When Desire is Distorted: Racial Fetishisation, Grief, and the Illusion of Being Seen
Artwork by @artworkbyAndileh
Introduction: A Mirror, A Mask, A Mourning
There are forms of desire that do not honour the soul. They arrive dressed in compliments, but feel like corridors — narrow, shadowed, suffocating.
To be racially fetishised is to be wanted through a mask, not met in your fullness. It’s to have your body praised, your skin reverenced, your heritage consumed — and yet to remain unseen. A spectacle. A souvenir. A shadow.
It can feel like desire. It can feel like attention. It can even feel — at first — like being chosen. But underneath the flattery is a grief: the sorrow of being misnamed, misread, misused. The ache of being extracted from, rather than experienced with.
In this post, we’ll explore what racial fetishisation really is, how it differs from appreciation, how it plays out across racial and gender dynamics — including when it comes from within our own communities — and the quiet, cumulative grief it leaves behind.
In the companion podcast episode (released soon), I share more of my personal story. You’ll hear what it’s like to be desired, yet not seen; praised, yet not protected; admired, yet not met. The story is mine — but the shape of it may be familiar to many of us.
What is Racial Fetishisation?
Racial fetishisation is not about love. It is not about appreciation, respect, or real intimacy. It’s about projection — where someone’s race becomes the lens through which they are consumed, not connected with.
In academic terms, racial fetishisation refers to a process whereby racialised bodies are reduced to a set of imagined traits, often hypersexualised, exoticised, or idealised, and desired because of those traits — not in spite of them, and certainly not in full humanity.
It stems from what Frantz Fanon called the “colonial imagination” — where the other is never encountered as equal, only as an object.
When someone says, “I’ve always wanted to be with a Black woman,” they are not seeing you. They are seeing a character they’ve cast you in — curated from history, media, pornography, pain, and myth.
This isn’t desire. It’s objectification wrapped in fantasy — one that often carries the residue of colonialism, patriarchy, and anti-Blackness.
Desirability Politics
The concept of desirability politics helps us understand how power and oppression shape who is seen as “desirable” — and why.
Scholar Mia Mingus defines desirability politics as “how ability, race, class, gender, sexuality and more determine who is considered attractive or worthy of love, sex, or care.” In a society shaped by white supremacy, cis-heteronormativity, and ableism, desirability is not neutral. It is constructed and policed.
For Black women and women of colour in particular, this plays out through dual erasure:
being hyper-visible (as sexual fantasy, stereotype, spectacle), and
being invisible (as tender, complex, and lovable humans).
To be racially fetishised, then, is to be included in the politics of desire — but only as a symbol. Not as self.
Why this matters particularly now
In today’s dating app culture — where swiping decisions are made in milliseconds, and bios often reduce people to emojis, ethnicities, and filtered photos — racial fetishisation has found new, algorithmic ground.
Apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble have been shown to reinforce racial hierarchies in dating. Research has found that Black women and Asian men are consistently rated as less desirable, while white men and women dominate desirability rankings (Robnett & Feliciano, 2011; Rudder, 2014).
And when Black women are sought out, it is often through the lens of curiosity, domination, or exoticisation — not connection.
This is not just about personal preference. This is about structural preference — shaped by media, colonisation, colourism, and centuries of racialised myth-making.
Reflection Prompts
When have I felt “desired” in ways that didn’t feel safe, mutual, or humanising?
In what ways has society taught me to see certain races or bodies as more desirable than others?
In what ways have I ever mistaken attention for affection? What did it cost me?
Appreciation vs Fetishisation
It can be difficult to name when something feels off — especially when it’s wrapped in compliments. When someone expresses desire toward you, how do you know if it’s genuine appreciation or racial fetishisation? The difference lies in the direction of the gaze.
Appreciation sees you as a person — with complexity, context, and choice. It honours culture as a living, breathing inheritance — something that belongs to a people, not a persona. It’s marked by reverence, humility, and relationship.
Racialised projection, on the other hand, distorts culture into a costume. It sees you as a type — with fixed traits to be consumed, admired, or conquered. It flattens nuance. It assigns assumptions. It’s less about knowing and more about owning — who you think someone is, based solely on the racial or cultural markers they carry.
