The Erotic as a Source of Power
LORDE, Audre. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. New York: Out and Out Books. 1978.
8vo. Original purple card wrappers with black title lettering and stapled spine; unpaginated; slight fading to wrappers especially to spine; otherwise near fine.
Very scarce first edition published in parallel with a limited edition. The pamphlet was first published in a private edition of 250 copies for distribution at the conference on Feminist Perspectives on Pornography in November 1978.
"Of course, women so empowered are dangerous" - Audre Lorde
Radically reclaiming the word 'erotic' in modern discourse, ~b~Audre Lorde's speech at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women~i~, disrupted the management of the conference which forbade discussion regarding lesbian identity.
Lorde posited the idea that the erotic was an essential resource in enabling women to embrace aspects of their identity that society would deny them, attaching inner strength and creative confidence to a concept more readily associated with physical pleasure, "The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and considertion of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with the opposite, the pornographic".
She powerfully asserts, "The erotic is a lens through which we can scrutinize all aspects of our existence" acknowledging the position that harnessing the erotic on one's own terms is a method of pursuing a relationship with oneself that will induce a more all- encompassing interaction with life as a whole.
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