{"id":1068,"date":"2020-05-12T13:47:27","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T17:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/?p=1068"},"modified":"2020-05-12T13:47:27","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T17:47:27","slug":"nikita-lamba-the-creative-force-of-unarticulated-feelings-and-desires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/nikita-lamba-the-creative-force-of-unarticulated-feelings-and-desires\/","title":{"rendered":"Nikita Lamba | The Creative Force of Unarticulated Feelings and Desires"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nikita Lamba*<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Critique 13\/13 we have been investigating how we can use critical theory in our current moment.\u00a0 When we posed the question as a collective last year, we were thinking of a present colored by political upheaval, by unfixed and unverified truths, by systemic inequalities, and by increased surveillance, among other dark and deepening fractures.\u00a0 What few, if any, of us were prepared for was our current lens: pandemic.<\/p>\n

The virus known as COVID-19 came on in waves across the globe, and few corners seem to have gone untouched by its strange and devastating impact, whether physical, psychic, or economic.\u00a0 Emergencies have a way of electrifying the collective sense of priority\u2013 attention thus turned to the immediate concerns of shelter, food, and medical resources.\u00a0 Suddenly the question of critical theory becomes more difficult and seemingly more disconnected.\u00a0 After all, people have lost and are going to lose lives, jobs, and stability.\u00a0 The question seems no longer to be what<\/em> to do with critical theory, but why<\/em>, in our present crisis, to devote our attention to it at all?<\/p>\n

Audre Lorde\u2019s writings cut to the heart of the question in almost disarming clarity.\u00a0 Her work, which is steeped inextricably in history, in presentism, and in the body, directly addresses a world concerned with how to process a crisis in the form of a bodily threat, and the necessity for careful and complex thinking and writing, like critical theory.\u00a0 She writes of poetry:<\/p>\n

Poetry is not a luxury.\u00a0 It is a vital necessity of our existence\u2026 Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought\u2026<\/p>\n

We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared.\u00a0 And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it\u2026 it lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.[1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same could be said of critical theory.\u00a0 We use critical theory to find the roots of our present, to make sense of the swirling fog of reality, and to find order, to name, and to build, so that we can share a language and a common project going forward.<\/p>\n

Lorde\u2019s texts are very much in conversation.\u00a0The Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master\u2019s House<\/em> is a series of essays, originally presented at conferences between 1978 and 1982, and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name<\/em> is Lorde\u2019s \u201cbiomythography,\u201d published in 1982.\u00a0 Though Lorde\u2019s essays are lucid and sharp sans<\/em> further context, Zami<\/em>, which chronicles her childhood, work, and relationships, paints the atmosphere from which her most pressing and vital ideas spring.\u00a0 The context serves not only to enrich the ideas presented in her essays, but also to provide an example for her readers: in \u201cUses of the Erotic,\u201d Lorde writes of the power that \u201crises from our deepest and non-rational knowledge,\u201d[2]<\/a> and we can trace many of Lorde\u2019s most powerful, articulate ideas to her most deeply felt experiences.<\/p>\n

Zami <\/em>is an account of the author\u2019s life, but also an acknowledgment of those to whom Lorde owes \u201cthe power behind [her] voice\u201d and strength[3]<\/a>: the women she grew up with and around, and those with whom she formed relationships later in life.<\/p>\n

The text begins with the account of how her mother and father immigrated to the United States from Grenada and Barbados, respectively.\u00a0 Stories of an idealized homeland informed Lorde\u2019s sense of alienation, setting her apart from her peers and neighbors, but also provided her with a framework for a kind of utopia: one premised on belonging.<\/p>\n

Lorde spends much of the discussion of her childhood focused on her relationship with her mother, a woman who could be hard at times, but also \u201cknew how to make virtues out of necessities.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Her mother was an early instructor in the art of interpreting reality through a lens in order to shape it, and Lorde credits her with teaching the maxim \u201cIf you can\u2019t change reality, change your perception of it.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

