Lorde’s “The Erotic as Power” and “Poetry is Not a Luxury” is the phrase, “It feels right to me” (pg 56&37). In Poetry is Not a Luxury, Lorde talks about how for women, poetry is not just a hobby for women to do while waiting for a man. Poetry is something that can make a path for their thoughts and dreams and make them reachable and not as scary. It puts the unknown into a language for them to read clearly and understand. Lorde says that poetry “is not an idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of ‘it feels right to me’”. This is the phrase that Lorde also says in The Erotic as Power “acknowledges the strength in the erotic into a true knowledge”. So by default, erotic manifests in poetry because it empowers women and give them that pleasure that they crave in life, not just in the bedroom.
ReplyDeleteI caution myself to propagate any securitive words on the Erotic; that is, I caution myself--in my position of a (sharply) male performing phenomenology--to make any pronouncements of the Erotic as assurative work. I will attempt to garner as reflective an understanding--with elements of my own inner masculine motifs in mind--of the Lordean Erotic as possible in my positionality. I proffer, then, that Lorde does reparative work to position the Erotic as that "lifeforce of women; creative energy empowered" which acts as a transcending power elemental to the female; arguably, to the queer--and by extension, to the hypersexualized racialized-other, of which she is all three ('Erotic" 55). It is a characteristic motif--an origin of symbolization of the Zizekian Real.
ReplyDeleteThe Erotic has a relationship to the Politics of Anger, the Politics of Rage. Note now, that, any proximity of the erotic and the politics of anger will be immediately held to suspicion and later castigated with aspersions; this act of castigation will be rooted in a primary and fundamental suppression of the Erotic. Understand, additionally, that a suppression of the erotic functions by A) misattributing uses and explosions of some other ill-observed power to the erotic, and B) vilifying those aspects which have been misattributed. In short, the Erotic will be recognized as the acts of a perversive hedon-a, not as a motif of elemental power--an origin of the symbolization of true otherized power. The Politics of Anger--whose "object is change"-- draws from, as its power source (the area with the capacity to incite, precisely, political change) the Erotic (129).
Lorde presents the “erotic” as the power of feeling in “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as a Power.” She explains that the power of erotic is a way for you to feel through your life and the decisions you make in it. She says, “the erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.” (54) In this quote Lorde explains that we must listen to our internal emotions so we can more fully understand ourselves and our place in the world. She also argues that we should use these internal feelings to lead us to where we want to be in the world. In “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” Lorde explains how we can use the internal emotion of anger to lead us to where we want to be in the world. She argues that anger is a useful emotion in the face of oppression because people who are different than us may not realize that they are contributing to our oppression. In order to see this change we must put our feelings out into the world so others can better understand where we are coming from. She says, “anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthing act of clarification.” (127) Overall, Lorde encourages her readers to empower themselves by channeling their erotic power and not just shutting down their feelings because they might be seen as wrong or unwanted. She encourages her readers to make themselves bigger instead of smaller and to live their life to the fullest extent.
ReplyDeleteIn Audre Lorde’s essay, “Uses of Erotic,” she defines erotic as “a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling (Lorde 53). This passage specifically discusses how women are restricted from experiencing erotic feelings. Society is has placed a lock on female erotic feelings because women are supposed to have sexual feelings for only one man, and then are expected to love and marry that man, on top of having his children. Society makes female sexuality more utilitarian that sexuality is only allowed to be expressed when it can result in reproduction, or just benefiting the male species. Any erotic sexual behavior was seen as wrong for women. Lorde describes it as, “women have been made to suffer and feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence” (Lorde 53). Women should not be held to restricting their erotic sexual feelings any more than men should.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”, Lorde focuses more on feminism and even the restrictions of only white feminism. She states that, “For women, the need to desire and nurture each other is not pathological, but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power os discovered” (Lorde 111). In our patriarchal society maternity is the only concept given only to women, and this can be used to fight stigmas against women, like the restriction on expression of erotic sexual feelings.
If I am understanding Lorde correctly, in her essay, "The Uses of the Erotic," she develops the idea of the erotic being something that is distinct and the basic foundational element for any and all deep and meaningful sharing through some sort of relationship. She notes that, "The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared by them, and lessens the threat of their difference." This is the erotic, that thing which if allowed to become, Lorde notes this particularly for women, facilitates an experience of the that, allows for the body to be open and fearless when striving or even just stumbling upon joy. The erotic is a freedom, and as such it is a way to bring back more life into the body. The erotic provides space wherein life can be sculpted and created, brought from the grey minutiae and into vibrant experience. I saw this idea really intertwining with Lorde's notions of connection and oppression. What I found to be a really interesting intersection is that notion of self that Lorde describes. Lorde argues that, "Those of us who stand outside that power often identify in one way that we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference." In that argument I see two connections with her notes of the erotic. The first, is that notion that we often forget that our identities are connected in intimate ways even if we cannot or choose to not see them. However, what is the most striking to me is that this ability to connect could facilitate more complex and meaningful relationships and experiences.
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ReplyDeleteThe erotic is an internal sense of self-satisfaction, power and harmony that is often not realized in women. When we as women achieve this fullness of feeling and satisfaction, we experience and recognize it's power and therefore our power of self. We want to demand this kind of fullness from ourselves and through this we become erotic beings. Lorde describes the word erotic and this fullness of feeling as, “the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings” (p54). This means we reach the middle ground of head and heart. She also notes that the term erotic has now been tainted by porn. The word erotic is meant to be a word of liberation and when used in relation to porn, it is diminished and misunderstood.
When the word erotic is used correctly, such as in the sense of anger, it turns into a conductive power. Where it is connected to the anger and feeding off of it, the word and feeling of erotic can become a, “powerful source of energy serving progress and change” (127). When that erotcism is a powerful source for change, it facilitates and moves along change and outspokenness against oppression and discrimination. In all, erotic means the power to transform through the connection of self and the liberation of feelings.
From my understanding, Audre Lorde describes the erotic as a resource for power that women are taught to suppress. Although I know that the erotic does not necessarily have to be sexual, the context and description that Lorde offers makes me think of a woman’s sex drive and can really easily be linked back to sex, especially considering, more often than not, women are discouraged from exploring their sexuality. Now, my interpretation may also be a result of my personal experience growing up in a sheltered, religious household. One thing she says especially contributes to my interpretation, she says, “It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power.” This statement makes me think of the way that women in my faith and culture are commended for their strength and obedience in abstaining from premarital sex, when in all reality their “strength” is being measured by their ability to obey what men say they should do with their bodies. This in turn connects to the chapter The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, especially in the beginning when she talks about feminist discussions being weakened by their one-sidedness in terms of experience. I think that one’s own experience, as can be seen with mine, influences their interpretation of the erotic which is important to acknowledge.
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