Joyful Human Rights 9780812251012, 0812251016

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Joyful Human Rights

PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS Bert B. Lockwood, Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Joyful Human Rights

William Paul Simmons Foreword by Semere Kesete

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y LVA N I A P R E S S PHIL ADELPHIA

Copyright © 2019 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ­19104-​­4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on ­acid-​­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A Cataloging-​­­in-​­Publication record is available from the Library of Congress ISBN ­978-​­­0-​­­8122-​­­5101-​­2

For Mason and Delaney

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise. —​­William Blake

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Semere Kesete  ix Preface xi Chapter 1. The Thrill Is Gone  1 Chapter 2. A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  24 Chapter 3. Whither Joy?  59 Chapter 4. Joyful Activists  96 Chapter 5. Joyful Perpetrators  130 Chapter 6. Joyful Martyrs  170 Chapter 7. Human Rights Winners  195 Notes 239 References 249 Index 275 Acknowledgments 289

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FOREWORD

Semere Kesete

I left Eritrea, my country of origin, in 2002, where I had been locked in dehu­ manizing solitary confinement without legal charge for one year. I managed to convince one of my prison guards to plot an escape. After five days and nights of an exhausting and dangerous journey on foot, the prison guard and I crossed the Eritrean border to Ethiopia. I then made it to Sweden as a refu­ gee, and received permanent residence status while struggling to overcome the trauma I had endured. It was difficult to adjust to a new country, new society, radically different weather, and a new language. It was difficult to find any job and have a normal life. It was in this particular time that I got in touch with Professor Simmons, who was involved in creating a public art project to protest against the Eritrean regime. A few years later I traveled to Arizona, and I was honored to be one of the first graduates of the master’s program of Social Justice and Human Rights that Simmons founded at Arizona State Uni­ versity. In the MA program, I greatly expanded my passion for and knowledge of human rights, especially from a global perspective. Ever since, I have been extensively engaged in promoting human rights and social justice. If anyone is asked to define human rights, the answer would most proba­ bly include words such as victim, survivor, oppression, and tyranny. To many of us the word “joyful” sounds odd in the realm of human rights. That is why I say that Professor William Paul Simmons has come out with a revolutionary book on human rights. Looking back, I won both physically and psychologically over the regime that locked me up. Now, I embrace myself not as a victim or survivor but as a winner. To consider myself as a victim or a survivor feels as if I am still held captive by my oppressor’s long arm. Human rights is not merely about victims or survivors, it is also about winners. I presume that the problem stems from

x Foreword

the fact that most of the people who have faced human rights violations are usually not well educated or able to express their experiences and define for themselves the way they feel. Therefore, it is left to the people who are edu­ cated or who have the expertise to write or tell their story. When people do not have the opportunity to define themselves, others define them and give them identity, which is usually as a “victim” or “survivor.” To my understanding, the realm of human rights has no universally agreed philosophical or ideological sources. However, it has its sources of inspiration, and I believe these sources are the human rights winners. In the history of shaking and shaping our world, there are individuals who stand out, whose actions and beliefs transcend their respective continents and affect the entire globe. They are able to shape the world as it should be and not as the powerful oppressors want it to be. These are the people who stood against the odds, against the mainstream, who stood up to change the status quo. They stood against the oppressive regimes, survived, and defied the state of living in vic­ timhood: these are the inspiration for human rights. We usually call these influential men and women great leaders. However, this does not give a full description of their background. First they ought to be accepted as winners. The great women and men in the history of human­ kind, such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Frederick Doug­ lass, were ­one-​­time victims or survivors of human rights violations. Though they suffered loathsome and inhumane treatment, they triumphed in the end. They not only succeeded but shaped our destiny because they are bigger than the circumstances that surrounded them. They transcended their circum­ stances. They are more than victims or survivors, they are human rights winners. Professor Simmons is not only an expert in human rights and social jus­ tice but also is a great mentor, with deep empathy for human rights victims, survivors, and winners. This new book, Joyful Human Rights, offers a com­ pletely new approach to the human rights discourse as well as to the people who experienced different types of human rights violations. Furthermore, it is a book that is highly connected to the lives of real people. After fourteen years of enjoying freedom, I am blessed with numerous important gifts. To mention only two: I am blessed with my first baby, a beau­ tiful baby girl. The second is the opportunity to write this foreword for this groundbreaking human rights book by my former professor, mentor, and great friend in the struggle for global social justice and human rights.

PREFACE

This is a book about joy. Thus, I must first acknowledge my positionality, and not just as a privileged White, male, heterosexual, ­cis-​­gendered academic from the United States. For a study of joy I must also confess that I have strong affinities with the famous ­tail-​­less one, the joyless Eeyore from the Winnie the Pooh tales. “Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt,” said he. “Why, what’s the matter?” “Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.” “Can’t all what?” said Pooh, rubbing his nose. “Gaiety. ­Song-​­­and-​­dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.” Yes, I am one who frequently dwells in “Eeyore’s Gloomy Place: Rather Boggy and Sad,” or at least I have for most of my adult life. I tend to wear my personal tragedies on my sleeve and focus my energies on the tragic and the macabre, like many human rights folks. I am quite a surprising choice to write a book on joy, as my friends and family have often reminded me. While I might be beyond redemption, I hope this work will encourage others, espe­ cially my students, to avoid the “Gloomy Place” and explore a new joyful land­ scape of human rights. From this place of great beauty, they will find enormous energy to counter those “boggy and sad” forces that sap our positive energy, ­loving-​­kindness, and sympathetic joy. My positionality also thankfully does not include immediate incidents of extreme violence and victimhood. I live in a relatively stable country, and as musician Pete Townshend wrote years ago, “I’ve known no war.” Like many academics, I write of human rights from something of a detached position.