Think of it this way: Appreciation is about witnessing with care. Fetishisation is about possessing through fantasy.
| Uplifting and Celebrating | Racial Fetishisation | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Seeing a person as whole — mind, body, spirit, history, and humanity | Reducing a person to skin colour, body parts, or cultural tropes |
| 2 | Appreciating culture with context — understanding its history, struggle, and nuance | Consuming or romanticising culture out of context — e.g. loving “Black girl magic” but ignoring Black women’s pain |
| 3 | Complimenting style, presence, or confidence without entitlement or ownership | Obsessing over features like lips, skin tone, or hair texture as “exotic,” “wild,” or “different” |
| 4 | Being in solidarity with struggles against racism, colourism, and colonialism | Sexualising or objectifying someone’s identity while remaining silent on their oppression |
| 5 | Celebrating individuality — recognising the person beyond group identity | Projecting fantasies onto someone based on race (e.g. assuming Black men are dominant, or Asian women are submissive) |
| 6 | Asking meaningful questions, listening deeply, and checking assumptions | Making assumptions or asking invasive questions (“Where are you really from?” / “Is that your real hair?”) |
| 7 | Making space for leadership, voice, and agency | Tokenising someone for diversity points or performance (e.g. “the hot Black friend” / “spicy Latina”) |
| 8 | Feeling attraction that includes but isn’t limited to racial identity | Feeling attracted because of racial identity — “I only date Black women” / “I have a thing for Asian guys” |
| 9 | Engaging in relationship or community with curiosity, respect, and care | Treating a person like a novelty, fantasy, or conquest |
| 10 | Holding people accountable without projecting shame or saviourism | Playing the “saviour” or “collector” role — “I’m different from the rest” energy |
| 11 | “I’m drawn to you — your presence, your humour, your fire.” | “You’re so exotic. I’ve always wanted to be with a [race].” |
| 12 | Curious about your culture without assuming it defines you | Assumes your race determines your personality or skills |
| 13 | Sees your beauty as personal and embodied | Sees your body as proof of stereotype or fantasy |
| 14 | Interested in how you experience your identity | Projects assumptions onto your identity |
| 15 | Notices power dynamics and seeks mutuality | Seeks power through possession, novelty, or conquest |
| 16 | Engages with your full humanity | Ignores your personhood in favour of “look,” “vibe,” or “type |
| 17 | Love as intimacy | Desire as extraction |
Reflection Prompts
When have I ever confused being "preferred" with being loved?
When someone shows interest in me, do I feel more free or more framed?
What does healthy, grounded appreciation feel like in my body?
How Racial Fetishisation Shows Up: Dynamics and Directions
Racial fetishisation isn’t always overt. It doesn’t always look like a cringeworthy comment in a DM or a dating app bio. Sometimes, it’s coded or disguised as adoration. Sometimes, it feels almost flattering — until you realise you were never really in the room. Just your racialised silhouette.
Let’s name some of the dynamics where racial fetishisation often appears — across and within racial contexts. Not to shame or generalise, but to illuminate where harm hides behind desire.
White Men & Black Women
Black women are often exoticised, hypersexualised, and praised for their “strength” — not as affirmation, but as justification. Phrases like “strong Black queen” are not compliments. They’re containment strategies. This is the legacy of colonial conquest, plantation sexual violence, and the Jezebel stereotype — where Black women’s bodies are seen as available, dominant, and desirable, but never tender, soft, or sacred.
And the mirror flips: Some Black women may also fetishise white men — seeing them as safer, softer, or more emotionally available, especially after repeated harm by Black men in patriarchal contexts. Whiteness becomes idealised — not because of who he is, but because of what he may represent: escape, status, protection, or repair.
The cost?Being over-revered but under-held. Desired, but not cared for. Elevated for your resilience, but never permitted to rest — or to rage.
Black Men & White Women
In this pairing, Black men are often fetishised through the “Mandingo” myth — a racist trope that casts them as hypersexual, physically dominant, and emotionally unavailable. This reduces them to a fantasy of virility and danger — a “forbidden thrill” or rebellion against whiteness.
White women, in this context, may be elevated as a kind of status symbol: the “ultimate prize,” a colonial remnant of power and access.
