GSFS 250: Strategy & Erotic (2)

Audre Lorde

Individual vs. Community (Lorde)

Neoliberalism → Break away from conformity to be an individual vs. harms the individual (Lorde)

Fordism → Overcome your selfishness to respect the community vs. harms the community (Lorde)

Issue with Individual vs. Community (Lorde)

Binary → positioned as oppositional → harms both individuals & the community

BUT

They are the same thing: Subject hood can come about because of community & vice versa (fund community in celebrating unique individuals)

In Lorde’s essay what are her 2 primary claims?

1. The route to subjecthood is community

2. Selfishness → Objectification (loss of self) is experienced as a form of antisociality (alienation from the community)

Feelings vs. Sensations

1. Feelings can be shared

• Sensation becomes feeling by being communicated/shared with others → thinking about it (the sensation) & putting words to it

2. Sensation (pleasure without emotion) is individuating

• Raw sensation when you are experiencing something

Does antisociality reinforce or disadvantage individualism?

Isolationism is anti-individual because it harms the individual’s ability to experience emotions/feelings (cannot share their sensations with others) & understand themselves

Issue with conformity vs. community (Lorde)

The route to subjecthood is community BUT conformity can force the individual to sacrifice their individualism for the sake of the community → lack of plurality/collaboration hurts the community

• Example of conformity harming the community: Fordism’s cog in the machine model

What to avoid to find a sense of community that nurtures both the self and others?

1. Instrumentality of seeing connections as primarily having a value in use

• Want to be a parent to fulfil a predetermined goal > caring for children

2. Overly structured roles/ models of what types of person are permitted

• Need to be willing to having “unexpected allegiances” despite not fitting into models of connections

The community NEEDS TO EMBRACE THE DEATH DRIVE

2 Meanings of Community Responsibility

1. Fordist model

2. Lorde’s model

The Erotic (Lorde)

Method of connecting with other people sexually and non-sexually:

1. Literal erotic (sexual intimacy)

2. Figurative erotic (emotional connection)

The Erotic vs. The Pornographic (Lorde)

Having experiences at the same time (pornographic) > sharing the experience with someone (erotic)

• Sensation > feeling

  • NOTE: Lorde is pro-polyamory and one night stands as you can have an emotional connection with another in that moment even it is fleeting

    • Not about the structures surrounding the act but the emotional connection in the act

Why is the pornographic bad? (Lorde)

Looking past people → looking away from ourselves

• To reduce others to objects is to objectify yourself → alienation → harm the objectifier and the objectified

Appropriation vs. Coalition → Musser & Stryker

Issue with QUEER as an umbrella term:

Musser: White queers appropriating Lorde’s work → Ignores Black queer women

Stryker: Prioritizes cis voices vs. trans identities

What does Lorde’s quote mean: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change”

Anti-assimilationist politics → Intersectionality

• EX: Lorde being invited to speak at an all white/straight feminist conference → white feminists continue to use this quote out of context

  • When you’re not intersectional, you miss obvious things