xii Preface

Looking at human rights through the fresh lens of joy has proven to be fascinating and illuminating. I had traversed the human rights landscape as a scholar, teacher, consultant, and activist for a quarter century and now I see my fellow workers, students, and human rights education in a new light. See­ ing how discussions of joy resonate with survivors, scholars, and practitioners, I now hope this work has such an effect on its readers. More than that, I hope it opens up new vistas in human rights; that it causes a disruption in current human rights thinking and practice and leads us to explore the foundations of human rights afresh. Such a disruption in conventional thinking is not without controversy. Many colleagues have viscerally opposed my consider­ ations of joyful perpetrators, joyful martyrs, and human rights winners. Such explorations radically challenge sacred cows in established fields as do several other parts of the book. This was not necessarily always a joyful book to write. Human rights is sobering. Wading through works on the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanjing, tor­ ture, sexual violence, and suicide bombers is not particularly joyful. Sitting through Joshua Oppenheimer’s shocking documentaries about the mass kill­ ings in Indonesia during the ­mid-​­1960s does not elicit joy, instead they over­ whelm in a horrifying manner. Writing, teaching, and being active in human rights requires engaging in tragedy; and working as an activist, I have some­ times felt like a fraud while writing this book. How can I write about joy and human rights when friends are facing prison time for their activism, when others are facing threats from despotic governments, when the Syrian human­ itarian crisis grinds into another year, when millions of ­sub-​­Saharan Africans are on the move and extremely vulnerable, when thousands of migrant chil­ dren from Central America are warehoused in my home state of Arizona, when large swaths of neighboring Mexico are aflame in an endless “war on drugs,” when racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, and xenophobia are rampant in the United States, when transgender women of color are killed in large numbers? During the times of s­ elf-​­doubt, I have found sustenance in human rights activists and scholars who assured me this was an important project. So many practitioners and survivors shared their own tales of the importance of joy in their human rights journey. Most of the new guard of human rights scholars shared my enthusiasm for the project. The old guard, alas, often did not know what to make of what one paternalistically, and with the requisite placing of his hand on my shoulder, called “such a unique project.” The excitement for the project sustained me, and pushed me into new frontiers as did the old

Preface xiii

guard’s reticence to even countenance the idea. They spurred me to show that it was a topic worthy of study. One of the easiest critiques to make of a book on joy is that it is not very joyful to read (e.g. Minzesheimer 2007). I have tried to balance theoretical rigor and firsthand accounts, as well as walk the fine line between lively prose that provokes and glibness that trivializes. My humble wish for this book and for human rights workers and victims in general, parallels that of the Hopi clowns: “When the clowns leave the kiva on their way to the plaza the last request by each is a prayer something to the effect, ‘If it be so, may I gain at least one smile’ ” (Sekaquaptewa 1980, 211).

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CHAPTER 1

The Thrill Is Gone

In popular, legal, and academic discourses, a subtle but significant shift has occurred: the term “human rights” is now almost always discussed in relation to its opposite, “human rights abuses.” Syllabi, textbooks, and academic arti­ cles on human rights focus largely on abuses, victimization, and trauma, with nary a mention of joy or other positive emotions. This will be obvious to most human rights scholars and practitioners once it is pointed out, but the depth of the elision is staggering. This book calls for a larger place for joy in human rights work. There is a time and place in human rights work for having a good time, for actually being joyful. Human rights work needs joy, and yet joy is too often pushed to the side. We are taking ourselves too seriously. Several scholars have also recently noted that the human rights narrative has ended, that we need something beyond human rights (e.g., Hopgood 2013; Posner 2014). Of course, some are seeking the next big thing and will oppose any discourse that gains hold in academic, legal, political, or popular imaginations. However, there is a strong sense of unease with the uncritical acceptance of human rights. It has become such an amorphous and unques­ tioned concept that oppressive regimes now regularly wield human rights discourses against their foes. This book argues that the human rights dis­ course, so ripe for current critique, has been only partly developed. Before we dismiss human rights or deconstruct it out of existence, we should see it fully developed. While its critics usually point to the failure of transnational human rights law and its institutions to effect meaningful change at the ­nation-​­state level (Posner 2014), they are missing the point that human rights treaties and their institutions, but most importantly the spirit of human rights, can have a profound impact on the lived experiences of marginalized populations (e.g.,

2  Chapter 1

Engelhart and Miller 2014; Chua 2015). It is in this lived experience of human rights stakeholders that we are also most likely to find joy and new possibili­ ties for human rights. Focusing on joy drastically modifies the way we view major human rights actors: victims, perpetrators, and activists. Further, tracing the elision of joy in human rights discourse recasts the philosophical and historical origins of human rights and provides a new lens for articulating a more affirmative and robust notion of human rights. This chapter begins with strong evidence, including personal narratives and quantitative data showing just how much joy has been ignored in human rights work and in the human rights literature. The second part briefly ad­ dresses the “so what” question: what has been the cost of this o ­ ne-​­sided un­ derstanding of human rights, and why does it matter to the study, advocacy, politics, and practice of global human rights? The chapter ends with an over­ view of the remainder of the book and a call for a new paradigm for human rights.

