Eros Ideologies ― Writings on Art, Spirituality, and the Decolonial

In Eros Ideologies Laura E. Pérez explores the decolonial through Western and non-Western thought concerning personal and social well-being. Drawing upon Jungian, people of color, and spiritual psychology, alongside non-Western spiritual philosophies of the interdependence of all life forms, she writes of the decolonial as an ongoing project rooted in love as an ideology to frame respectful co-existence of social and cultural diversity. In readings of art that includes self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, Ana Mendieta, and Yreina D. Cervántez, the drawings and paintings of Chilean-American artist Liliana Wilson, and Favianna Rodriguez's screen printed images, Pérez identifies art as one of the most valuable laboratories for creating, imagining, and experiencing new forms of decolonial thought. Such art expresses what Pérez calls eros ideologies: understandings of social and natural reality that foreground the centrality of respect and care of self and others as the basis for a more democratic and responsible present and future. Employing a range of writing styles and voices—from the poetic to the scholarly—Pérez shows how art can point to more just and loving ways of being.

Laura E. Pérez is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities, also published by Duke University Press.