The erotic as power
- The word erotic comes from the Greek expression eros, which refers to the personification of love in all its aspects. Eros, born of the god Chaos, represents creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of an affirmation of the life force of women, of that powerful creative energy whose knowledge and use we are claiming in our language, in our history, in our dances, in our loves, in our lives. jobs, in our lives.
For me, the erotic works in several ways and the first is by providing the power that comes from the experience of deeply sharing any activity with another person. Sharing enjoyment, be it physical, emotional, spiritual or intellectual, creates a bridge between people that can be the basis for better understanding what is not shared and lessen the feeling of threat caused by differences.
Another important way in which the erotic connection works is by reinforcing, in an open and bold way, my capacity for enjoyment. In the same way that my body opens up to music, responding to it, and listens carefully to its deepest rhythms, so also everything I feel can open up to an erotically full experience, be it dancing, building a shelf, writing a poem, examine an idea.
This self-connection is a measure of the joy of knowing that I am capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity to feel. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for enjoyment requires that I live my whole life in the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible and need not be called marriage or god or eternal life.
This is one of the reasons why the erotic is so feared and so often relegated only to bed, when it comes to be recognized. Because once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand of ourselves, and of all the activities of our lives, that they agree with that enjoyment of which we are conscious of being capable. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, it becomes a lens through which we look at all aspects of our existence, forcing us to honestly evaluate it in terms of its relative meaning in our lives. This is a great responsibility that, projected from within, commits us not to establish ourselves in what is convenient, in what is false, what is conventionally expected, what is merely safe.
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If I celebrate the erotic in all my endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision - a desired bed to which I go with gratitude and from which I rise with more power. Of course, women with such power are dangerous. Hence, we are taught to separate the erotic from all the most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And lack of concern for the erotic roots of our work is manifested in the lack of courage in much of what we do. For example, how often do we really love our work?
The main horror of any system that defines the good in terms of profit, rather than in terms of needs, excluding its emotional and psychic components - the main horror of such a system is that it deprives our work of its erotic value, of its erotic power, of its intimate relationship with life and fullness. As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can truly be different. I am referring to the need to reassess the quality of all aspects of our lives and our jobs.
- Audre Lorde, The Erotic as Power
