"JOYFUL INSURRECTION AS FEMINIST METHODOLOGY; OR 

THE JOYS OF BEING A FEMINIST KILLJOY"

LIBE GARCÍA ZARRANZ  en 452ºF: Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature 14: January 2016

During our last meeting we discussed García Zarranz's proposal for reinvigorating the figure of the 'feminist killjoy' (Ahmed 2010), and arguing for the pleasure of insurrection as a feminist tool:

“In my understanding, the act of being a feminist killjoy means becoming an obstacle or an interruption to episodes of sexist exchange, racial discrimination, and compulsory heteronormativity. These moments disrupt the system momentarily, thus becoming instances of dissent and disorientation: you are not following the right path; you are breaking the flow. I here propose to consider these moments of dissent precisely as moments of joyful insurrection.”

Through a brief presentation of the way in which joy has been theorised by Braidotti, Deleuze, and de Spinoza, the article articulates how the viral nature of joy, that is, it's capacity to spread between people, can be a useful means of conceptualising the feminist project of opposing gender, racial, sexual, and class inequalities. The first sections of the article offer an articulate interrogation of the theory of affect, particularly as it pertains to the ways in which joy can be mobilised as an effective tool for resisting patriarchal demands and oppressions. Further, by invoking Barad and Harraway's respective understandings of diffraction as opposed to reproduction, the article turns to consider how the work of visual artist and photographer KC Adams http://www.kcadams.net/art/photography/phtotal.html can be read as a manifestation of refractive techniques for feminist activism. For García Zarranz, Adams’ work enacts the ‘joyful insurrection’ that interrupts dominant discourses of Otherness.

Prior to the conclusions, García Zarranz poses a series of questions that were the central focus of our discussion: 

“What would be the implications of conducting differences and contradictions as potential sites of joyful insurrection? How can we devise sustainable ways to conduct ourselves joyfully as a way to activate action between communities that are often kept apart from each other? What kind of diffractive methodologies could we articulate to keep building an archive of sustainable feminist affects?”