95
THE FIVE FINGERS OF SOCIAL DESIRE
being, inside our social and political communities. We may articulate an idea of
a potential to express sensuality, sociability, and creativity in all of its delectable
complexity, a potential for social desire that exists within us at every given
moment; not as an individual triumph over an inner emptiness, but as a social
and cooperative expression of a fullness that yearns to emerge.
And yet, when we seek to elaborate discussions of social desire, we are
confronted by a linguistic and conceptual vacuum: While the language of
liberal capitalism offers a rich vocabulary for describing what is anti-social, it
offers an impoverished vocabulary for describing the cooperative impulse. We
know
far
more
about
anti-sodal,
irrational
desires
such
as
greed,
acquisitiveness, domination, and competition, than we do about desires that
enhance the subjectivity of both self and other. In turn, as Michel Foucault
points out, we are indeed saturated by discourses on ‘sexuality .7 However, we
have a paucity of discourses on social desires for creativity and solidarity.
As we move beyond an energistic Freudian idiom of forces, repression,
drives, and release, Eros could represent a metaphor for sociality itself. The
idea of Eros, or the more vernacular term, the erotic, provides a metaphor for a
quality of social relationships that is passionate, loving, mutualistic, and
empathetic. And building upon the idea of the erotic, we may point to a
cooperative dimension of desire. We may speak of a socio-erotic, a spectrum
of social and sensual desires that enhance social cooperation and a progressive
revolutionary impulse.
The socio-erotic, as a metaphor for a relational orientation that may
counter capitalist rationalization, places social and cultural criticism on much
firmer ground. Instead of conflating rationalization with a rationality to be
countered by an irrational spirit, we may appeal to the idea of a socio-erotic, a
way
of
talking
about
an
impulse
toward
collectivity,
sensuality,
and
non-hierarchy that may be nourished and encouraged by the creation of
non-hierarchical institutions. The idea of a sodo-erotic, or a spectrum of sodal
desires, is implidt within many feminist and sodal anarchist writings that reveal
the delicate and crudal link between desire and freedom. The desire for a
quality of life that is sensual, cooperative, creative, and ethical resonates with
the impulse for a way of life that is not only based on justice and equality, but
on a profound sense of freedom as well. The sodo-erotic represents the
spectrum of sodal desires that emerges from this longing for freedom, this
impulse toward an interdependent and harmonious world. The very act of
thinking through the sodo-erotic represents an exerdse in strolling the
perimeters of a passionate landscape that could potentially encompass the full
scope of our personal, sodal, and political lives.
The project to further elaborate understandings of desire is central to
ecology. By exploring tire sodal desire for ecological justice and integrity, we