Finding and Missing Joy What a day! My colleague and I had driven down from Phoenix to Tucson to join members of the Samaritans/Los Samaritanos to conduct a patrol in southern Arizona to assist migrants who might be disoriented, thirsty, or worse in the Sonoran desert. That year would see a record, with over 200 migrants, mostly from Mexico, dying in Arizona’s desert attempting to come to the United States for a better life. With increased border enforcement begun under the Clinton administration in the 1990s and intensified under the Bush administration after 9/11, migrants were crossing farther and farther from the traditional crossing points near urban areas, into harsh desert and mountainous terrain where temperatures could reach over 100 degrees Fahr­ enheit during the day in the summer and bitterly cold at night in the winter (see Simmons and Mueller 2014). In a striking departure from the promise of Emma Lazarus’s famous poem on the Statue of Liberty, Arizona had also just passed a number of ­anti-​­immigrant measures that made the lives of undocu­ mented migrants even more difficult and further stoked the ugly ­anti-​ i­ mmigrant fervor in the state. We were paired up with a father and his ­college-​­age daughter who were veterans of many such patrols. Since we were experienced with hiking in the

The Thrill Is Gone  3

desert, our task was to drive to remote but ­well-​­known migrant trails and hike up washes and canyons looking for any migrants who might have become separated from their group during the previous night or nights and offer water or food or even rudimentary medical treatment. The four of us had much in common and spent the day in the sublimely gorgeous desert chatting about politics, bicycling, and our favorite hiking areas. We did not meet any mi­ grants that day. We ran into a number of border patrol officers, left water near ­well-​­traveled migrant trails, picked up some backpacks and other debris left behind by migrants, and enjoyed a wonderful lunch at a local diner. The four of us, all seasoned desert hikers, even became disoriented in the desert for a short time, reminding us how easy it must be for migrants to become lost in the unforgiving terrain, with reports of many of them walking in circles for days on end. We reported back to the Samaritans/Los Samaritanos headquarters at the Southside Presbyterian Church, famous as ground zero for the Sanctuary Movement in the 1970s and 1980s. As we unpacked and stored our remaining supplies, I exclaimed, “That was a lot of fun,” but was quickly shushed by my fellow activists. Apparently, this was the wrong thing to say. And then, as we said our goodbyes a little while later in the parking lot, I was again overcome by the camaraderie of new friends, the beautiful hike in the desert, and the sense of having tried to help the most vulnerable, and again blurted out, “That was a lot of fun!” Again, I was shushed. I had disrupted the somber atmo­ sphere of the human rights workers. Flash forward a year or so to a landmark conference at New Mexico State University to raise awareness and develop an action plan for dealing with the murders of young women, the infamous feminicides, in nearby Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The feminicides were beginning to draw national and international attention, with approximately 450 young women killed since 1993, many of whom had been the victims of extremely gruesome sexual homicides. The event brought together leading experts working on this issue from the US and Mexico, as well as numerous family members of the victims from Juárez. The weekend was punctuated by a profound public art exhibit created by Irene Simmons with 450 handmade memorial dresses on pink crosses (see Fregoso and Bejarano 2010). It was an intense experience. In addition to the heaviness of the topic and seriousness of the participants, a leading journalist who had done so much to draw attention to the tragedy, and a friend to many of us, had recently received a number of death threats, so she only attended the private, preconference meetings and then left before the public sessions. And most

4  Chapter 1

tragically, another young woman was killed in Juárez that weekend, her body dumped near the bridge leading to the US, which was perceived as a clear signal to the conference organizers and participants. Emotions reached a high point when family members who had been leading the movement were brought on stage and presented with special dresses in memory of their daughters. Not a dry eye could be found in the lecture hall of 400 people. After the last panel, the speakers and family members were invited to the dean’s house for an informal dinner and g­ et-​­together. I spent most of the evening in the backyard with four of the family members and the ­award-​ w ­ inning filmmaker Lourdes Portillo. The family members included three mothers and one sister of the victims, who were perhaps the best known rep­ resentatives among the family members. In the preceding few years, they had traveled to dozens of venues in the US, Mexico, and beyond to discuss their experiences and their fledgling grassroots activist movement. They had re­ peatedly been brought on stage to share their tragic experiences and the crowds were shocked and horrified by their stories. But the mood in the back­ yard that night was anything but somber. After some small talk, we ended up telling stories and jokes, with Lourdes Portillo translating when my basic Spanish was not up to the task. The jokes became funnier and our laughter even louder and we soon were even drowning out the raucous music coming from inside the house. Many of the jokes were at my expense as the only male and only Anglo in the group. It was a wonderful time, a ­much-​­needed cathar­ sis from the intense weekend activities, but also just a genuinely good time. As I looked back on these two experiences, I reflected on the proper coun­ tenance of human rights victims and workers. There must be a place for being serious and somber; after all, we are engaged in intense and occasionally dan­ gerous work. I appreciate that our experiences on patrol in the desert that day were thankfully uneventful. Others that day and many days of the summers since have come across remains of migrants, or badly suffering migrants needing emergency medical assistance. Two c­ollege-​­age aid workers that summer were even arrested for transporting a severely dehydrated migrant to a Tucson hospital on the Kafkaesque charge of aiding and abetting illegal mi­ gration. With the chronic abuses of border patrol and detention facilities, and the active role played by armed militia members like the Minutemen, it was an intense time to be at the border. But I did have a good time that day. And, it was a wonderful sense of camaraderie between those working for a common cause against long odds. I then reflected on the migrants that we were seeking to help. Would they

