"Uses of the Erotic" for Teaching Queer Studies
Nikki Young
In her classic essay, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," Audre Lorde
challenged the Western mascuUnist characterization of the erotic as an element of human debasement, as well as its use as a tool of oppression. She
argued that this framing of the erotic had ghettoized women's sensuaUty—
a means by which we know and orient ourselves to the world—thereby
erasing a significant form of our Uberating power. To confront this erasure,
Lorde offered a view of the erotic as an episteme, a critical mode through
which we may attain exceUence. While viewed in some feminist circles as
overly reductionist and even anachronistic, Lorde's erotic innovation has
estabUshed itself as a poUtical, social, and academic tool of deconstruction,
subversion, and imagination.
As a scholar-teacher, I view my queer studies course—any course,
reaUy—as a space buüt on possibiUties, grounded by collective potentiaUties, and fiUed with bodies that are materiaUzing sensibiUties. One of the
most important processes in engaging students on the subject of queerness, then, is developing their willingness to critically frame the self as a
sensual entity. This kind of framing calls for at least three things: ( 1 ) a wiUingness to testify to a truth about the self—even when that truth (or our
assessment ofthat self) is nonnormative; (2) a commitment to chaUenge
the poUcing of self-perceptions; and (3) the employment of counterhegemonic epistemological frameworks to dismantle oppression. By resurrecting the power of the erotic, Lorde affirms our simultaneity as selves
who exist in individual potentiaUty and selves whose connectivity is based
on the freedoms of our sensuaUty. For this reason, "Uses of the Erotic" is
always welcome in my classroom.
WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly K: 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2012) © 2012 by Nikki Young.
All rights reserved.
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Nikki Young
Students in my courses often understand power in dichotomous terms.
It is either a forceful means of having self-control or control over others.
Situated in a Western firamework of individuahty and independence,
power represents the means by which one can differentiate from community and, perhaps, even gain authority. What is missing from their notions
of power is the possibiHty of self-actuaHzation as something linked vnth
community. That is, students are often missing the idea that power can
be a Hberating source—one that connects people to themselves and to
one another in a way that enhances, rather than destroys, relationships.
Derived from internal recognition and creativity (rather than fi-om external acquisition and conformity), the erotic is one form of power that both
iUuminates oppressive forces and puts them in danger (Lorde 2007, 55).
Power understood within this dichotomous frame is impoverished. We
have much to gain by instead understanding power as a bridge between
the self and the Hberating relational possibiHties.
Although the Hberating power of the erotic Hes in its point of origin—the self—Lorde suggests that we have been taught to question the
self as a source, "to suspect what is deepest in ourselves" (Lorde and Rich,
1981, 730). I begin my queer studies course with a lecture and exercise
about how this internaHzed suspicion is a form of oppression. I explain
that oppression is a cycHcal process that systematicaUy suppresses various forms of power, and I point to Lorde's essay as a response to this suppression. As we read portions of the text aloud, I invite students to pay
attention to her assertion that the relationship between oppression and
power is often marked by corruption and distortion: "In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources
of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for
change" (Lorde 2007, 53). An example of such distortion is the way the
erotic itself has been misrepresented as pornography, a way of experiencing sensation—acquiring knowledge—without feeling. This distortion of
the erotic's power reinforces docihty, obedience, and external definition—
aU of which contribute to the cycle of oppression through the process of
dehumanization (58). As we learn about how oppression seeks to destroy
the erotic through misnaming, nay, signifying, the students and I begin
to understand just how dehumanizing this kind of systematic and socially
sanctioned separation from self can be.
Because the process of dehumanization through the evisceration of
internal power is an effort to deny people the vocation of becoming fully
"Uses of the Erotic" for Teaching Queer Studies
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human, I introduce students to queer theory and other materials in queer
studies as an attempt to humanize what has been deemed nonnormative.
I explain, with the use of Lorde's essay, that this ongoing separation from
one's self—one's body knowledge—is a result of a systematic maintenance of myopic modes of knowing. When we have been taught to suspect
knowledges that are not socially (or religiously) sanctioned or institutionally derived, we deny the legitimacy of our deepest feelings as a way of
knovnng. In queer studies, then, our aim is to expand modes of knowing
such that other realities—identities, experiences, histories, and institutions—in our context are not only recognizable but also deemed worthy
of charitable engagement and critical dialogue. I explain further that this
expansion has both deconstructive and subversive aims, in the same way
that the work of critical and queer theories deconstruct and subvert normative reahties and imagine new relational excellence.
