Audre Lorde & Eroticism

A detailed Summary of Audre Lorde & Eroticism

In her essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde challenges the modern view on eroticism in a patriarchal society, and instead presents an unconventional view on this concept, eroticism-a source of female power. In addition to revealing what "the erotic" means to her, she also discusses how it is misleadingly associated with the pornographic, and how women are taught to doubt this "non-rational knowledge" within themselves. This oppression, according to Lorde, denies the females a true source of power within themselves, as they are taught to touch the surface instead of reaching into the core.

What is eroticism as a power according to Lorde? It is the deepest understanding and knowledge of our desires and ourselves; it is the power to feel fully and deeply in everything we do and everything we experience, and then striving to achieve

I found this essay intriguing, it caused me to reexamine some of the motives behind my actions, and to think about how often do I really let me dive into the full emotional experience of a situation and how often I detach myself from it. What strikes me is Lorde's exclusion of men when she describes eroticism as a "resource within each of us that's lies on a deeply female and spiritual plane". I think that men are capable of feeling as deeply as women feel, and I do not see why they should not be at least partially included or mentioned in this essay. Overall, I found this reading to be interesting and thought provoking, I look forward to reading more of Audre Lorde's work in the future.

One paragraph from the essay struck me as interesting, where Lorde talk about the "importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power". It seems

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Approximate Word count = 577
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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