I literally worked for 3 hours on this email
Hi, my name is Langston and I recently took your class: The Energetic Embodiment of White Supremacy. I am writing a thesis paper on Audre Lorde connecting her theories of the erotic as a politics of embodiment to practices of somatic body centering therapies and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?
I would like to pay you for any labor this might entail. However much you feel.
I have a couple of questions and am seeking guidance:
In your class, The Energetic Embodiment of White Supremacy, you defined [or described] whiteness as a cultural trauma of disembodiment. This is something I've also been thinking about but hadn’t heard it put so brilliantly as a cultural dissociation resulting from collective trauma. I have been fascinated by Audre Lorde’s theory of the erotic and her belief in the importance of poetry as a politics of embodiment and social change for quite some time. I like this quote about Audre explaining her ideas of poetry and revolution happening from the place of the body.
"...by fully experiencing herself as a sensual being, she had gained access to a larger cosmology of personhood; she was no longer tied to the abstracted Cartesian individual premised on the colonial division of body and mind. The epiphany lay the foundation for her revolutionary thinking about the necessity of poetry as a vehicle for holistic social change” (The geopolitics of the erotic Audre Lorde’s Mexico and the decolonization of the revolutionary imagination)
I’m always looking for ways her theories and poetry can be put into a praxis. Specifically, I'm interested in how somatic body centered therapy can be a tool for healing the cultural trauma of whiteness. Lorde’s theories of the erotic have always spoke to me because they speak to the fact that social change happens through the body.
A few years ago I wrote another essay on Audre Lorde’s theories of the erotic and how disembodiment is a symptom of white supremacy. I also referenced "Mass Psychology of Fascism" by Wilhelm Reich (if you haven’t read this you might fight it interesting as it’s a western writer referencing the Hara. It talks about how prior to Nazi Germany Germans were ready for a socialist revolution but it wasn’t possible because of a cultural lack of connection to the body/ the erotic. Thus German society fell into fascism. Reich spoke of social change and revolution happening from the place of the body and through sexuality, “The sexual morality that inhibits the will to freedom, as well as those forces that comply with authoritarian interests, derive their energy from repressed sexuality” (Reich, 32).
I was wondering if you had any insight into the events, developments, or primary contributing factors that initiated this trauma of whiteness. What is the trauma that you speak of? When I think of dissociation as it relates to trauma on an individual level I often think of it relating to a specific event like sexual abuse or emotional abuse. However, I know the trauma that precipitated whiteness most likely cannot be easily isolated or located. Regardless, I'm wondering if you have any ideas you'd be willing to share. I often think of religion/ puritanical ideas of sexuality contributing to a dissociation from the body. I also think about the development of civilization in general and how to be civilized means getting away from baser/ bodily/ "animalistic" functions. I'm trying to do a little bit of research into the timeline of how whiteness developed, with a loose definition of whiteness meaning a traumatized culture who is dissociated from the body. Thank you so much for reading and for any insight you may share!
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