Deconstruction, subversion, and imagination are conceptual processes that I emphasize throughout the queer studies course. With them,
the students practice using new critical frameworks for thinking about
course materials, diverse human experiences, and sensuahty. Additionally,
I employ Lorde's description of sensuality as an epistemological source in
order to destabihze the polarization of mind and body. This destabihzation
is not only helpful in supporting a psychosomatic frame of knowing; it
also encourages a new type of truth seeking that opens imaginative possibilities. For students in this course, the ability to engage truth about self
and neighbor requires "testimony." That is, students learn to pay attention
to and speak about what is real about themselves—what they feel, who
they are, how they came to be, and so on—as a way to thoughtfully engage
these truths about others. Learning to testify to truth about the self from
an internal perspective (rather than an external directive) creates space for
understanding queerness and nonnormativity as a function of both social
forces and self-perceptions. Recognizing queerness as both theoretical
and embodied in this way actually helps them to deconstruct categories of
identity, which sometimes aids in subverting oppressive power.
To model this behavior, I disclose my identity as an early thirtysomething, black queer woman who was raised in South Carohna in a
Pentecostal rehgious environment. Acknowledging my queerness (es)
with immediacy accomplishes two pedagogical tasks. First, I acknowledge aspects of my identity that are visibly and invisibly "queer" to their
sensibihties and experiences, exposing the lenses through which I experi-
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ence and engage the subjects that we wifl entertain together in the course.
I explain that our contextual and embodied awareness is not only a lens
through which we engage in academic discourse, but is the only lens that
we cannot evade. Because of the inescapability of our materiality and
sensuahty, I suggest thatfiruitfialconversation wifl privilege subjectivity
instead of feigning objectivity that does not and cannot exist. I share that
my own self-awareness is an invitation for them to feel comfortable thinking criticafly their own. Second, my self-disclosure, specificafly around
sexual identity, compels students to contend v«th the reahty of my queer
personhood as "teacher" in a context that is usuafly dominated by the normalcy of whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality. For some who have
never been taught by a black person, or a woman, or a queer person, or
someone existing at the intersection of those identities, my presence in the
classroom is often chaflenging, inspiring, and curious.
After I testify about my personhood, I invite students to do the same.
I use a think-pair-share exercise in which students reflect on "first times."
I ask them to think about and write down the stories of the first time they
knew what gender, race, and sexuahty they are. After they reflect on each
question for a few moments, they share with a partner During this segment of the exercise, students participate as listener and tefler—roles that
require attention and respect. Finafly, students offer explanations and
lessons firom their conversation with the whole class, and we critically
reflect on their implications. Without fail, students ask each other followup questions such as "How did you feel when that happened?" Or they
express some reahzation: "I never thought about my identity this way." I
find this process particularly powerfld when explaining why it is important
to pay attention to details within their conversation partner's stories. In so
doing, they attend to the variety of language and emotions that relate to
this "first." The story helps the narrator share feehngs, rather than explain
situations, which is a useful way to teach students how to recognize when
they are policing their self-perceptions. At the end of the exercise, I remind
them of Lorde's wisdom: "To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling
at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of
the experience, and to aflow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic,
the abused, and the absurd" (2007, 59).
By providing a new critical epistemological framework, "Uses of the
Erotic" accomphshes three things. First, it demonstrates to students that
embodiment is a legitimate lens through which one can gain deeper
"Uses of the Erotic" for Teaching Queer Studies
305
understanding. Since some of our work in queer studies privileges understanding through experiences and the materiaUty of the body, this use of
the erotic is key. Second, this privileging makes knowledge—the intake
of information—usefiil. Instead of allowing knowledge to exist as something external, to be used abstractly, the erotic transforms knowledge into
technology, episteme into techne. Finally, embodied knowledge promotes
exceUence. Lorde affirms, "Once we begin to feel. . . our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects
of our existence" (57). Such scrutiny opens the door to the imaginative
energy that creates new worlds.
Thelathia "Nikki" Young is visiting assistant professor of women's and gender studies
at Bucknell University. She received her PhD in Christian social ethics in 2011 from
Emory University's Graduate Division of Religion. For her research in ethics, race,
gender, and sexuality, Nikki received doctoral and dissertation fellowships from the
Fund for Theological Education and a dissertation scholarship from the Human Rights
Campaign. Nikki is currently working on her manuscript "Imagining New Relationships:
Black Queers and Family Values."
Works Cited
Lorde, Audre. 2007. "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" In Sister Outsider:
Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde, 53-59. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.
Lorde, Audre, and Adrienne Rich. 1981. "An Interview with Audre Lorde," Signs
4(6):713-36.
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