Audre Lorde. In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde defines eroticism as “the sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual.” The erotic is an inner resource, a vitality. It is a force that compels us to be close to each other, one that “forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them and lessens the threat of their difference.”