The Thrill Is Gone  5

wish us to be solemn as we sought to aid them? Were their harsh lives in Mex­ ico and Central America, as well as their trying experiences on the journey and in the United States, filled only with sobriety or were they seeking and experiencing joy and other positive emotions? I concluded there might just be a place, perhaps a measured place, for joy on the migrant patrols and in human rights work in general. This conclusion was reinforced by my experi­ ence with the women from Ciudad Juárez. They had often traveled to the US and elsewhere and were seen as victims, tragic victims. They had played their roles well, as they were very successfully drawing attention to their cause. But I had the e­ ye-​­opening opportunity to see the women as joyful. Despite all they had gone through, they were able to laugh and tell jokes, and to relax, to the point that we were worried the neighbors might call the police because of all the noise. Should I have been so surprised? After all, they had to go on with their lives. Yes, they had suffered something horrible, and they were fighting a long and difficult battle in an increasingly dangerous city. But they also were raising their remaining children, running small businesses, attending wed­ dings and funerals, and faithfully attending religious services. They had full familial and social responsibilities to attend to. They were full human beings. To see them merely as victims, as so many had, would be to reduce them to a ­small—​­albeit ­important—​­part of their lives. Indeed, to see them as just vic­ tims would be colluding with the perpetrators of the feminicides, for whom women’s lives could be reduced to almost nothing (see Wright 2011). To see them as just victims would be to reduce their agency. Victims qua victims need help, they need succor. They need someone to step in and comfort them in a colonial or paternalistic fashion. We rarely think of a victim as someone we can learn from, as someone who can guide us, who could lead a move­ ment. We rarely think of victims as people with whom we can share joy. That night made crystal clear that I had much to learn from these women.

Joyless Human Rights in the Academy Thousands of volumes have been published on human rights and thousands more on joy, but very little has been written on their intersection. Joy is almost never mentioned in human rights textbooks, in human rights syllabi, or in discussions with human rights workers. Other positive emotions such as hap­ piness, hope, and love are rarely mentioned either. Partly, this is due to the elision of emotions from much of the field, though human rights scholars and

6  Chapter 1

workers seem very comfortable with, and often welcome, the negative emo­ tions of hate, vengeance, outrage, shame, and disgust. And indignation is ubiquitous and seems to drive much human rights work. Teaching Human Rights

As the chief architect of Arizona State University’s master’s degree program in Social Justice and Human Rights, launched in 2008, I had the good fortune to teach and mentor dozens of human rights workers in a rigorous academic setting. A common thread among these diverse students was trauma, be it through their jobs in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) helping vic­ tims, their own harrowing experiences, their internships, their study abroad to human rights hotspots like Rwanda, Uganda, and Mexico, and through our course readings. I am not stereotyping too much to say that the typical human rights course in our program and throughout the wider academy follows a distinctive for­ mula. We begin with the shocking reality of some tragedy that the students are probably only vaguely aware of, Rwanda 1994, the Holocaust, vicious wars in the 1990s over “blood diamonds,” Apartheid, human trafficking, the treatment of women and children around the globe, the current chaos in Syria, or various ethnic conflicts. And the students are moved. They are shaken. They are human after all, and as students enrolled in a human rights class they are likely prone to empathy. The students are now primed to pay close attention to the instruc­ tor’s ensuing brilliant analysis or deconstruction that will convince them that these tragedies are multicausal, with historical, economic, cultural, ideological, and geopolitical roots. The students are now better able to critically analyze other tragedies through this heightened critical and structural lens. But the multicausal explanation also brings the realization that addressing the problem is complex and almost intractable, and even finding culpability for the trage­ dies is a very messy enterprise, much messier than the students had wished for at first. They are moved to action and crave a c­ lear-​­cut villain to blame, but find that choosing the correct action is a minefield, to say the least. Inspiring per­ sonal narratives of resilient victims or intrepid activists are seen as the excep­ tion, and appear almost miraculous (e.g., Ilibagiza 2007). If the instructor introduces a critical, postcolonial lens, the students should question the role of their own society in creating and exacerbating these tragedies and even inter­ rogate their personal role in fueling such tragedies as well as their own (often paternal, imperial, neocolonial) motives for wanting to help. The semester abruptly ends.