The story of Lorde\u2019s childhood winds through her difficulty being near-blind as a child, navigating school and community in Harlem and Washington Heights, and growing up with her two sisters.\u00a0 She details the difficulties of being the first black child at her school and the racism she faced and began to learn to name, especially in two powerful early experiences of losing a school election and being refused service at an ice cream counter on a trip to Washington D.C.\u00a0 Translating the psychic harm that racism inflicts into physical manifestation, she writes about how \u201cthe white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Along with developing consciousness of her race, Lorde describes the experiences that were formative in her understanding of herself as a woman.\u00a0 In one incident, she tells of a comic book clerk holding her body to his, and the sense of revulsion she feels despite being unable to place her finger on the harm.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 She describes the confusing and painful experience of being raped by a male peer, and the terror that follows because of her lack of information about sex and pregnancy.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

But, as importantly, she also recounts the joys in her experiences of being black and a woman, including the wonder of her mother\u2019s cooking, and the complex bodily experience and sense of feminine connection she feels from her first menstrual period.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSisterhood\u201d becomes a defining theme, and through the repeated advice she receives to \u201cRemember to be sisters in the presence of strangers,\u201d Lorde becomes aware of the complex web of sisterhoods she is a part of at home, at school, and in the world, as well as the ways these webs provide refuge and can be weaponized.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

Though she finds a close-knit group of artistic and rebellious friends as she begins at Hunter High School, she remains one of the few black women in her class, and this isolation robs her of the ability to name the racial difference that sets her apart from her white peers.\u00a0 Lorde recalls that \u201cSometimes I was close to crazy with believing that there was some secret thing wrong with me, personally, that formed an invisible barrier between me and the rest of my friends, who were white\u2026 I had no words for racism.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

In high school, Lorde meets the first of her most significant romantic relationships in Gennie, a fellow black student.\u00a0 Gennie suffers abuse and eventually takes her own life, with her death leaving an irreparable scar on Lorde\u2013 one that leads Lorde to forming deep connections with other women who also lost their first loves to violence.<\/p>\n

Once she moves out of her home, Lorde begins to navigate different communities of women, and develops the consciousness and language for her intersectional identity.\u00a0 She finds work in New York, and then at a factory in Stamford, and then spends a period in Mexico.\u00a0 Lorde recalls \u201chow being young and Black and gay and lonely felt\u2026 there were no mothers, no sisters, no heroes.\u00a0 We had to do it alone\u2026\u201d[12]<\/a>\u00a0 As Lorde shifts contexts and continues to develop relationships with women, white and black, she becomes aware of how few other Black, gay women she finds in her environment, and the painful toll this takes.<\/p>\n

One of the most poignant aspects of Lorde\u2019s relationships is the excitement and confusion that accompanies each\u2013she writes of feeling that she and her live-in partner were \u201creinventing the world together,\u201d[13]<\/a> but also notes that this was not due solely to feelings of love, but because \u201cnone of us knew quite enough about ourselves; we had no patterns to follow.\u201d[14]<\/a> [15]<\/a><\/p>\n

Her longest relationship in the narrative is with Muriel, a white gay woman, and, despite their deep love, Lorde recalls their inability to speak frankly about her race.\u00a0 During this period, Lorde writes of the ache she feels for community, and her frequenting of gay bars in order to seek \u201cthe atmosphere of other lesbians\u201d because \u201cin 1954, gay bars were the only meeting places we knew.\u201d[16]<\/a> [17]<\/a><\/p>\n

But the community of mostly white, gay women is not enough, and Lorde writes of longing \u201cfor other Black women without the need ever taking shape upon [her] lips,\u201d[18]<\/a> as well as the acknowledgement that \u201cevery Black woman I ever met in the Village in those years had some part in my survival, large or small, if only as a figure in the head-count at [a club] on a Friday night.\u201d[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

