The Politics of Pleasure

What if decolonizing our country and our minds is also the path to pleasure? True pleasure.

In the movie Inside Out, emotions are given names, faces, and personalities. Sadness, disgust, joy, fear, and anger live in the headquarters of 11-year-old Riley’s mind and vie for control of her thoughts and actions. 

It’s easier to be steady in the face of swirling emotions when we can name them, disentangle them, even befriend them. Especially the challenging ones.

I was thinking about this as Wednesday’s events unfolded like a mythical play, staged for us to see clearly, starkly even, what animates us as a country: There was joy celebrating in the streets after Georgia’s historic wins; fear and anger were climbing the scaffolding around the capital, disgust roamed the streets of DC and made the rounds on the evening news.

I’m taking this time to reflect on which parts of me are still climbing the metaphorical scaffolding, clenching onto my fear. I'm asking myself which of my beliefs are past their expiration date, and in which ways white supremacy lurks in my body and mind. I’m re-reading this list of the characteristics of white supremacy culture and cross-checking it with my work, my relationships, and my desires for the future. 

On the list: perfectionism, fear of conflict, power hoarding, individualism, the belief that making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, that doing wrong is being wrong, and that one needs to defend themselves against new ideas. 

Basically, this is a list of pleasure inhibitors, the conditions under which it is nearly impossible to experience the official Webster’s definition: a feeling of gratification, delight, or joy. 

Shining the high beams into the recesses of the unexamined psyche, the blindspots where white supremacy lurks, is not a pleasurable experience. It is downright uncomfortable. Over here at TPR, we are talking about whose pleasure is prioritized in our world, and why. And how a lot of the time, what we talk about as pleasurable can be inhibited by class, racial and/or gender lines. Take sleep, for example, which should be a fundamentally egalitarian way of getting more pleasure in our lives. Except for so many, it’s curtailed by stress, working multiple jobs, or housing scarcity. 

What if decolonizing our country and our minds is the path to a deeper pleasure? The feelings of ease and lightness, of immediate gratification and stimulation are beautiful but difficult to sustain when you’re the only one at the party allowed to dance. Like fire, pleasure wants to ignite pleasure. It wants to light not one, but all. 

adrienne marie brown, in her seminal book, Pleasure Activism, writes “I think a result of sourcing power in our longing and pleasure is abundant justice - that we can stop competing with each other, demanding scarce justice from our oppressors. That we can instead generate power from the overlapping space of desire and aliveness, tapping into an abundance that has enough attention, liberation, and justice for all of us to have plenty.”

On Wednesday, brown posted this poem titled what is unveiled? the founding wound. (poem/directive)

What new terrain of pleasure might we experience knowing that every human being is not just surviving, but thriving? Is it possible that a pleasure beyond our wildest imagination awaits us?

SJJ and Team TPR

To our white readers, we invite you to join us Friday, January 15th at 6:30 PM for a conversation around THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001. This guide illustrates how racism is embedded in our institutions, our work, and our personal relationships. It offers antidotes so we can map what is possible. This work is challenging but definitely more pleasurable when done in community. RSVP here.

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From the Institute of Pleasure Studies

Read: THE UNBEARABLE WHITENESS OF STORMING THE CAPITOL, a potent read from journalist and activist Jimmie Briggs. “What happened at the capital is history,” he told me in a conversation this week. “What went down in Georgia is the future.” In this Vanity Fair article, he writes, "As an American, I will go to bed disgusted. But as a Black man I feel joy, pride, and for the first time in many years, hope."

Study Hall: Author and educator Milagros Philips runs a powerful and inclusive weekly online workshop on healing from racism. Mondays at noon. She calls herself a race healer and seeks to engage the heart in walking the path of transformation.

Read: Pleasure Activism by adrienne marie brown, my source for when I want to remember what is at stake, to explore why we love what we love and how to increase the pleasure we feel when we are doing the good work. Or, in her words, “how to nourish the orgasmic yes in each of us.”

Dance and Grieve. I recommend anything Bernadette Pleasant is doing, from her Sunday emotional dance journeys to her monthly Grief Rituals. She grounds her practices in the body, welcomes everyone where they are, and invites us to experience the full range of emotions. And all the voices that are in our heads.

Read: Joy Ride, by Karen Good Marable on driving through Atlanta with her daughter, trying to make sense of life as a black mother in America in a pandemic and a racial awakening. “Even though the world is changing and the optics are shifting, I still ask my husband not to walk the dog too late; I bargain with ancestors known and unknown to protect my daughter and I get comfortable with the weight of a 9mm in my hand. And a couple of times a week, for the sake of all of our sanity, I tear myself away from social media, wrestle the iPad away from my kid, check my purse for wallet/keys/masks/sanitizer, jump in the car, and go.”

Til next week.

Thank you for reading.

Team TPR: Sue Jaye Johnson, India Kotis and Liv Hockenberry