In this post: I write about why I believe in our (Audre) Lorde's uses of the erotic, the power of lesbian feminism for ALL of us, and how love informs our work both within and beyond the university.
Next week: I list sixteen PDFs on different topics including pedagogy, Why We Teach as a Practice of Freedom, Teaching to Transgress in Real Life, and the Pedagogy of Lesbian Feminism.
Last week: Activist pragmatism, the undercommons, and the task of the subversive intellectual today. I talk about scholars featured in the upcoming "resources for the resistance" post.

Oh hi, my fellow academic radicals,

A special thank you to the group of us that gathered for the fireside chat last week--- this month’s fireside chat will be on the last Wednesday of the month because even I didn’t want to attend an event on a Friday afternoon. Of course, I realized I was the one who scheduled it and nonetheless did, but still.

My favorite part of the conversation was hearing from Doug Priest and Sarai Guerro about their experiences and thoughts about carving out a life within and beyond academia. I loved how intimate our conversation was. To that end, I want to make this month’s chat even more casual, laid back, and something to look forward to for just a simple exchange of ideas amongst like-minded peers. 

In this month’s fireside chat, I want to get gushy and talk about love. But not romantic love, love of what we do-- what we research, what we teach, and how we teach it. 

And to set up for that, and for the month of love in a desert of bleak winter and depressing news, I turned (naturally) to Audre Lorde’s conception of the erotic and Sara Ahmed’s essay “Lesbian Feminism,” in her book Living a Feminist Life. 

Why? Because the world needs more radical lesbian thinkers. As Ahmed states in her essay “Lesbian Feminism,”

When a life is what we have to struggle for, we struggle against structures... . Many of these structures are not visible or tangible unless you come up against them, which means the work of chipping away, what I call diversity work, is a particular kind of work. The energy required to keep going when you keep coming up against these structures is how we build things, sometimes, often, from the shattered pieces. Lesbian feminism can bring feminism back to life.
-"Lesbian Feminism," Living A Feminist Life. 2017

When you’re used to fighting for your life, your right to exist, fighting for causes you believe in become that much easier. For me, as you know, it’s education. Or perhaps more plainly put: the right to the pursuit of knowledge.

Lorde’s definition of the erotic reframes it not just as sensual, but also as empowering for women:

“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects-- born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our love, our work, our lives.” - Audre Lorde “Uses of the Erotic” Sister Outsider

I’ve always had the sense that teaching, research, and writing is a privilege and in exchange for that privilege, you don’t get paid a lot of money. In fact, when I was younger and naive and a doe-eyed undergrad, I looked at the scant pay of teachers and thought, “well, it’s worth it to do something you love and something that makes a difference.”

What a cruel joke capitalism plays on those of us who love what we do.