for Queer Ecologies
Eros
Alex A. Jones, EROS Map (detail), 2023. watercolor, ink, and salt on paper © Alex A. Jones
The ancients did not take for granted the cosmic agency of love. In Plato’s Symposium, the classical Greek philosophers debated the nature of eros (ἔρως) as a universal force. Socrates credited eros with his skill in teaching and discourse, artes eroticas, by which he aroused desire for the pursuit of knowledge. An ambiguity between carnal and intellectual longing pervades the erotic dialogue, suggesting both spring from the same source. Socrates and Aristophenes also emphasize the relationality of eros, locating it neither in the lover nor the beloved, but within the action of their love.[i]
As an animating force of the universe, eros is the fire that drives bodies into creative encounter, found wherever life manifests. Phallic hydrothermal vents on the deep ocean floor spew heat and alkaline fluids, which are rumored to be the spawn of life itself. The floating caress of a honeybee touches the genitals of a flowering plant that have evolved specifically to attract it. A special, slippery mucous coats the skin of a clownfish, making it immune to the sting of anemone tentacles so the two organisms can live mutualistically.[ii] [see MUTUALISM]
Sexual selection is an evolutionary concept conceived by Charles Darwin to explain how some traits evolve not because they directly enhance an individual’s survival (natural selection), but because they make the individual more attractive to potential mates. These traits can be physical, such as the tail-feathers of male peacocks, or behavioral or cognitive. Contemporaries of Darwin rejected the aesthetic agency implied by this theory, skeptical that nonhuman animals could be motivated by beauty, but in recent decades the importance of sexual selection has been scientifically demonstrated in many species, particularly among birds, fish, and insects. Sexual selection likely played a role in the runaway cognitive development of Homo sapiens, recalling Socrates’ belief that eros fuels the intellect.
Eros is the universal longing for wholeness. A pollinator does not seek a flower because it is lovely, but because it is hungry for the nectar inside. Which is not to say that eros is deterministic—the story of Eve in the Garden of Paradise explains that humanity is driven funamentally by desire, not need. And like the myth of Paradise, the story of eros has a tragic heart—a pit at the center of the fruit—for we always desire what we lack. [see HOLES] At the middle of our galaxy is a black hole, and everything erotic—which is to say, every living in motion—spins out from this centrifugal center.
[i]
For a full exploration of eros in the Symposium, see Marina Berzins McCoy, “Eros, Woundedness, and Creativity in Plato’s Symposium” in Wounded Heroes: Vulnerability as a Virtue in Ancient Greek Literature and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 114–139.
[ii]
The mutualism of clownfish and anemone is dependent on symbiotic bacteria which generate an epithelial mucous signature matching that of the anemone, so that its nematocysts (stinging cells) are not triggered by the fish. Because the mucous signature varies on an individual basis among anemones, the mimicry of the clownfish and its microbial symbionts is even more sophisticated than initially thought. Audet-Gilbert Émie et al., “Microbiomes of clownfish and their symbiotic host anemone converge before their first physical contact,” Microbiome 9, no. 1 (May 2021): 109, accessed October 30, 2023, doi: 10.1186/s40168-021-01058-1
Alex A. Jones with QuERC, 2025