THE NATURE OF SOCIAL DESIRE
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concept of the erotic suggests an anarchist view of human nature, implying
too, the utopian potentiality of desire. According to Lorde, “in order to
perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources
of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for
change.”3^ The sources of power, then, to which Lorde refers, constitute an
anarchist impulse, a proclivity toward non-hierarchy that is quashed by
hierarchial systems of power.
In this way, Lorde endows the erotic with an
ethical dimension, establishing it as a quality of being against which all of our
actions may be measured for ethical content and meaning. Lorde describes the
erotic as an impulse that moves women to take creative and courageous action
to fight racism and sexism to change the world. Lorde’s erotic represents a
creative and social force reminiscent of the “social bonds which knit us
together” described by Emma Goldman nearly a half-century before.37
The revolutionary implications of Lorde’s essay unfold as we follow its
logic to its most reasonable conclusions: if we were to demand from our
everyday lives the same pleasure and passion that we hope to find in sexuality,
then we would have to make some pretty profound institutional changes. If
such institutions as racism, sexism, capitalism, and the state make misery out of
our work and political engagement, in turn making a misery out of our social,
familial, and sexual relationships; if hierarchy and authority inhibit the
cultivation of creativity, participation, and pleasure, then surely, fighting to
restore the erotic means nothing short of a social and political revolution:
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 shqddy, the
conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.38
Lorde’s essay conveys a desire to resist that which obstructs a free expression
of creativity, political empowerment, and collectivity. It suggests that within all
of us is a potential for a desire that is bigger than just sexual appetite. It is the
appetite for efficacy in a world which de-skills us, a hunger for a kind of
revolutionary competence. Lorde asserts that beneath layers of self-hatred,
there often lies an untapped body of self-love and courage which could
emerge into a revolutionary force so vast that it could transform not only
women but the social and political landscape with its fierce intelligence.
Hence, in Uses of the Erotic; The Erotic as Power, Lorde offers an invitation to