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ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
Introducing the concept of the ‘lesbian continuum,” Rich articulated a
wide spectrum of social and sexual desires that women have expressed to
each other throughout history. Rich encouraged feminists to expand the
concept of lesbianism’ to include a wider variety of relationships between
women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, bonding against male
tyranny, sharing of political support, resisting heterosexual marriage, and
choosing, instead, female friendship:33
As the term lesbian has been held to limiting, clinical associations in
its patriarchal definition, female friendship and comradeship have
been set apart from the erotic, thus limiting the erotic itself. But as we
deepen and broaden the range of what we define as lesbian
existence, as we delineate a lesbian continuum, we begin to discover
the erotic in female terms: as that which is unconfined to any single
part of the body or solely to the body itself 34
While Rich’s concept of the lesbian continuum was highly controversial
(accused by many of de-emphasi2ing the specificity of the oppression faced by
women involved in same sex relationships), it constitutes a significant and
historical attempt to recognize degrees of autonomy, intensity, and sociality
within women’s relationships,* relationships that, according to Rich, have been
consistently trivialized, discouraged, and obstructed throughout history. For
Rich, women’s desire to bond with, and care for, other women, is essential to
the process of reconstructing society: Activities such as female friendship and
mothering should be valorized for their potential to make social life more
pleasurable, meaningful, and cooperative.
In 1978, Audre Lorde, feminist anti-racist activist, theorist, and poet
articulated one of the most innovative and influential positions on women’s
social desire in her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”.35 In this
landmark work, Lorde explored the erotic as a creative force, a way of
knowing and being that becomes warped and distorted by racism, sexism, and
other expressions of social hierarchy. For Lorde, the erotic constitutes a
spectrum of social and sensual satisfactions ranging from the joy of engaging in
passionate conversation to the pleasure of cooperative and meaningful work.
In ‘Uses of the Erotic”, Lorde was the first to explicitly develop a feminist
‘erotic’ that is social and sensual, endowed with revolutionary implications.
Audre horde’s primary contribution to
‘desirous discourse’ was to
explicitly broaden the definition of the erotic to include a spectrum of everyday
practices. Unlike Freud, who examined the infusion of an often destructive
sexual erotic into the realm of everyday life, Lorde highlighted the constructive
potential of a social desire that could restore to everyday life dimensions of
mutualism and creativity. And while Lorde did not identify as an anarchist, her