The Erotic Overcoming Differences within Populist Demands Chapter 5, Sexualities & Communication in Everyday Life, A Reader edited

by Karen E. Lovaas and Mercilee M. Jenkins

As a child my mother always told me, Dont cry. Be strong. I grew up in a household where no one talked about their feelings; it wasnt encouraged. I never felt confident to express said feelings. Up until now, I thought I had to be an intellectual or a logical, rational thinking person for someone to listen. Well, what am I? A feeler. I am a heart person. I never thought being a feeler was valued in society. We are always told to separate our feelings from our work. Now in my early twenties, Ive discovered the power of vulnerability and being open to sharing those deep feeling thoughts and intuitions. They are powerful. The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, written by the black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet writer Audre Lorde, who was born on February 18, 1934 in New York and died fighting a battle with cancer in November 1992, names this deep sense of feeling the erotic. Here is a summary of the essay from the required reader for my Sexual Identity and Communication class: Anti-ascetic in her demands that desire be made conscious and sensuality affirmed. Lorde responds in this 1978 essay to second wave feminists debates over whether or not pornography creates and maintains sexual oppression. By disentangling womens eroticism from its cultural misuse and calling for a realization of the erotic as the most self responsible source of womens power, Lorde, locating that power in womens acknowledgement of desire, blurs the boundaries between the erotic, on the one hand, and political, creative, and everyday activities, on the other. And in issuing her call to all women, regardless of their sexual identity, Lorde erases erotic differences between

straight, bisexual, and lesbian desire in order to promote such desire as a creative force for revolutionary change. (p. 87) In this last sentence lies a similar solution offered by Laclaus Populism: bringing together differences of demand/desire and channeling that energy into a creative force for revolutionary change. I agree that desire be acknowledged, however, there is a fundamental difference between Laclaus desire and Lordes desire. As I mentioned earlier, the latter introduces the idea of the pornographic (sensation without feeling), which is parallel to Laclaus definition of desire, because both are insatiable. Lordes desire is opposite; it can already be achieved because it exists, deep within us, on the female spiritual plane. Lordes pornographic and Laclaus desire is the same because they are manufactured, manipulated, perpetuated and oppressed by the same external forces. That deep sense of feeling: the erotic, which has been shackled to the bedroom by society, not called for in other aspects of our lives as women, is vital and natural, a true source of our power. As Professor McCormick said, Laclau is an advocate for revolution. So is Lorde. This essay discusses the two important topics weve focused on in class: desire and demand. Over the last couple of months weve made clear the difference of the former from the latter; desire = insatiable and demand = can be satisfied. In Lordes essay they have a causal relationship: her demand is that we (women) acknowledge our desire. She states the difference between the erotic and the pornographic: the latter emphasizes sensation without feeling (which I would consider consumerism which as in Laclaus definition is insatiable) and the former a deep sense of feeling; the erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos and power of our deepest feelings (p. 88). It can be satisfied only if expressed.

According to our class discussions, desire and fear is created by position 4. Lorde (1984) also states this in her essay: The principle horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that needthe principal horror of any such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and erotic life appeal and fulfillment. (p. 88-89) Populism strives to achieve the demands of the people, a successful example being the French Revolution, where people were in material misery. Food, water and shelter, check. But what is left out in these Populist movements, and extremely important to our well-being, is the psychic and emotional components of the Populist demands. The erotic can provide the key and power to completely overcome differences on an interpersonal and subcultural level of a populist movement. This power comes from sharing deeply in any pursuit with another person: the sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference that always seems so insurmountable (Lorde, 1984, p.89). The Populist group can be truly successful if their equivalent demands are met on an erotic level, a deeply felt and shared experience between each group. Supplemental Note: Id like to add definitions of Empiricism, from my friends at Wikipedia, as an addition to this discussion of the Erotic. Just for fun. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism) Empiricism- Emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory experience, in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or traditions. Ex. John Locke held that

knowledge (knowledge of Gods existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone. Early Empiricism- nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu Latin for nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses. Renaissance ItalyLeonardo da Vinci said, If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings. British EmpiricismDavid Hume: 1. Divided all of human knowledge into two categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact. Mathematical and logical propositions are examples of the first, while propositions involving some contingent observation of the world e.g. the sun rises in the East are examples of the second. All of peoples ideas, in turn, are derived from their impressions. For Hume, an impression corresponds roughly with what we call a sensation. To remember or to imagine such impressions is to have an idea. Ideas are therefore the faint copies of sensations. 2. Hume maintained that all knowledge, even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, cannot be conclusively established by reason. Rather, he maintained, our beliefs are more a result of accumulated habits, developed in response to accumulated sense experiences.