Part One is in the previous page.
Author’s Note: I wrote this post shortly after Pres. Biden stepped down as the Democratic candidate for the presidency and endorsed Kamala Harris, long before the Kamala-Harris ticket adopted “joy” as their watchword. The reference to the “joy” of this campaign has now become so ubiquitous that I fear it will become trivialized and merely a slogan. I hope instead that they meaningfully embrace a politics of joy and the capacity of joy to heal divides, not just in this country, but throughout the world.
* * *
. . . and then everything changed.
What is this feeling that has been filling me of late? Ah, yes, I remember — hope, enthusiasm, excitement, optimism! It’s been so long since I’ve felt this — on the political scene, for our country, for the world. But lately I’ve felt buoyant – something I haven’t felt at least since 2016. Rather than avoiding the news, now I am eager for it, seek it out.
The energy, vitality, and yes, laughter that Kamala Harris has brought to the presidential campaign has infused myself and many others I know with a sense of joy, a welcome contrast from the doom and gloom that has been surrounding the campaign for so long. Her ability to laugh, to smile, to find the positives in people, in life, that has brought new life to this campaign. Yet for some reason, the opposing side has chosen to focus on Harris’s easy laughter as a target for derision.
I was struck by a comment on Minnesota Public Radio made by Duchess Harris, professor of American Studies at Macalester College, regarding the derogatory remarks the Trump campaign has made of Kamala Harris’s laughter.[i] She asked, “What does it mean that people don’t want her to have joy?” I immediately thought of how Audre Lorde would respond to that question. Why don’t people want her to have joy — because of the radical potential of joy to empower us – to demand of our relationships, our work, our worship, our institutions, our lives, and our politics that they be fulfilling of our deepest purposes. As Lorde wrote: “That deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within that knowledge that such satisfaction is possible. . . . Once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of.”[ii]
Enhancing our capacity for joy raises the possibility that the polis itself could be a vibrant place of both individual and collective avenues of self-expression, self-determination, and meaning, as opposed to place of a people so disaffected and disillusioned as to fall easily into the hands of an autocrat or to cling desperately to a cult leader. As I wrote in an earlier post[iii], in his Inciting Joy, Ross Gay asks the question — what does joy incite? Incite – to provoke, stir up, arouse. Gay answers his own question: “My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. . . . My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow – might draw us together. It might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. . . .”[iv]
It might depolarize us!! How threatening that might be to the kind of “us vs. them” politics of hate on which the Right has thrived. “The sharing of joy,” wrote Audre Lorde, “ . . . forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.”[v] Consider for a moment the creative potential, or as Gay says, the “transgressive” possibilities this lessening the threat of difference between us, the depolarization of us, the love between us could bring? It could up-end the power of those who profit from this polarization and enmity, inviting the subversive possibilities of the “unboundaried solidarity” of being on each other’s side vis à vis the capitalist patriarchy, creating just and right relations with each other and the earth. Joy incites an uprising of the heart.
It might de-atomize us! In her study of the origins of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explained how totalitarianism grows from “atomized, isolated individuals.” Totalitarian movements demand “total, unrestricted, unconditional, and unalterable loyalty of the individual member. . . . Such loyalty can be expected only from the completely isolated human being who, . . . derives his sense of having a place in the world only from his belonging to a movement, his membership in the party.“[vi] The dread that has shadowed my being has been of this potential – of a totalitarianism fomented by those eager to keep us isolated from each other and to prey on a disaffected populace.
But now, in nearly a blink of an eye, all that has changed, so hungry have people been for a future filled with hope. We are tired of a politic that has divided us from friends and family and each other as a nation. My current sense is of a populace which is ebullient – eager to engage in a dialogical politics that seeks to create what and who it is that we are together; that seeks not just liberty, but also justice for all.
Ah — this is the feeling – of a joy emerging from what has been our common sorrow over the looming political nightmare. I can feel a sense solidarity emerging, one that is transgressive of rigid party boundaries. I can feel us being drawn together “to consider what, in common, we love.”
I say – bring on the laughter! Bring on the joy!
Sources
Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New Edition with Added Prefaces. San Diego: Harvest/HBJ Books.
Gay, Ross. 2022. Inciting Joy: Essays. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books.
Kamala Harris, women in leadership and the ‘glass cliff’ | MPR News
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg: New York, The Crossing Press.
Notes
[i] Angela Davis, “Kamala Harris, Women in Leadership and the ‘Glass Cliff,.’” MPR. July 29, 2024. Kamala Harris, women in leadership and the ‘glass cliff’ | MPR News
The reference comes from Donald Trump — “I call her ‘Laughing Kamala.’ You ever watch her laugh? She’s crazy,” he said, according to a clip of the speech shared online. “You can tell a lot by a laugh. No, she’s crazy, she’s nuts.” Acyn on X: “Trump: Kamala, I call her laughing Kamala. Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts. She is not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi. https://t.co/EumPAKo2yk” / X
[ii] Lorde, Sister Outsider, 57.
[iii] Radical Joy by Beth Bartlett (feminismandreligion.com)
[iv] Gay, Inciting Joy, 9.
[v] Lorde, Sister Outsider, 56.
[vi] Arendt, Origins, 323-324.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Ann Bartlett, Ph.D., is an educator, author, activist, and spiritual companion. She is Professor Emerita of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where she helped co-found the Women’s Studies program in the early 80s. She taught courses ranging from feminist and political thought to religion and spirituality; ecofeminism; nonviolence, war and peace; and women and law. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Journey of the Heart: Spiritual Insights on the Road to a Transplant; Rebellious Feminism: Camus’s Ethic of Rebellion and Feminist Thought; and Making Waves: Grassroots Feminism in Duluth and Superior. She is trained in both Somatic Experiencing® and Indigenous Focusing-Oriented trauma therapy, and offers these healing modalities through her spiritual direction practice. She has been active in feminist, peace and justice, indigenous rights, and climate justice movements and has been a committed advocate for the water protectors. You can find more about her work and writing at her personal website, Beth Bartlett.
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