The cost? Both parties are objectified. Love is replaced by spectacle. Intimacy becomes a performance of power — not a place of mutual truth.
Black Women & White Women
Here, fetishisation may show up as cultural consumption. Blackness becomes the spice, the edge, the “cool.” Think: obsession with aesthetics (braids, hoop earrings, AAVE, fashion), without connection to context, community, or consequence.
Sometimes, the fetish is wrapped in trauma bonding — an unspoken belief that the Black woman can carry, soothe, or “earth” the white woman’s pain, grief, or rebellion.
The cost? Being the container, the muse, the “raw” one — but never the centre.
Queer Fetishisation
Fetishisation within queer spaces is also real — often complicated by intersecting marginalisations. Black queer folks may be hypersexualised in ways that mimic straight racial dynamics, but with the added burden of being seen as a “fantasy” or “first-time” experiment.
Racial dynamics in queer dating spaces are often dismissed as “preference” — but scratch beneath the surface, and colonial scripts remain.
The cost? Being desired for your difference, but excluded from true community or commitment.
Intra-Racial Fetishisation Exists Too
We’ll go deeper into this in the next section — but it’s vital to say here: You can be racially fetishised by your own race. Internalised colonial logic runs deep — shaping which shades, textures, or accents are “preferred,” and which are rejected.
Fetishisation is not just about whiteness looking in. It’s about any gaze that makes your race the reason, the plot, or the proof — instead of simply part of your wholeness.
Racial Fetishisation in other contexts
Racial fetishisation doesn’t confine itself to the dating realm — it seeps into workplaces, media, fashion, and even wellness spaces under the guise of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusivity’. In the workplace, it often masquerades as tokenism, where racialised individuals — especially Black women — are celebrated for optics, but not meaningfully included in decision-making or culture shaping.
In the fashion industry, we see an aestheticisation of difference where ultra-dark-skinned African models with shaved heads become symbols of high-fashion ‘edginess’ — fetishised for their “otherworldly” beauty while rarely afforded the same humanity or range as white counterparts. Models like Alek Wek and Anok Yai have spoken about this duality of being both hyper-visible and fundamentally misunderstood. The body becomes a canvas for white imagination — an abstract concept of Blackness made palatable only when styled, framed, or controlled by white curators. This aesthetic fetishisation extends to marketing campaigns, curated social feeds, and spiritual wellness spaces where Blackness is consumed, mimicked, and commodified — but not deeply respected or centred.
Reflection Prompts:
When have I sensed that my race was central to someone’s desire for me — not my story, softness, or substance?
When have I ever felt more like a symbol than a partner?
In which dynamics have I noticed power masquerading as passion?
When It Comes From Our Own: Internalised Racial Fetishisation
Racial fetishisation is not only something that happens to us — it’s something we can also unconsciously participate in, especially within our own racial and cultural communities.
Internalised racial fetishisation happens when the gaze of the oppressor is absorbed and replayed within the group that has been historically marginalised. It’s the coloniser’s script, read aloud in familiar voices. And because it happens “at home,” it often hurts in deeper, more disorienting ways.
Colourism, Texturism, and the Fetish of Proximity to Whiteness
In Black communities around the world, there’s often a deep, unspoken longing for what has historically been rewarded: lighter skin, looser curls, narrower noses, or certain body shapes. This isn’t just “preference.” It’s preference shaped by trauma, by empire, by survival.
When we say, “I only date light-skinned girls,” or “She’s pretty for a dark-skinned girl,”
what we’re really saying is: “I desire closeness to power.”
Even terms like “melanin goddess” or “chocolate king”, while seemingly celebratory, can slip into fetish territory when they reduce a person’s worth or attraction to their skin tone alone — as if that’s their defining and desirable quality.
Culture, Music, and the Line Between Praise and Possession
Within our communities, cultural expressions often walk a fine line between celebration and sexualisation — particularly in music.
In both African and African American music scenes, Black women are often lyrically and visually portrayed as symbols of sexual power — curvy, “thick,” seductive, and insatiable. Think: afrobeats videos that zoom in on hips, American rap lyrics that rank desirability by waist-to-hip ratios or skin tone.
