In her essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde challenges the modern view on eroticism in a patriarchal society, and instead presents an unconventional view on this concept, eroticism-a source of female power. In addition to revealing what "the erotic" means to her, she also discusses how it is misleadingly associated with the pornographic, and how women are taught to doubt this "non-rational knowledge" within themselves. This oppression, according to Lorde, denies the females a true source of power within themselves, as they are taught to touch the surface instead of reaching into the core. .
What is eroticism as a power according to Lorde? It is the deepest understanding and knowledge of our desires and ourselves; it is the power to feel fully and deeply in everything we do and everything we experience, and then striving to achieve excellence in all of those aspects. She urges the women to reclaim an older more inclusive definition of the erotic, where it is an "assertion of the life force of women" and our "creative energy empowered". Thus, Lorde shows how the erotic may become a great motivating factor in the lives of women, as when women tap this power within themselves, it provides them with a deeply felt sense of satisfaction and completeness. This way eroticism can be integrated into all aspects of our lives, it can be a base from which we act and a motivating force behind our actions. .
One paragraph from the essay struck me as interesting, where Lorde talk about the "importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power". It seems to me that she would be critical of a powerful businesswoman who would choose to have relations with random partners for the sake of sexual satisfaction. In this paragraph, she makes several general statements that to me do not and should not apply as a rule to all women. Some women do not have the need to be "conscious of what they are feeling at any time", nor should they.