The Thrill Is Gone  7

The students have been exposed to a series of tragedies of which they were previously unaware, and which are almost beyond human capacity to fathom. They most likely have experienced secondary or vicarious trauma, but they have been given precious few resources for addressing it. Such courses almost always result in strong course evaluations for the instructor. It is somewhat easy to teach about Rwanda 1994 or other genocides as the students are vis­ cerally moved and hooked by the shock factor of the tragedy and the aston­ ishing personal accounts. But is this all that human rights should be about? Is ours a field only based on a litany of shocking tragedies in a complex, seem­ ingly evil world? Is it a field that must incessantly pile on secondary trauma to primary trauma with few positive emotions to provide balance? The Joy of Google

Since I relish data and it is a fun and easy parlor game to do ­meta-​­analyses of one’s own discipline, I now turn to some rudimentary statistical evidence to demonstrate the elision of joy from human rights discourse. First, we begin with the great repository of all knowledge new and old, everyone’s friend and mentor, Google. For these queries, conducted when I began this project in 2012, I placed “human rights” in quotation marks in order to exclude hits for “human” that do not involve rights, and to exclude “rights” for things other than humans, including nonhuman/animal rights. Not surprisingly, for “human rights” we literally find almost a googol of hits and the same for “joy” by itself. So, we would expect that putting them to­ gether in various combinations, again with quotation marks, would yield oo­ dles of entries. But “joy of human rights” returned only ten hits in the entire ­Google-​­verse and “joyful human rights” only yielded five, three of which no longer contain that phrase. While these results are great news for the author of this book, they do not bode well for the field of human rights. To put this into better context, to provide for a nonscientific control group, let us compare Google hits for some rather obviously joyful things. The numbers for our first control group are artificially inflated by ­best-​ s­ elling books, television shows, the Hollywood film Joyful Noise, and the Jap­ anese ­sado-​­erotic film Shogun’s Joy of Torture. We might expect these numbers to balance out a bit once this book is published and if film rights are negoti­ ated. But ­best-​­selling books and films do not explain the data where the joy of death and the joy of insanity (as well as the joy of trees, flatulence, and avoca­ dos) appear hundreds of times more often than the joy of human rights. What if we reverse the analysis? What words are associated with human rights? The

8  Chapter 1

last two columns in Table 1 provide more evidence that the field of human rights is dominated by genocide, trauma, torture, and pain. More Rummaging for Joy in Human Rights

If we move to the catalog of a large university library (in this case, Arizona State University where I previously taught), the traditional repository of knowledge, we find, of course, no books called joyful human rights or joy of human rights, again which is good for the present author. But we find 127 books that start with the phrase “Joy of _____.” These include a motley Table 1. Google Searches for Joy and Human Rights Obviously Joyful Things Search Phrase

“Hits”

Unexpected Uses of Joy

Uses of Human Rights

Search Phrase

“Hits”

Search Phrase

“Hits”

Joy of Human Rights

101

Joy of Death

124,000

Joy and Human Rights

Joyful Human Rights

52

Joy of Torture

99,500

Genocide and Human Rights

8,500,000

Joy of Sex3

2,380,000

Joy of Insanity

16,200

Trauma and Human Rights

5,530,000

Joy of Cooking

1,180,000

Joy of Trees

13,000

Torture and Human Rights

34,200,000

240,000

Joy of Flatulence

9,200

Pain and Human Rights

36,400,000

Joy of Fishing

Joyful Noise Joyful Belly Rub

22,100,000 Joy of Avocados 268

Joyful Diarrhea

3

113 55

One hit is clearly a mistranslation from the Spanish. Three links actually do not contain that phrase. 3 As Monica Casper pointed out, The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort and The Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein and Edmund White with their embrace of sex-positivity and undoing of stigma served important human rights functions. 1 2

The Thrill Is Gone  9

collection of works including Joy of Creating Virtual Mathematical Sculptures, Joy of Comparing Transformations in Modern Hebrew Poetry, Joy of Sets: Fundamentals of Contemporary Set Theory, Joy of the Desolate, and my favorite, Joy of the Worm.1 The ASU library has 136 works that start with Joyful, including Joyful Reading of Joseph Andrews: Critics’ Treatment of Parson Adams and Adams’s Message of Virtue, The Joyful Delaneys: A Novel, Joyful Cuckoldom, or the love of gentlemen, and gentlewomen [microform]: a collection of new songs, with ye musick. for ye lute, violin, flute, or harpsichord. These numbers are partially inflated by access to ­e-​­books from an Early English collection, and include books with Olde English spellings, especially messages to parliament that begin Joyfull Message or Joyfull Newes. Similar results are found by searching academic journal databases such as JSTOR and Academic Search Complete, with one caveat. I was struck by the large number of scholars with the first name “Joy” who have written about human rights and related topics. Indeed, there were more hits for the name “Joy” and human rights than for the subject of joy and human rights. One might think that scholars named Joy who study human rights would perhaps write about the subject of joy and human rights, but alas they too have faith­ fully avoided the topic. Clearly, the repositories of general knowledge contain precious few con­ nections between joy and human rights. So, now we move to our most rigor­ ous empirical test. I examined what instructors teach about human rights by conducting a systematic content analysis of ­sixty-​­three ­English-​­language course syllabi used at universities and colleges within the past five years (data set available from the author for replication purposes). The syllabi came from a wide variety of fields including law, public health, philosophy, history, Latino/Latina studies, business, English, and religion. I tallied how many times the following words and their variations appeared in each syllabus: joy, happiness, love, emotion, torture, genocide, victim, abuse, trauma, violence, tragedy, violation, and evil. In general, “emotion” words appeared the least. The word joy or its varia­ tions appeared in two syllabi: one was a discussion of enjoyment of social and economic rights and the other was a reference to “the right of everyone to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” The word happiness and its cognates appeared twice in the required readings of two syllabi, Philip Alston’s “Labour Rights as Human Rights: The Not So Happy State of the Art,” and Adina Hoffman and Taha Muhammad Ali’s “My Happi­ ness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century.”