While these expressions can be rooted in cultural pride and body positivity — especially when reclaiming space in a world that has shamed and erased Black bodies — they can also cross over into fetishisation when:
Women are reduced to body parts (“a baddie with a big back”)
Beauty is tied to race-adjacent features (e.g. “light-skinned with good hair”)
Desire is stripped of emotional intimacy or mutual humanity
In short: when we prize the aesthetic of Blackness more than the actual experience of Black women.
Internalised Fetishisation as a Colonial Hangover
This dynamic is one of the lingering aftershocks of colonisation. When beauty, intellect, and desirability are centred around whiteness — and Blackness is historically cast as “too much,” “too loud,” “too dark,” or “too unruly” — it’s no surprise that we begin to replicate the same logics in our own dating, friendships, and social spaces.
The result? Entire hierarchies within the Black diaspora, where some accents, nationalities, and aesthetics are elevated… and others are erased.
The Illusion of Empowerment
At first glance, internalised racial fetishisation may look like empowerment. It may even feel like pride. But when our desire is shaped primarily by external validation or inherited ideals, it becomes another form of disconnection — from others, and from ourselves.
To fetishise someone from within your own community is to fragment them — to reward the parts of them that feel closer to whiteness, assimilation, or “palatability,” while silently rejecting what is unfiltered, unpolished, and deeply ancestral.
Reflection Prompts:
Where have I internalised ideals of beauty, intelligence, or desirability that centre whiteness or proximity to it?
Have I ever felt more desired within my community when I appeared “lighter,” “softer,” or more “well-spoken”?
In what ways have I judged or idealised others in my own racial group based on traits shaped by colonial logic?
How has music, pop culture, or social media shaped how I see my desirability — or someone else’s?
The Impact: When Fetishisation Wounds the Psyche, Body and Soul
Fetishisation is not flattery. It is distortion—flattening complexity into a consumable fantasy. For Black women and women of colour, the psychic toll of being desired not for one’s humanity but for one’s mythology is profound.
Fetishisation is not only erotic—it’s emotional, existential, and often violent in its reduction. The repeated experience of being seen through a lens that fragments rather than recognises the self, creates what Frantz Fanon described as a "zone of nonbeing"—a space where the person is rendered invisible while being hyper-visible.
Psychologically, the impact can be internalised in the form of self-doubt, anxiety, or a deep sense of alienation. When a woman begins to question whether someone is drawn to her or to her skin, to her personhood or to the politics of her race, intimacy becomes a minefield. It’s a grief of its own kind—the mourning of true connection in spaces where objectification has worn the mask of admiration.
In the body, these wounds might show up in subtle dissociations during sex, in the tension held in the shoulders during workplace banter, or in the split-second hypervigilance in public when being watched. The body remembers being othered. The nervous system responds not just to acts of overt racism, but to the slow burn of performative desire.
Spiritually, fetishisation is a theft of sovereignty. The soul hungers to be mirrored in its wholeness, not curated for someone else's gaze. When your body is a battleground between representation and reality, spiritual erosion can occur—leaving behind a shell of performance and protection.
For many racialised women, healing means learning to trust one’s own reflection again. To reclaim sensuality as sacred, not spectacle. To unhook from the mythologies projected onto us and return to the truth of our own becoming. It requires unlearning the lie that desirability must come at the cost of dignity.
Reflection prompts
When have I felt desired, but not truly seen? What signals told me it was about projection, not presence?
Where do I notice myself dissociating or disconnecting in intimate spaces? What might my body be trying to protect me from?
When have I questioned whether someone’s desire for me was shaped by a stereotype? How did I respond—did I shrink, perform, confront, or withdraw?
What myths or fantasies have been projected onto my body? How do I begin to return those myths to their rightful owners?
What does sacred, sovereign sensuality feel like for me—outside of anyone else’s gaze? How can I nurture that in small, nourishing ways?
The Grief of Not Being Seen
Racial fetishisation is not merely a poor romantic match or a mismatch of values—it is a profound kind of heartbreak. A heartbreak that stems from the painful recognition that you were not really seen, only projected upon. That the desire was never truly for you, but for a constructed image—a fantasy shaped by colonial legacies, stereotypes, and dehumanising myths. In this way, racial fetishisation masquerades as visibility but delivers only a cruel and glittering kind of invisibility.
