Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is the grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe. — Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
Who is Diotima?
See the following (forthcoming) article: https://www.academia.edu/79849646/Naming_the_Nameless_Apollodorus_Symposium_and_Diotimas_Pseudonym
The After Party
The Lost Final Scene of Plato’s Symposium Aristodemus: One more thing, Glaucon. Apollodorus further recounted that in the morning while Socrates, Agathon and Aristophanes conversed about comedy and drama, he overheard another set of speakers. Apparently on the other side of the dining hall, a flute-girl entered with some commotion, attracting the attention of a…
Human Nature Section 1
Okay, so this semester, after the first day on the Allegory of the Cave and bell hook’s Teaching to Transgress (where the main point is to get students to see education as a form of personal transformation and awakening to their own power), I decided to start my Human Nature course with issues that highlight…
The Myth of Psyche and Eros
In the 2nd century AD a literary author and philosopher, Lucius Apuleius, crafted a story that allegorizes the relationship between the human soul (psyche) and desire (Eros). This happens to be the first real day of class for my students and this is the first year that I have used this text as the opening…
The Flute Girl Song
THE FLUTE GIRL SONG I was making music for the men, Music of the highest kind, Enjoying the divine wind in my chest, my lips pressed in enthusiasm. My hips swayed, releasing me to play, exposing myself/not myself, at ease, despite their intentions. And they could not help but watch, but listen as I moved,…
Erotic* Pedagogy* (1): There are no teachers
*Erotic is a technical term for the soul’s desire (which transcends the sexual) and internal resource and even poverty, i.e. the fire within that is both nurturing but also destructive. This blog will attempt to unpack this Platonic idea but, for now, one should follow the advice of feminist poet and essayist Audre Lorde, do…
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Erotic Power from Antiquity to the Present 