10  Chapter 1

Table 2. Content Analysis of Human Rights Syllabi Term Happiness Emotion Joy Evil Trauma Love Tragedy Victim Abuse Violence Violation Torture Genocide

Syllabi (of 63) Using the Term 2 2 2 4 4 8 9 18 19 29 35 30 31

Total Number of Mentions 2 2 5 9 15 16 16 36 52 84 144 150 159

The first is not so much a discussion of happiness while the second is an im­ portant account of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali’s life as it intersects with the extended ­Israeli-​­Palestinian conflict. The word “love” and its cog­ nates do appear in eight different ­syllabi—​­including some interesting films such as Zulu Love Letter, Cry the Beloved Country, and Beloved; and interest­ ing readings such as Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Love and Gold,” and Mo Tzu’s “Universal Love,” but the term love did not seem to be a subject of study by itself. On the other hand, the word violation appeared in 35 of the 63 syllabi, genocide appeared in 31 syllabi, and torture appeared in 30 syllabi. It is safe to conclude that the academic teaching of human rights centers on massive violations and abuses, and is most likely to portray individuals as victims rather than full individuals with emotions, especially positive emo­ tions such as joy, happiness, and love.

The ­So-​­What Question The neglect of joy in human rights work is especially glaring as I believe joy is fundamental to human rights and by neglecting its role, we see only a partial view of the field, much to our intellectual and psychic detriment. Consider that many of the iconic moments of human rights are marked with great joy. Recall the seemingly endless lines to vote in South Africa in April 1994. After

The Thrill Is Gone  11

decades of oppression, the queues were filled with outbursts of spontaneous joy in the form of music, dance, and general shock and amazement. Those voting, as well as activists and commentators from around the globe, were touched in a profound way, as they thought back to the long struggle, the countless sacrifices, the courage of those who had stood up to their oppres­ sors, and the hope of a new day. Such a moment had a profound effect on thousands. People around the world were moved and felt joy (e.g., Minter, Hovey, and Cobb 2007). April 1994 is discussed in scores of human rights courses, but almost always for the onset of the Rwandan genocide and not for the joyful voting in South Africa. It is difficult to compare the two events, but to think of one without the other is to provide only a partial story, to do a disservice to ­hard-​­won human rights victories and their many meanings. Such victories partially redeem, in the etymological sense to buy back, the sacrifices so many had to endure. Consider also that the atrocities of the Cold War are explored or often alluded to in human rights courses, but rarely do we discuss the sheer joy occasioned by the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, or the revolutionary spirit in Wenceslas Square in Prague in 1989, or even the joyful birth of the Solidarity Movement in Gdansk in the early 1980s (Ash 1990). Likewise, we discuss the evils of colonization but do not ask our students to imagine the pride and joy of witnessing President Nkrumah’s independence speech in Accra in 1959. Smaller, or at least more personal, victories are also glossed over, as we focus on abuses and suffering. In the ­award-​­winning documentary God Grew Tired of Us, one of the Lost Boys from southern Sudan is reunited, almost miraculously, with his mother in the Pittsburgh airport and she ululates un­ controllably with joy. Clearly, this joyful reunion is every bit as much a part of the human rights story as is the harrowing journey for survival her son en­ dured years before and the pain of their long separation. Once we look for them, such joyful human rights reunions can be found far and wide. If joy is mentioned in the human rights context, it is often by writers trav­ eling to human rights hotspots who are shocked to find joy among atrocities and poverty. Commentators have been shocked to find joy in Mogadishu (Omar 2012), in Afghanistan (Graham 2009), and in Baghdad (Flintoff 2009). Also, recall the uproar when Roberto Benigni dared to make Life Is Beautiful, a film that showed humor in the Nazi concentration camps (further analyzed in Chapter 3). Many were especially chagrined by his sacrilege in being over­ joyed to win an Academy Award for his work. Such an outburst shattered the