You are hyper-visible, and yet not known. You are desired, but not respected. You are ‘chosen’, but not cherished.
This dissonance brings with it a grief that is difficult to articulate. Because how do you grieve what was never real? How do you mourn a connection that, in hindsight, was more extraction than intimacy?
It’s here that we meet the quieter, layered ache of secondary losses—the losses that spiral out from the initial rupture of being racially fetishised. These might include:
Loss of self-trust: questioning your instincts, wondering how you didn’t see it sooner.
Loss of relational safety: feeling guarded or hypervigilant in future romantic connections.
Loss of cultural belonging: particularly when fetishisation happens across racial or cultural lines, leaving you unsure of how or where you are welcome.
Loss of narrative clarity: the realisation that what felt like love was performance or fantasy.
Loss of innocence: the betrayal of discovering your body was seen as symbolic or exotic before it was seen as human.
Loss of confidence or desire: internalising the fetishising gaze and struggling to reclaim your sexual agency.
Loss of emotional labour: mourning the energy spent explaining, defending, or trying to be understood.
Loss of possibility: grieving what the relationship could have been in the absence of power distortions.
Invisibility in this context doesn’t mean being unseen—it means being mis-seen. And there is grief in that distortion. It is a spiritual sorrow. A body sorrow.
As bell hooks writes in Feminism is for Everybody (2000): “Being oppressed means the absence of choices.”
And that is the legacy of fetishisation—it narrows the field of choice, reducing the fullness of your identity to something consumable, desirable, but ultimately discardable.
Reflective prompts:
Where in my body do I feel the ache of being mis-seen?
What have I lost—emotionally, psychologically, spiritually—as a result of being fetishised?
What would it feel like to be fully seen and not just desired?
How has my relationship to desire changed after being racialised or fetishised?
Who do I feel safe being fully visible with now?
Three Healing Practices for Racial Fetishisation
Healing through self-reclamation, embodied sovereignty, and narrative liberation
When you’ve been reduced to a fantasy, an object, or a symbol — especially in racialised ways — healing calls you back to your fullness. These practices are designed to gently but powerfully counteract the impact of racial fetishisation, guiding you back to your wholeness, sensuality, and sovereignty.
1. Loving Self-Gaze
What it is: Counteracting objectification by choosing to see yourself through your own sacred, loving, and nuanced lens.
When others flatten you into caricatures — “exotic,” “curvy,” “strong,” “wild,” — you get to choose to look deeper. To honour your ancestry, your softness, your sensuality, your full humanity.
Practices to try:
Mirror work: Stand before a mirror and speak life into your reflection. Name the beauty, heritage, and power you see. Speak to yourself like a beloved.
Journaling prompt: “What do I want to see in myself that no one else has ever acknowledged?”
2. Body Sovereignty & Reconnection
What it is: Healing from being reduced to a racialised or exoticised body by reclaiming your physical and emotional boundaries.
Fetishisation often fractures our connection to our bodies. It teaches us to see ourselves from the outside in — a performance, not a presence. This practice is about coming home to your body, on your own terms.
Practices to try:
Somatic check-ins: Ask yourself before, during, and after intimacy or social encounters: “How do I feel in my body? What does safety feel like right now?”
Sacred touch or dance: Develop rituals that allow you to move, touch, or adorn yourself without performance — simply for connection, pleasure, or grounding.
3. Narrative Reclamation
What it is: Naming and rewriting the stories you’ve internalised about desirability, identity, and worth.
Fetishisation implants false scripts: “I’m only desirable if I meet their fantasy.” “I must play the part to be loved.” Reclamation means taking the pen back — refusing the tropes and telling your truth.
Practices to try:
Letter to your younger self: Write a love letter that affirms: “You are not a fetish”
Creative expression: Whether it’s art, voice notes, poetry, or song — express who you are beyond what you’ve been told to be.
Definitions and Further Reading
KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS
Here are some key terms and concepts—drawn from sociology, psychology, critical race theory, and gender studies—that are useful when discussing racial fetishisation, especially as it relates to interpersonal dynamics, identity, and systemic power:
PSYCHOLOGICAL TERMS
1. Madonna-Whore Complex – Coined by Freud, this describes a psychological split in which women are either idealised as pure (Madonna) or degraded as sexually available (Whore). When racialised, this complex often plays out in the eroticisation of women of colour as hypersexual or exotic, while white women are idealised as “wife material.”
