Notes on Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic"

Lisa Blasch


I. Introduction

Audre Lorde’s conception of the erotic is radical. Because she denies that it can be reduced to any universal form, it must be understood instead as a kind of raw potentiality &endash; the source of our self-awareness, awareness of others and therefore the most foundational bridge to our emancipation and empowerment. One of Lorde’s key claims is that the erotic cannot be reduced to sexuality. Rather, it is a basic human longing or passion that brings us to a condition of fully authentic commitment to our life activity. It is what makes these choices meaningful and important to us. Lorde points out that a significant, weighty responsibility attaches to this potentiality for meaningful activity, because it automatically places a demand upon us “not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.” (CR 67) In this way, there is a significant connection between liberating erotic energy and our capacity to engage in the philosophical life, articulated in her description of it as the ‘nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.’ For this reason, I see Lorde refining Thoreau’s challenge to us to live our lives deliberately. I will begin by briefly describing the way in which the erotic functions as potentiality. Next, I will consider in greater detail the impact of the repression of the erotic from the individual and social perspective. Finally, I conclude by examining the way in which removing this repression makes the ethical life possible.

II. The Erotic as Potentiality

It is significant that there is an etymological connection between the erotic as eros and the categories of ‘life force’ or ‘creative energies.’ One the one hand, of course, it is passionate in the sense that it cannot be separated from sensuality. But as Lorde argues, it is also more than this, because passion and sensuality are deeply bound up with the non-sexual aspects of our lives as well. The fact that we have the ability to be excited by philosophy, to suffer outrage at social injustice, or to experience an aesthetic thrill when we read poetry are all illustrations of this claim. Therefore, the erotic broadly encompasses our intellectual, psychological and emotional capacities: it is a key resource for achieving personhood and establishing meaning in our lives for this reason.
Lorde describes two primary ways in which our capacity for the erotic empowers us to bring the activities of our daily life into harmony with our particular values and overall desire for emancipation. The first function of the erotic is identified with intersubjective self-awarness which becomes possible when we engage in cooperative pursuits with others. “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 between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” (CR 67) Secondly, the erotic functions as a mechanism for liberating and expanding the senses, so that we may move toward a more full experience of joy and be conscious of our selves in this movement. It is, essentially, to witness and direct our own spiritual growth. Therefore, she concludes that “our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives.” (CR 67)


III. The Impact of Erotic Repression: Individual and Social

The eradication of the erotic from central spheres of our lives means that the most significant activities we engage in lose a human dimension in a very significant way. Ultimately, this means that we lose a measure of individual self-determination in the sense that we are prevented from choosing to become ourselves and achieving excellence in our personal lives. Further, we lose the possibility for social self-determination, the ability to cooperatively and deliberately construct the conditions of our shared lifeworld in order to maximize opportunities for growth and emancipation. Therefore, the implication is that erotic repression endangers autonomy at the individual and the social level.

erotic repression in the individual

I believe Lorde would agree that erotic repression is experienced by men as well as by women. However, she believes that women exemplify this repression in a way which illuminates the nature of the problem in a particularly insightful way. We know that the structural nature of racism has an impact on people of color, so I would argue that the point is to recognize the way in which this happens with sexism as well. In other words, this is not a sweeping indictment of men as the oppressors of women, rather it is an attempt to demonstrate the deformation of subjectivity effected by erotic repression by showing how sexism robs women of the means to their own autonomy.
In the contradictions which exist between the roles women have been encouraged or allowed to take, both traditionally and contemporaneously, the erotic has been reduced to a superficiality which is then reinstantiated as inferiority. The sexual capacities of women have historically been viewed as forces which must be regulated, and because we are ever socio-historically constructed there are remnants of this tendency even today. (For example, the Madonna/Whore complex survives as the separation of the clean, pure, procreative aspect of women’s sexuality from the sensual, libidinous aspect.) As Lorde points out, when women accept the illusory erotic as their self-identity, they end up caught within a kind of Kierkegaardian either/or which is difficult to overcome. On the one hand, a woman understands that being sexually attractive to men requires that she cultivate not only a style of dress which may be inconvenient, but that she cultivate a non-threatening disposition as well. This is perhaps best exemplified by pornography. What pornography illuminates about the erotic repression of women is shown by the kind of feminine subjectivity that stares back at us from the pages: indiscriminately available, never posing any threat of rejection, always ready for sex.
This same subjectivity is peddled in mass media images of attractive women, and women are encouraged to demonstrate it, but also to feel shame when they do. Most of us should be able to recognize the close connection between the superficial form of feminine sexuality and the scorn we have for women who exemplify it. This helps explain why we have come to regard women, and why women have come to regard themselves, as socially empowered only when they are no longer overtly sexual.
The point of all of this is to throw erotic repression at the level of individual subjectivity into relief. When a woman accepts the burden of erotic repression, she divests herself of her capacity to control her own activities and desires. This is all predicated on her inability to recognize her own interests, values and abilities. The mis-named erotic as “the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation” which passes for feminine subjectivity must be overcome if she is ever going to move forward in the process of self-exploration.
Clearly, the structural perpetuation of patriarchy constitutes one aspect of the impact that the repression of erotic subjectivity has upon social life. As classes of persons, women and men experience significant obstacles in their efforts to merge their lives with one another. However, the obstacles affect more than just our efforts to establish romantic relationships, because once the erotic is severed from the life of the individual, all our life projects are typified by a kind of ‘felt disaffection’ which removes them from our more general ends. This is one particular way in which men suffer erotic alienation in much the same way as women.

erotic repression in social activity and institutions

Lorde argues that as long as hierarchies of social power persist, we will have difficulty accessing the erotic as an alternate source of empowerment. The social aspect of erotic repression takes place according to the basic framework of an alienated relationship between our activities and our ends or values. Once we accept a set of social relations, conditions or activities that deny the full expression of the erotic, these relations, conditions and activities are reduced to a ‘travesty of necessities.’ This is a very basic claim about social freedom. In perhaps its most visible form, we can identify it with an economic system which views production, distribution and consumption primarily from the perspective of market imperatives. When our social activities and institutions are not subject to our evaluation and control, individual and social freedom are diminished.
The radically democratic potential of the erotic is destroyed by an economic system in which people must work at jobs which are psychologically and physically destructive if they are not to starve. Rather than managing the production of goods and services in an egalitarian way, which would make it possible to use the economy as a means for meeting human needs and engender widespread individual autonomy, the imperative of profit determines what we make, how we make it, how we work and more generally how we live as a society. If the economy liberated human subjectivity, Lorde points out that our work would become “a conscious decision” in the sense in which erotic potentiality was described in the previous section. As the anti-democratic logic of the market colonizes the political sphere, our ability to use the institutions of representation and will-formation to manage our social problems becomes more remote. The upshot of this is that we lose the capacity to direct not only our individual activities according to our goals, but the ability to direct our society as well.

IV. The Erotic as the Ethical

To speak of the erotic as the ethical illuminates the connection between intersubjective relations and autonomy. The erotic is an important aspect of the ethical sphere, because self-consciousness and empowerment are not purely individualistic matters, but must be continuously re-established through our relationships. In turn, these relationships allow us to more thoroughly understand ourselves and provide a basis for increased social cooperation.