12  Chapter 1

predictably maudlin tone of the Hollywood elite when confronting such tragedies. Why does it matter that joy has been almost completely elided from human rights discourse? What is gained by carving out a more significant role for joy in human rights work? Here, I sketch a few answers that will be fleshed out throughout this volume. First, bringing in or visibilizing joy corrects a historical imbalance and recognizes the important role that human rights victories and human rights pioneers have played in advancing human rights. For example, the 1990s are often remembered, especially in human rights classes, as a decade of grave human rights abuses, but it is also a decade of significant human rights victo­ ries gained by the tireless efforts of countless brave human rights workers. By the end of the decade, millions more people than ever before were enjoying a plethora of human rights. Eliding joy and celebration does a disservice to those who played such a pivotal role in the fight for human rights. The history of human rights need not be merely a timeline of abuses or a justice/account­ ability cascade; it can also be a history of celebrations. Human rights workers need not always be grave; they can find time to celebrate and to be joyous. We need human rights to fight outlaws, but we also need joy and the passions to sustain ourselves in the fight for human rights. Human rights practitioners and students frequently burn out from an on­ slaught of trauma and secondary trauma, which can exact a painful toll phys­ ically, mentally, and spiritually. Human rights does not need so many Eeyores. When human rights workers get together, they can rattle off an amazing litany of human rights t­ragedies—​­and they often do, but they also can rattle off a litany of their successes. Human rights workers can and do find time to cele­ brate and to be joyous, to find balance in their work, and to recuperate from trauma. The critical role of joy in the face of serious work is evident in the following famous, and often misquoted, passage from Emma Goldman’s biography: At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

The Thrill Is Gone  13

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to ­self-​­expression, everybody’s right to beau­ tiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole ­world—​­prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. (Goldman 1931, 56; emphasis added) Audre Lorde’s foundational essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” which plays a pivotal theoretical role in this book, had its origins in a similar moment of resistance to chastisement about dancing. Lorde tells the story of needing to present to a women’s group on a Sunday, but that she spent Satur­ day night partying. “I had danced my lungs loose” and so was not prepared. The ­self-​­important group was incredulous: “But how could you have chosen dancing rather than doing your presentation?” (Lorde 2004, 160–161). Additionally, an emphasis on joy will lead to a more robust understanding of rights and their functions. As developed by most liberal theorists, human rights establish ground rules for a society where everyone, or at least everyone who is considered rational, is free to pursue their own conceptions of the good life (without harming others, of course). This is a political theory striving to create a stable, minimally good state. To expand our conception of the liberal state to include positive emotions such as joy is to think of human rights that will not merely serve as trumps over other foundational concepts or the abuses of states. This is not just a legalistic version of rights to be adjudicated against the state by neutral actors, but a positive force that transgresses norms and potentially resists c­ o-​­optation into the larger rational order. Joyful human rights expands the mind beyond reason and has an important role in breaking out of the symbolic realm and the structural violences that fuel human rights abuses. Such an approach is also much more in tune to the endlessly creative ways that rights are joyfully claimed around the globe (see Chapter 4). Further, being conscious of joy dramatically changes our perceptions of human rights victims and mitigates the propensity to express paternalistic/ colonial attitudes ­toward them. Human rights victims experience joy, indeed

14  Chapter 1

it is often what sustains them and in many cases what best facilitates their recovery from trauma. Instead of reducing them to victim status, human rights workers should help these individuals to reclaim their full humanity, which includes positive emotions. The study and practice of human rights is overburdened with tragedy, as if to celebrate human rights, to find joy in suf­ fering, is to trivialize the victims, to do a disservice to the cause. This book argues the opposite. To excise joy from human rights work is to trivialize the victims, the “cause,” and those who work for the cause. At the same time, emphasizing joy recasts our perceptions of human rights perpetrators. Though tempting, we cannot eschew the role of sinister joy. Since joy plays a major role in the perpetration of human rights abuses, it has significant consequences for societal reconciliation afterward. Many per­ petrators enjoyed their work, be it torture, genocide, or depriving individuals of their fundamental liberties. Until this is accepted, our understandings of transitional justice, reconciliation, and recovery will be incomplete. By eliding joy, we academics and activists risk deceiving ourselves. The gloom and sadness that pervade human rights work is a type of good con­ science. If we are always serious, if we focus on the tragic and the grave, then our work must be “important.” If we have transmitted a serious affect to others through our teaching and publicizing of abuses, then we must have done enough. But, have we ­really created conditions for the enjoyment of human rights? Instead of an imperative to mourn (See Casper and Wertheimer 2016), what would it look like to have an imperative or right to be joyful? What does it mean to take seriously Emma Goldman’s words: “I want freedom, the right to ­self-​­expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things” (Goldman 1931, 56). Finally, my study of joy complements and extends several recent works of human rights scholarship that have called into question hegemonic under­ standings of justice founded in atrocity, abuse, and forgiveness. Other recent works have argued that such a focus wrongly limits the appropriate response to human rights abuses and reduces the types of rights claims that can be made. For instance, social theorist Robert Meister (2011) also examines the cost of placing Auschwitz and other cruelties as the center point of human rights. Focusing on discrete times and places of violations reduces the future world of realized human rights to adequately dealing with past human rights abuses. In the currently dominant model, once those who fill the roles of perpetrators, victims, and witnesses, are brought together with testimonies given, griev­

