Joy and Human Rights
In this piece, Tallulah Lines is inspired by US artist Rashaad Newsome’s short film Build or Destroy to think about the role of joy in art and human rights. She argues that art can help bring to life theoretical concepts like Black Joy or Decolonial Joy, that may inspire new ways of thinking about human rights.
Still from the short film Build or Destroy (2021), reproduced with permission from the artist Rashaad Newsome.
I wandered through the In the Black Fantastic exhibition in London’s Hayward Gallery last summer feeling a mix of excitement, awe and pleasure. The exhibition featured artwork which challenges and reimagines our conceptions of past, present and future worlds and knowledges, created by artists from the African diaspora. I found myself ‘lingering in appreciation’ (Mullin, 2003) of many of the pieces on display in the show, but it was Rashaad Newsome’s (b.1979, USA) 5.27 minute video Build or Destroy (2021) which kept me captivated the longest, as I reveled in its hypnotising imagery and its affective and intellectual impact. Watching the video, I thought about the complex and promising relationship between joy, resistance, human rights and art. How do the arts mobilise a joyful resistance to political oppression and support the fulfillment of human rights? And what role and responsibilities do academics have in making sense of and communicating this relationship?
Build or Destroy: finding joy in resistance
Newsome (2022) wants his art to be a liberating space where narrow conceptions of identity and humanity are expanded, and where some of the most frequently marginalised, oppressed and policed bodies can ‘break free of the frame and break free of whatever is projected onto us’ through a combination of ‘abstraction’ and ‘fantastical, surreal and futuristic ideas’. In Build or Destroy, a Black femme figure wearing extravagant metallic clothes vogues* to an original soundtrack as the city behind them is repeatedly bombed, the flames increasing intensely while buildings collapse to the ground. The flames catch the dancer’s body, but seem to give them power and energy to continue dancing, or at least, certainly don’t deter them. The dystopian background serves as a metaphor for the necropolitics that mean that some people, because of their race, gender, sexuality, social class and other intersectional characteristics, ‘are not meant to survive’ (Lorde, 1978 and 1984 [2019]). In this daily grind of survival, Newsome’s vogueing protagonist suggests that one perfect remedy is to be defiantly, joyfully alive.
The idea that joy among marginalised groups is resistance is well versed in Black and decolonial feminist thought. It struck me that what Newsome captures in Build or Destroy bears strong resemblance to the ‘decolonial joy’ that Negrón-Muntaner (2019) theorises with regards to the anti-colonial demonstrations in Puerto Rico of 2019. She describes them as ‘joyful… spaces of community renewal’, precisely because of the way that protestors engaged in the arts, using a range of art forms including performance, street theatre and street poetry in their activism. But, it was reggaeton music and its associated dance style of perreo that really stood out in the protests. Reggaeton is lively and upbeat ‘music born in the island’s housing projects and once openly persecuted by the state and rejected by the middle class’. Therefore, foregrounding reggaeton in protest was subversive and political, but it was also a fun and creative way for Puerto Rican protestors to reclaim their own identities, bodies and the space they occupy, despite hundreds of years of colonial policies designed to dehumanise and disenfranchise them.
Finding joy in human rights work
Simmons (2019) argues that human rights discourse in ‘popular, legal and academic’ spaces has become disproportionately focused on human rights abuses, to the point that it seems impossible to imagine that narratives on human rights could be any other way. Simmons draws on his own experiences as an activist and academic to argue that joy is part of engaging in human rights labour, even if happier moments are often ignored in the write up. His examples centre around the friendships that develop among activists: he advocates for more focus on the raucous laughter shared with other activists even in despairing contexts, or the pleasant feeling that can come after spending time with other activists working towards a common goal. Experiencing this joy feels somewhat taboo. But, as Simmons argues, achieving human rights is about creating the conditions for people to reach their full potential and live fulfilling, satisfying lives. These are positive goals, too often obscured in narratives which focus on the negatives, something which Simmons believes makes much human rights scholarship counter productive.
But can we as researchers really investigate and write responsibly about joy and human rights, especially researchers like me, a white woman based in a British university, predominantly researching politics and human rights in the geopolitical south? This question has come up repeatedly in various research environments I have been a part of, from my ethnographic research into painting murals of the victims of feminicide in Mexico, to participating in panel discussions about arts-based participatory research in migration, to exploratory conversations among the team as we embark on this project. In all of these situations, myself and other researchers have encountered plenty of examples of joy and laughter in contexts of endemic violence and hardship, whether it is our own joy as members of the same communities we write about, or the joy of research participants whose experiences we strive to relate honestly. But the worry is that if we write about participants finding joy in desolate circumstances, we risk providing policy makers with an excuse not to take action to remedy the sociopolitical situations, and downplaying the severity of the circumstances many people live in.
However, if we don’t write about joy, we risk othering our participants, reducing them to one-dimensional victims, and not honestly and holistically representing their voices and experiences. This is a disingenuous to research participants and the communities they are part of, and it risks perpetuating coloniality in knowledge production. It can also be harmful, to participants and researchers, by delegitimising or devaluing joy and contributing to negative, draining discourse and practice. None of this is conducive to fulfilling human rights.
For me, the risks inherent in ignoring the role of joy in resistance are pressing. We shouldn’t ignore the role that joy plays in politics, and in human rights. The arts are an excellent location to find this joy.
References:
Lorde, A. (1984 [2019]). Sister Outsider. Milton Keynes: Penguin.
Mullin, A. (2003). Feminist Art and the Political Imagination. Hypatia 18 (4), pp. 189-213.
Simmons, W. P. (2019). Joyful Human Rights. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.
*A style of dancing which originated in poor, queer migrant Black and Latinx communities in 1960s New York.