After her relationship with Muriel deteriorates, Lorde\u2019s complex need for belonging and recognition as a Black gay woman manifests in her final relationship detailed in the narrative.\u00a0 Afrekete, a fellow Black gay woman from Harlem, validates not only Lorde\u2019s identity, but also provides her with the final vision of the narrative: one where the idealized imagined homeland, full of belonging and recognition, is not some faraway place, like her mother\u2019s island of Carriacou, but her own home environment by 113th<\/sup> street.<\/p>\n

The word \u201czami,\u201d which is \u201ca Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers,\u201d[20]<\/a> becomes not merely a word belonging to another place and way of being, but one brought over by Lorde\u2019s mother, gifted to Lorde, and repurposed to create a sense of belonging and understanding in her current context.<\/p>\n

In her essay \u201cPoetry is Not a Luxury,\u201d Lorde writes about the power of giving name to ideas, and Zami<\/em> illustrates the power that Lorde feels in repurposing this word\u2013and it is specifically feeling<\/em> that Zami <\/em>highlights the importance of, because \u201cliving within structure defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive.\u201d[21]<\/a><\/p>\n

In \u201cUses of the Erotic,\u201d Lorde explains how the erotic is \u201ca measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings,\u201d [22]<\/a> and how, once acknowledged, humans intrinsically feel the desire to live in a way that cultivates the full depth of their feeling.\u00a0 The flashes of recognition that Lorde felt through her life, in different communities and relationships, led to her pursuit of a theory of liberation\u2013one which would allow her and those like her to share in the fullness of feeling all the time.<\/p>\n

And so we return to the question of critical theory and its uses in our present moment:\u00a0 In the midst of a global pandemic, when many of us are confined to our respective living spaces, alongside partners and children and families, forced to reckon with precarity of food, of work, of health, of shelter, Lorde\u2019s ideas encourage us not to discount the importance of the physical experience of the body in this time, to pay careful attention to our emotional needs, and to recognize the ways in which unarticulated feeling can be a critical resource.<\/p>\n

Lorde significantly deviates from some classical thinkers in writing that \u201cthere is, for [her], no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.\u201d[23]<\/a>\u00a0 She characterizes the difference between these pleasures as merely one of quantity, rather than quality, in stark contrast to thinkers like Mill who posited a hierarchy of the pleasures that prioritized those that employ the \u201chigher faculties.\u201d[24]<\/a><\/p>\n

Zami<\/em> is the account of all that mattered to Lorde, all that helped her understand what was\u00a0 worth fighting for and protecting, and the account is richly detailed with vivid descriptions of rooms, of faces, of clothes, of meals, of the smells of a lover\u2019s skin\u2013\u00a0in short, all the things that make up the core of a life.\u00a0 Or as she puts it succinctly in \u201cThe Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master\u2019s House\u201d: \u201csurvival is not an academic skill<\/em>.\u201d[25]<\/a>\u00a0 The distinction between the pleasures that rely on the \u201chigher faculties\u201d and those that do not is not, for Lorde, a meaningful one\u2013this merely points to a systemic discounting of the erotic, and the lack of language available to describe those pleasures most vital to survival.<\/p>\n

The power, for Lorde, in recognizing these \u201cerotic\u201d feelings (which is to say, feelings that are full, powerful, and rooted in the body) is that \u201crecognizing 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.\u201d[26]<\/a>\u00a0 In short, we have the opportunity to reframe our experiences and harness their energy to create change,[27]<\/a> rather than to merely discount our current isolation and grief as unfocused and inarticulable, and therefore useless.<\/p>\n

And change is, undoubtedly, necessary.\u00a0 There is a sense of heartbreak in reading Lorde\u2019s words four decades later and realizing how little has changed.\u00a0 Black communities are still marginalized and disproportionately affected by societal conditions.[28]<\/a>\u00a0 Those who are most at risk are still treated as disposable by those with power.[29]<\/a><\/p>\n

Lorde\u2019s narrative provides an example of a person who, faced with a lack of example by which to live, created the world she wanted to live in within her relationships.\u00a0 We can extrapolate that lesson: there is no roadmap through the pandemic, nor the future that lies on the other side, but perhaps by naming, understanding, and utilizing the creative force of our unarticulated feelings and desires, we can generate \u201cthe power to seek new ways of being in the world\u2026 as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.\u201d[30]<\/a><\/p>\n

