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women to demand pleasure, passion, and creativity in more aspects of their
lives. By expanding the idea of desire, Lorde touched the wide range of social
desires of many women.
Finally, feminist explorations of desire permeated a spectrum of literary
genres. Indeed, both Lorde and Rich, women whose poetry, fiction, and theory
enriched a radical feminist literary canon, were complemented by the works of
other women committed to carving out new understandings of subjectivity and
desire. In particular, this impulse found literary fulfillment within the fiction,
theory, and poetry of Alice Walker, particularly within her novel, The Color
Purple, published in 1982.39
In this story, Celie, a young African American woman comes of age,
discovering within herself an erotic impulse, both sensual and revolutionary.
Within the course of the novel, Celie falls in love with “Shug Avery,55 a sensual
and spiritual mentor, who helps Celie to recognize her own intelligence, talent,
and capacity for love. It is within the matrix: of the relationship between these
two women that Celie comes to experience Benjamin’s mutual recognition: the
experience of being recognized fully while recognizing the other. After a life of
subjugation by men, Celie rises to claim her own power as the forces of
sensuality, mutualism, and autonomy come together, bringing her to a state of
self-love. Separating from ideologies of racism, sexism, and Christianity, Celie is
finally free to see “the color purple,55 a metaphor for the new erotic Shug
teaches Celie to recognize within her own body and in the rest of the natural
world.
In the character of Shug Avery, Walker articulates a new understanding of
the erotic that has anarchistic implications. No longer a stingy authoritarian
creator, Shug’s ‘god5 becomes a fecund, non-hierarchical and creative natural
process to be enjoyed through sensuality, sexuality, and pleasure. In one
passage, Shug explains to Celie the potential for complementarity between
sensuality and ethics saying, “Oh God love all them [sexual] feelings. That’s
some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves 'em you
enjoys ‘em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that’s going, and
praise God by liking what you like.5’40
In The Color Puiple, Walker displaces the romantic dialectic of predation
and protection that characterizes most love relationships in literature. In her
offer of love, Shug makes no pretense of ‘protection5. Rather, she assists Celie
as she faces the realities of her own oppression, encouraging Celie to claim her
own freedom. In turn, Shug is no romantic hero ‘gallantly5 constraining her
desire for Celie. Instead, she proudly offers to Celie her own sexuality in an
ethics of ‘impurity5. In this way, Shug celebrates her own body and the natural
world appealing to a sexual ethics reminiscent of the Brethren of the Free
Spirit. Walker conveys the possibility of a love between women that is neither