notes from fallow

Audre Lorde's energy

We start with anger.

Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.

—Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger” (my emphasis)

We move to the erotic.

The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feelings. 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.

—Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” (my emphasis)

Audre Lorde starts with what women have—anger, the erotic—and reframes feeling as resource, as “energy for change.” Repetition is a strategy. Lorde is always looking for “energy for change.” Looking in places it might be said not to exist: in sensation. One might not have material goods or social standing or political connections, but one has feelings.

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At first, I thought I was going to write about “use” in Audre Lorde, but the word “energy” keeps demanding attention. Let me attempt to give it some.

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Lorde writes about energy in two main ways: (i) Where it can be found and how to use it (ii) How not to waste it.

She finds energy in anger and the erotic and in other “sources of power within the culture of the oppressed.” We can point to friendship, kinship, laughter, grief, gathering, music, fashion, love, gardening, cooking, and many other ordinary practices found within the culture of the oppressed that are sources of power. We engage in these practices and experience a renewal of energy, a sharing of energy, a collective sense of energy. We might walk away from a concert with the sense that anything is possible, a sense that shapes what we are willing to risk, how we are willing to gather, what we dare to imagine, how we give quiddity to shared imaginations to make freedom more possible.

Given that most—perhaps all?—of the essays in Sister Outsider were written after Lorde had been diagnosed with cancer, we could map her interest in energy in bio-medical terms.

Part of cancer treatment is managing energy. Is the body strong enough to undergo yet another round of chemo? Yet another bout of radiation? Yet another set of tests? Yet another and more? These physical demands are compounded by social possibilities. Do you have the energy to receive visitors? Can you work? Can you attend religious services? Can you still participate in your preferred sports? Do you still feel sexy enough to initiate intimate contact? Can you still garden?

I want to hold on to this bio-medical understanding, even as I do not think it is all Lorde is drawing from.

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I hate the word indefatigable. It feels like a word coined at the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy to exploit and destroy minoritized people. I think of how often it is used to praise office administrators—almost always women. Wives and partners—almost always women. People who do bullshit jobs because those jobs must be done and no one else shows up.

I really hate the word indefatigable.

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Where do minoritized people find resources to persist in struggle to pursue freedom? How do they find energy to continue? What allows people to keep showing up? What sustains energy? What replenishes depleted energy? What drains energy? Or, in Lorde’s terms, what wastes energy?

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In her open letter to Mary Daly, questioning how Daly uses African and Black thought, Lorde writes,

I had decided never again to speak to white women about racism. I felt it was wasted energy because of destructive guilt and defensiveness, and because whatever I had to say might better be said by white women to one another at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and probably with a better hearing.

In “Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving,” Lorde writes,

Instead of keeping our attentions focused upon our real needs, enormous energy is being wasted in the Black community today in antilesbian hysteria.

In “Age, Race, Class, and Sex,” Lorde writes,

Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. This results in a voluntary isolation, or false and treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative change within our lives. We speak not of human difference, but of human deviance.

I could multiply the examples.

In each of these instances, Lorde is asking about the best use of energy, a use that will not generate “destructive guilt and defensiveness,” a use that will not extract a high “emotional cost,” a use that will not foster “isolation” or “false and treacherous connections.” A use that will not deflect attention from “real needs.”

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Perhaps Lorde’s writing on energy speaks to me because I’m older and have less inclination to engage with antagonistic people and terrible ideas. I want to direct my energy in ways that shape possibilities for freedom.

Lorde points to sources of energy.

In “Uses of the Erotic,” she writes,

Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.

In “Age, Race, Class, and Sex,” she writes,

I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as part of my living.

And in “Learning from the 60s,” she writes,

The raw energy of Black determination released in the 60s powered changes in Black awareness and self-concepts and expectations. This energy is still being felt in movements for change among women, other peoples of Color, gays, the handicapped — among all the disenfranchised peoples of this society. That is a legacy of the 60s to ourselves and to others. But we must recognize that many of our high expectations of rapid revolutionary change did not in fact occur. And many of the gains that did are even now being dismantled. This is not a reason for despair, nor for rejection of the importance of those years. But we must face with clarity and insight the lessons to be learned from the oversimplification of any struggle for self-awareness and liberation, or we will not rally the force we need to face the multidimensional threats to our survival in the 80s.

—“Learning from the 60s”

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Given the U.S.-Israel war of aggression against Iran, we are now in an energy crisis. As we think of how to navigate that material reality, we can also consider how to source and replenish the energies we need to imagine, pursue, create, and practice freedom.