Defender la alegria… de las endemias y las academias
—Mario Benedetti poem, Defensa de la alegría
I have had a reoccurring dream over the years, or rather nightmare, in which I am part of an academic setting in which we are gathered to analyze, dissect and explain happiness. Even in the dream this seems not only tedious and pointless but to some degree sacrilegious. I have taken it as par for the course of belonging to a tribe that does this for a living, dissect things, or as Carl Lumbly states, “talk things to death.” And I don’t find it accidental that in this dream it is happiness that we are ready to analyze, since happiness, like love, anger and joy, is one of those things that still have managed to escape or elude analytical destruction.
Joy is even more elusive to academic banter since is better served to express the experiential approximation to moments of extreme fulfillment and coherence. Joy in my appreciation is a sentiment that overrides mere physical pleasure or happiness, and rather locates us in the realm of oneness with oneself and the world around us. To this degree, joy is something to be felt, experienced and shared, but not defined or caged. Perhaps that sharing of joy is what is most meaningful to me in our current pandemic times. The very discrete moments of complete fulfillment when different events provided a sense of wholeness that made me feel connected to myself, and through myself to others; and allowed me to abandon for a second this sense of isolation, loneliness and alienation which we normally inhabit.
—Hugo Benavides
The metaphor for joy that I have been toying with is a short circuit. As the editors of Oppositional Conversations were considering the theme for this issue, we kept coming back to joy’s ephemerality and unpredictability—its resistance to appropriation or instrumentalization. A short occurs when two parts of an electrical circuit not meant to be connected in fact do connect—through chance or accident. The result is that electrical energy meant to be regularized through carefully wired channeling suddenly and temporarily becomes unconstrained.
The circuit might be thought of as the structures that undergird our society. We are the electricity flowing through it. This system routes our energy and spirit, narrowing or expanding each as needed. The circuit allows for predictable kinds of pleasure or happiness, but not joy. Occasionally there is a glitch in the system. Two wires cross unintentionally, and, for a moment, all of our energies, emotions, and ideas are released at once. That moment is joy. When it’s over, we return to the previously scheduled programming, unable to replicate the moment but aware of its ever-present possibility.
The constructed nature of circuitry is important. The circuits we flow through are designed to treat joy as an unwanted consequence, a flaw in the design. That joy manages to happen anyways—however briefly—is a testament both to its necessity and its inevitability. With enough time, or after many occurrences, a short circuit can overheat and destroy the system it is circumventing. I like to think this property of the short circuit gives some idea of joy’s threat and promise.
—Bobby Cardos
I remember being brought up short when it was explained to me that “collective effervescence” was the academically authoritative term for the energies and social solidarity unleashed by human exchange and gift-giving. “They couldn’t do better than that to designate the living heart of human collectivity?” I thought to myself. “Surely there’s got to be a more transcendent way of naming mutual human recognition and reciprocity.” Whenever I hear that phrase, I still cringe. “Why not just say ‘joy,’” I think.
“Joy”—“delight,” “happiness,” “bliss,” “erotic or sensual pleasure,” “gladness”—its etymology goes back to an Indo-European root meaning, simply and profoundly, “rejoice.” “Joy” it seems to me is that pleasure taken and given in being alive that exceeds theorization or containment even by its own expression or any other elaboration. It’s what eludes capture or definition about the best things that happen to us and that we do for their own sake. It is of the essence that joy eludes instrumentalization no matter how hard we may try to take advantage of it or profit from it. The instant we try to appropriate it and apply it to some “use” or purpose, it stops being joyful.
And maybe that’s why it feels like such a good theme for an issue of Oppositional Conversations. Our journal is a project of writers, artists, scholars, teachers, editors, and readers who have made lives and careers associated with the contemporary university. We are now trying to create a place to engage each other outside the university and institutionalized reason’s seeming capture by the relentless forces of administered extractive global profit seeking. For such a project to search for a common conversational ground that resists theorization in the same way that joy resists theorization seems an altogether appropriate and joyful idea.
—Peter Dimock
For me, joy is a practice and an activity that is also an experience. It is a kind of reunion with my own and our collective animation. An encounter with the livingness and vital essence within and around me. When I return to this awareness, I feel I know something true about my value, my dignity, my belonging, my safety, and my knowing that I am sufficient and more than enough and that I matter. Being joyful means tuning into this reality and feeling how it disrupts the many stories and narratives proffered by social systems that are designed to tell me and to tell us otherwise. The experience of joy and the act of “joying” are a kind of liberation within broader structures of oppression and control where I know myself and my interrelatedness with others and with Life.
Corny, yes, but this is my dedicated path these days!
—Maurice Stevens