The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need - the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting. It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel...
The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. 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.
Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea.
That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.
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 to feel deeply 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. 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. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe...This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the power of each other's feelings is different from using another's feelings as we would use a Kleenex. When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.
In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. But within the european-american tradition, this need is satisfied by certain proscribed erotic comings-together. These occasions are almost always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense of calling them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence, or even playing doctor. And this misnaming of the need and the deed give rise to that distortion which results in pornography and obscenity - the abuse of feeling.---Audre Lorde (1978 [1984]) The Uses of the Erotic, reprinted in Audre Lorde Your Silence Nill Not Protect You. [A recording of a version of the essay can be found here.]
One of Lorde's critiques of capitalism is that on the production side, it is joyless. This is matched, by a related critique that on the consumption side, capitalism promotes a certain kind of numbed, inauthentic, feeling -- she calls it 'sensation' -- that is soulless. To be sure these are not the only cruelties and sources of oppression Lorde diagnoses with capitalism. In fact, the more important critique (in case we had forgotten that Lorde is a poet) is centered on 'misnaming:' the abuse of words. In particular, both this joyless production and soulless consumption are accompanied by forms of rhetoric (or marketing techniques) that turn this bad reality into something cruel (on the production side) and oppressive (on the consumption side). It's cruel because we are encouraged to buy into a set of distorting fantasies that are not just impossible to live up, but self-undermining. It's oppressive because our desires are turned against ourselves (and each other) or, worse, numbed entirely, or even worse yet, abused by others.
By contrast, Lorde promotes a form of authentic, joyful feeling (she often uses the word 'deep') that can be shared; this joyful feeling is life-affirming and, when recognized by others, fruitful not just in our psychic lives, but in our political lives. Unlike inauthentic sensations, which are draining, shared joy is empowering, creative, and energizing and so (Lorde is no quietist) a source of political agency.
Mohan Mathen, in a critical engagement with Kristie Dotson, first alerted me to the significance of Lorde (1934–1992) on contemporary thought. Then, more recently, Amia Srinivasan has been developing Lorde's views on fury and anger to criticize a rejection of anger in political life (see also her article), associated with say Martha Nussbaum's political philosophy (recall also this post). So, when I encountered a collection of her essays and poems on display at one of the tables at the Waterstones at the 02 Center, a mall on the Finchley Road, while my son and I were were killing time before we would go watch Thor: Ragnarok, I did not hesitate and slipped it in the pile of children's books we bought. Yesterday, I read it through, feeling like I was listening in on a vaguely familiar, secret conversation that I have been hearing all along, but not wishing to hear. This post is the start of my overdue reckoning with Lorde.
It may seem perverse to start with Lorde's political economy, when she is such a powerful critic of patriarchy/sexism/racism/gay-bias, and at times veers close to new age spirituality, but one striking element of her writings is that she regularly reminds the reader to ask "who profits from" the unjust status quo* that the "form our creativity takes is often a class issue." For example, "of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labour, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper."**
What's central to Lorde's vision of joyful feeling is that in sharing, and she does not deny this can be both gentle and painful, we do not become the same or identical (like Stoic sages), but recognize mutual difference. This connects the personal with the political; for her central political insight is that "unity implies the coming together of elements which, are to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular natures."+ In unity these natures are not effaced, but they work together in a common goal, which is the development of "a liveable future."++
Lorde is not essentializing women as feeling and men as rational; rather while men benefit from this status quo, we also end up distorting our own lives. The most savage passage in her work is this cool reflection: "Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly 'inferior' capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny themselves their own essential humanity."* That is she understand capitalism as a system of oppression that turns the oppressed into slaves of inauthentic desire (there are echoes of Wollstonecraft here) and the sometimes sadistic, privileged into robots. And, while the privileged are unfeeling (I couldn't help but think of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho), they encourage manifest forms of hatred and self-distortion among the oppressed. Before you think the previous sentence is fantasy, remember that our for-profit media encourages such inventive hatreds on a daily basis.
Some other time I'll face the question if a future liberalism can salvage commercial life from its present (and, perhaps, domesticate Lorde's critique), destructive capitalist manifestation, but today I close with this observation. Unlike many critics of capitalism, Lorde is not naive about existing socialism nor a revolutionary. She reminds the reader, time and again, not to fetishize novelty, not to participate in historical amnesia, but to develop the right forms of historical 'continuity.'+++ In fact, what's revolutionary about her view is that she insists on the significance of continuity and memory. For, "there are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our living."****
*Uses of Anger, p. 113 of Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
**"Age, Race, Class, and Sex," p. 97 in Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
+"Learning from the 1960s" p. 121 Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
++ "Eye to Eye" p. 169 of Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
*** "Man Child" 47 Your Silence Will Not Project You.
+++"Learning from the 1960s" p. 122 Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
****"Learning from the 1960s" p. 119 Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
Very interesting & powerful take. Thank you.
Posted by: Zhenzhen Xiang | 11/16/2021 at 06:25 AM