2. Erotic Racialisation – A term describing how race becomes sexualised and racial identities are reduced to sexual fantasies or stereotypes.
3. Object Relations Theory – Explores how early relationships shape adult attachment and perceptions of others; in this context, it can help unpack how racialised projections get internalised and reenacted.
4. Projection and Splitting – Common defense mechanisms in which individuals project unwanted traits onto others or split people into “good” and “bad.” These mechanisms are often racialised in fetishistic dynamics.
5. Cognitive Dissonance – The psychological tension that arises when someone’s beliefs about race (e.g., “I’m not racist”) conflict with fetishistic behaviour.
SOCIOLOGICAL & CRITICAL RACE TERMS
6. Desirability Politics – Refers to the social and racial hierarchies that shape who is considered attractive, lovable, or partner-worthy. Often rooted in white supremacy, it prioritises Eurocentric beauty standards.
7. Racial Fetishisation – The reduction of a person to racial stereotypes, particularly in sexual or romantic contexts. It involves objectification, exoticism, and power imbalances.
8. Exoticism – The portrayal of someone as alluring and mysterious due to their perceived foreignness. It often dehumanises and flattens cultural complexity.
9. Colorism – A subset of racism that privileges lighter skin tones within communities of colour, often impacting desirability, treatment, and access.
10. Othering – The process of perceiving or portraying someone as fundamentally different, often in ways that dehumanise or marginalise them.
11. Intersectionality – Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, it examines how overlapping identities (race, gender, class, etc.) create unique experiences of oppression and privilege.
12. White Gaze – A term describing how people of colour are viewed through the lens of white norms, desires, and assumptions, often leading to distortion or objectification.
13. Cultural Appropriation – The adoption of elements of a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, often stripped of context and meaning, and sometimes sexualised.
14. Postcolonial Theory – Explores how colonial histories shape current power relations, including in romantic or sexual dynamics (e.g., the colonial fantasy of the “submissive” woman of colour).
GENDERED TERMS
15. Hypersexualisation – The over-sexualisation of individuals, often based on race or gender stereotypes. Black, Latina, and Asian women are often subject to this in different ways.
16. Sexual Scripts – Culturally constructed expectations about how sexual encounters should unfold. Racialised scripts often place women of colour into limiting and degrading roles.
17. Misogynoir – A term coined by Moya Bailey to describe the unique form of misogyny directed at Black women, combining racism and sexism.
18.White Male Entitlement / Possessive Investment in Whiteness – Concepts that explore how white men often view relationships through a lens of control or ownership, especially across racial lines.
FURTHER READING
1. Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
A foundational text that explores how colonialism shaped Black identity, especially in relation to whiteness and desire. His chapter on the “lived experience of the Black man” and interracial relationships is essential for understanding how the Black body becomes a site of projection.
2. The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
While not specifically about racial fetishisation, this feminist classic helps unpack how women’s bodies are used, controlled, and commodified—concepts that resonate deeply when layered with race.
3. Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry
This biography touches on Hansberry’s experiences navigating race, queerness, and being othered—particularly in intimate relationships. It offers insight into the subtleties of being exoticised and erased, even within progressive circles.
4. The Erotic Life of Racism by Sharon Patricia Holland
A powerful academic yet poetic book that explores how racism permeates even our most intimate, erotic spaces. It looks at how racial difference is eroticised and how racism lives within desire itself.
5. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison
Morrison examines how Blackness is constructed in the white literary imagination—as mystery, sensuality, danger, or absence. While not about fetishisation per se, it offers a vital framework for understanding racialised narratives.
6. Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life by Mark Epstein
A Buddhist psychologist’s look at desire—this book doesn’t focus on race, but is deeply useful for those trying to untangle internalised messages about worth, attraction, and erotic power. When read alongside racial analysis, it adds healing depth.
7. Sensuous Knowledge by Minna Salami
This book blends African feminist thought, philosophy, and storytelling to decolonise our ways of knowing, being, and loving. It powerfully addresses how Black women are often objectified or idolised rather than seen—and invites new ways of inhabiting desire and power.
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