Audre Lorde: Dream of Europe — Reading Group #5
The Force of the Erotic with Philomena Essed

Sunday October 18, 2020
19:00–21:00 (CET)

*Due to the increased COVID-19 safety measures we have moved the Dream of Europe reading group to participation via Zoom only.*

For The Force of the Erotic* guest reader Philomena Essed will guide us through the fifth reading group of Audre Lorde: Dream of Europe. We will read pages 193 to 233, consisting of reading by Audre Lorde from the period 1984 - 1992, during her stay in Berlin. *Audre Lorde defines the erotic as a profound source of power, housed in the spiritual realm of women's existence.

Philomena Essed is professor of Critical Race, Gender and Leadership Studies at Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change and Affiliated Researcher at the University of Utrecht’s, Gender Graduate Program. She holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (cum laude, 1990) and Honorary Doctorate degrees from the University of Pretoria (2011) and Umeå University (2015). In 2011 The Queen of the Netherlands honored her with a Knighthood. Well known for introducing the concepts of everyday racism and gendered racism, she also pioneered in developing theory on social and cultural cloning. The now classical 1984 book (in Dutch) Alledaags Racisme (English version, Everyday Racism, 1990) has been republished in 2018 with additional chapters. Philomena also joined us at de Appel last year for one of our Historic Encounters, as part of the exhibition Guess Who's Coming for Dinner Too? by Patricia Kaersenhout.