Why does critical theory matter right now?\u00a0 Because \u201cthe necessary ingredient needed to make the past work for the future is our energy in the present, metabolizing one into the other.\u00a0 Continuity does not happen automatically, nor is it a passive process,\u201d [31]<\/a> \u00a0and \u201cto refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up.\u201d[32]<\/a><\/p>\n

Notes<\/h1>\n

* J.D. Candidate | Columbia Law School, B.A. Critical Studies | USC School of Cinematic Arts\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Audre Lorde, \u201cPoetry is Not A Luxury,\u201d in The Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master\u2019s House, <\/em>3.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Audre Lorde, \u201cUses of the Erotic,\u201d in The Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master\u2019s House<\/em>, 6.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, <\/em>3.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 11.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 18.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 71.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 49.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 75.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 77.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 81.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 176.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 209.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 211.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> The cause for this feeling of \u201cinvention\u201d is not as often named directly, as it is in Lorde\u2019s narrative.\u00a0 In Celine Sciamma\u2019s recent film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire <\/em>(2019), a woman asks her first female romantic partner whether \u201call lovers feel that they\u2019re inventing something?\u201d\u00a0 She \u201cfinds virtue in necessity,\u201d as Lorde\u2019s mother taught, by romanticizing the feeling of discovery rather than acknowledging that the feeling stems in part from a homophobic culture that has forced queer people to hide their relationships, robbing the queer community of examples to follow and aspire to.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Id. <\/em>at 187.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> The dance club still functions as a refuge for queer communities\u2013\u2013many have written about the symbolic devastation of the Pulse nightclub shooting, in addition to the horrifying physical attack. Ann Powers, \u201cI Was Born On The Dance Floor: A Playlist For Pulse,\u201d NPR, <\/em>18 June 2016.\u00a0 <<\/em>https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/therecord\/2016\/06\/18\/482517579\/i-was-born-on-the-dance-floor-a-playlist-for-pulse<\/a>><\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, <\/em>224.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Id. <\/em>at 225.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 255.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Lorde, \u201cPoetry is Not a Luxury,\u201d 5.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Lorde, \u201cUses of the Erotic,\u201d 7.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 13.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism<\/em>, Chapter 2.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/a> Audre Lorde, \u201cThe Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master\u2019s House,\u201d in The Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master\u2019s House<\/em>, 18.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a> Lorde, \u201cUses of the Erotic,\u201d 15.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/a> As Lorde says, even anger is \u201cloaded with information and energy.\u201d\u00a0 Audre Lorde, \u201cUses of Anger,\u201d in The Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master\u2019s House<\/em>, 27.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/a> \u201cThe coronavirus is infecting and killing black people in the United States at disproportionately high rates.\u201d\u00a0 John Eligon, et al.\u00a0 \u201cBlack Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States,\u201d <\/em>The New York Times, 7 April 2020.\u00a0 < https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/04\/07\/us\/coronavirus-race.html<\/a> \u00a0><\/p>\n

[29]<\/a> Matt Steib, \u201cTexas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: \u2018Lots of Grandparents\u2019 Willing to Die to Save Economy for Grandchildren,\u201d New York Magazine<\/em>, 23 March 2020. < https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2020\/03\/dan-patrick-seniors-are-willing-to-die-to-save-economy.html<\/a> ><\/p>\n

[30]<\/a> Lorde, \u201cThe Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master\u2019s House,\u201d 18.<\/p>\n

[31]<\/a> Audre Lorde, \u201cLearning from the 1960s,\u201d in The Master\u2019s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master\u2019s House<\/em>, 39.<\/p>\n

[32]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 46.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nikita Lamba* In Critique 13\/13 we have been investigating how we can use critical theory in our current moment.\u00a0 When we posed the question as a collective last year, we were thinking of a present colored by political upheaval,… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-13-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}