Dag iedereen
Na vorige week kreeg ik wat reacties dat het nogal lang en academisch was, mijn excuses! Deze week wat korter, en over de geweldige Audre Lorde. Als je nog niet echt bekend bent met haar persoon, kan je hier een introductie lezen tot haar werk en wie ze was als persoon, geschreven voor Warda El-Kaddouri.
Liefs
Anaïs
Na vorige week kreeg ik wat reacties dat het nogal lang en academisch was, mijn excuses! Deze week wat korter, en over de geweldige Audre Lorde. Als je nog niet echt bekend bent met haar persoon, kan je hier een introductie lezen tot haar werk en wie ze was als persoon, geschreven voor Warda El-Kaddouri.
Liefs
Anaïs
Remember that you don’t know
We had to read the text why I (not love) information, and as a part of my extended understanding, and scheme making, I tried to explain it to my mom while she was cleaning the house (maintenance?). She was annoyed that I was keeping her busy, but she’s also an artist and a reader so she let herself be kept busy, if you ask me. After a few minutes she asked “But what does he mean with ‘information’?” I couldn’t quite define it, but I only knew he was helding a plea to be critical towards it, and not to let it rule or ruin your life. He stated that to the opposite of information, is being curious. Something my mom always tells me, that we’re not curious enough about other people and even cultures.
I am taking this class this year “Gender and Intersectionality”. It has been a huge exercise for me to think critically. Sometimes she gives us so many sources (about feminism, religion, being different), that I agree and oppose with all of them, and sometimes it makes me want to cry out “Please just tell me what to think!!!” (A lack of curiosity?)
Although, I am very certain about being critical to one kind of approach to information: our western knowledge. It is male dominated, white supramacist, capitalist and colonial. It’s called rational, it’s called facts, it’s called objectivity. Note that I said that I wanted to be critical towards it, not abolish it all together (yet).
I started reading a book this past summer “Pleasure Activism” by adrienne maree brown. I was all about Pleasure this summer. I broke off a relationship that lasted two years, and I was very ready for single life.
I was single for three full days. Then I met my current partner. A coup de foudre, with a summer filled with very easy pleasure as a result. Also lots of confrontations, and trying to find a form in this new relationship. What is this heterosexual monogamous pleasure, is it the only way? Can we break through clichés, how do we navigate consent within our connection, and how can I be a pleasure activist?
I am taking this class this year “Gender and Intersectionality”. It has been a huge exercise for me to think critically. Sometimes she gives us so many sources (about feminism, religion, being different), that I agree and oppose with all of them, and sometimes it makes me want to cry out “Please just tell me what to think!!!” (A lack of curiosity?)
Although, I am very certain about being critical to one kind of approach to information: our western knowledge. It is male dominated, white supramacist, capitalist and colonial. It’s called rational, it’s called facts, it’s called objectivity. Note that I said that I wanted to be critical towards it, not abolish it all together (yet).
I started reading a book this past summer “Pleasure Activism” by adrienne maree brown. I was all about Pleasure this summer. I broke off a relationship that lasted two years, and I was very ready for single life.
I was single for three full days. Then I met my current partner. A coup de foudre, with a summer filled with very easy pleasure as a result. Also lots of confrontations, and trying to find a form in this new relationship. What is this heterosexual monogamous pleasure, is it the only way? Can we break through clichés, how do we navigate consent within our connection, and how can I be a pleasure activist?
The book starts off with an essay from Audre Lorde “Uses of the Erotic. The Erotic as Power.”She was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and homophobia.
The erotic, according to Lorde, is a resource that lies in each of us, and rooted in a deeply female and spiritual plane. It’s a power of unexpressed or unrecognized feelings.
Being a woman in this patriarchy, we don’t trust this power that comes from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. The male world has done everything to let women only practice the erotic to serve them, while fearing the depth of it.
Lorde practices the erotic in several ways. In sharing deeply with another person, physical, emotional, intellectual or psychic joy. But not only in the sensual way.
The erotic, according to Lorde, is a resource that lies in each of us, and rooted in a deeply female and spiritual plane. It’s a power of unexpressed or unrecognized feelings.
Being a woman in this patriarchy, we don’t trust this power that comes from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. The male world has done everything to let women only practice the erotic to serve them, while fearing the depth of it.
Lorde practices the erotic in several ways. In sharing deeply with another person, physical, emotional, intellectual or psychic joy. But not only in the sensual way.
Information can not just block your creative process, it’s also so compromised by all kinds of oppressions and marginalizations. Lorde talks about the erotic as a power to find it in everything you do, to become yourself to your fullest potential, to challenge the norms, to grow. To close the gap between the things that are not shared, to not be afraid of the difference.
(To share, to care. Not for everyone, but for the ones who also care.)
'There is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.'
As Audre Lorde identifies herself under the labels of black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet, then I am a white, bisexual, artist, lover and writer. We talked about identity in the class, and about how to know who you are, without pretending. But you can’t know when you’re pretending, because you can’t know who the real you is. We all live in frames. Like lots of the texts we read, I’ll do some name dropping too. First Foucault, then Butler wrote a lot about these frames we grew up in. You can never distinguish the difference between nature and nurture. Even before you’re born your caregivers have plans, maybe even a name, some clothes, a color of your new bedroom. You cannot know if the thing that you’re becoming is the right thing. But you can feel what feels good, how you make other people feel, how this framework might be stifling. And you can tear it down, but you can never break out, because the moment you decide your frame isn’t working, you start building a new one. And that’s erotic: putting your heart and passion in something you’ll never know, only feel. Maybe a bit like art.
“'For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.'