ABSTRACT
The Erotic of Abstinence is an aesthetic in art and performance that makes desirable an ethic of care and intimacy in resistance to the non-consensual violence of settler colonialism and the consequences of this violence to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC); queer; and disabled lives. Settler colonial values normalize non-consensual ways of relating, and these values have shaped our spaces and pedagogies for actor training. This chapter reflects on the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the insidious harms of these values hidden within the intimacy of labor in our everyday lives and offers a timely proposal for allies to embrace settler abstinence as an erotic ethic that would refuse the demands of settler productivity and systems of property and embrace an aesthetic that promotes wellbeing and consensual relating within performance pedagogy.