The Thrill Is Gone  15

ances aired, and forgiveness granted, a society can move forward. However, such formulations gloss over ongoing violences, including the structural vio­ lences and invisible ideologies that have fueled the abuses. Privileging transi­ tional justice and atrocities then weakens the call for more radical r­ ights-​­based revolutions and movements. Meister writes, “­Justice-​­­as-​­reconciliation is, in important ways, reconciliation to continuing inequality” (29). The transitional justice trope fails to account for the possibilities that victims can envision a new world that radically breaks with the past, and it fails to account for the transcendent lived experiences of the victims and even the perpetrators. Other recent critiques of the dominant transitional justice framework have drawn upon Holocaust survivor Jean Améry’s writings to extol the virtues of resentment, specifically against the fetishization of forgiveness, or what Améry sharply calls “hollow, thoughtless, utterly false conciliatoriness” (Améry 1980, ix; Brudholm and Rosoux 2009). Brudholm (2008), for instance, questions the model survivor as granting unconditional forgiveness out of a desire to move forward, as portrayed in many accounts of the South African Truth and Rec­ onciliation Commission. By focusing on forgiveness, the commission and its commentators, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have silenced the very real resentment, the refusal to forgive, felt by many survivors. A South African woman said, “What ­really makes me angry about the TRC and Tutu is that they are putting pressure on me to forgive. . . . ​I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive. I carry this ball of anger within me and I don’t know where to begin dealing with it. The oppression was bad, but what is much worse, what makes me even angrier is that they are trying to dictate my forgiveness” (quoted in Brudholm 2008, 37). Victims need not forgive their oppressors, and this failure to forgive does not make them lesser individuals. Indeed, holding on to resent­ ment and withholding forgiveness invokes a critical moral claim: some actions do not deserve forgiveness because they have damaged human dignity with an unforgivable wrong (MacLachlan 2010). Joyful Human Rights also holds that human rights survivors need not be broken individuals who must summon up the power to forgive through some ­near-​­miraculous grace. While some, like Améry, wallow in resentment,2 oth­ ers have found strength, renewal, and even joy in their anger. Indeed, it is by holding onto anger that they are able to move forward. Just as Brudholm and others argue that the narrative of forgiveness in transitional justice silences many victim’s voices and feelings, the Holocaust historian Lawrence Langer cautions that the emphasis on triumphal narra­ ­ ell-​­read Holocaust memoirs too often conjure up a tives also silences. W

16  Chapter 1

“rhetoric of meaning” when the experience itself cannot be expressed or made comprehensible. How can an experience be understood when one survivor described Auschwitz as “it . . . ​never was life to me. It was destruction!” (Langer 2006a, 298). Words fail. Or, at least, ordinary words fail.3 More than that, Holocaust memoirs are crafted in such a way that they provide some closure, they make meaning out of an experience that lacked meaning for so many. Langer instructively singles out historian Martin Gilbert’s ­one-​­volume ac­ count of the Holocaust that relies heavily on victim testimonies replete with what Langer labels “unheroic memory”: Nazi brutality, the choiceless choices required to prolong life, and the inability of victims to find meaning in their experiences. Despite all testimonial evidence to the contrary, Gilbert ends his tome with an uplifting paragraph that extols moral victories, dying with dig­ nity, and “the quiet passive heroism of the common Jew” (Langer 1991, 163). His conclusions do not follow from the multitude of premises voiced through­ out the volume. By neatly tying up the disparate testimonies into a coherent package, Gilbert blunts the force of the brutality and the suffering and does an injustice to the very testimonies he presented. Similarly, the experience of the Holocaust cannot be summed up by re­ sorting to ­well-​­trod moral bromides. As Langer movingly recounts, the moral choices of the inmates, such as those found in the diaries of the ­sonderkommandos—​­those who dragged the corpses from the gassing cham­ bers to the ­crematoria—​­unearthed years later, do not conform to any external moral logic. As we hear and read more testimonies, “We often cannot avoid feeling that we are in the presence of a disintegrating integration, a crumbling structure held together by the tenuous threads of a fragile architecture” (2006a, 308). We must resist the temptation to find Kantian solutions to n ­ on-​ K ­ antian dilemmas. So many individuals did not survive and if they did, they may be broken beyond measure. To do justice to indescribable atrocities, to be fully authentic, might also mean not forgiving or forgetting, but holding on to despair. Others, like Améry, may have found themselves through anger and resentment. Of course, individuals’ stance t­ oward previous atrocities change over time. Améry, famous for his brooding resentment, conceded that he felt like a buoy­ ant human rights winner for several years after the Holocaust. “For quite some time there lasted what was for me a totally unprecedented social and moral status, and it elated me to the extreme: being what I w ­ as—​­a surviving Resis­ tance fighter, Jew, victim of persecution by a universally hated regime” (1980,

The Thrill Is Gone  17

64; emphasis added). His resentment grew as German society embraced the attitude of moving on and forgetting, especially when Germans increasingly portrayed themselves as victims of the Soviet war machine and distanced themselves from historical ­anti-​­Semitism. We silence survivors by expecting them to be only dispirited or ready to offer forgiveness. Just as we would be silencing them if we expected survivors to feel only resentment, or if we looked only for joy. Many find joy in survival and sometimes joy is found in resentment and anger. Drawing upon the work of Audre Lorde and others, I will argue that joy and resentment both tap into our innermost being and allow us to discover connections with others. They also both point to an alternate reality, a vision that we should work t­oward together. Here is yet another place where human rights scholars can learn by patiently listening to human rights activists and survivors (cf. Simmons 2011). While human rights in the academy rarely mentions joy, the examples throughout this work are almost completely composed of the lived experi­ ences of activists and survivors.

Book Overview At its most general level, this work faithfully tracks what has become a com­ mon, and lucrative, and likely overused, trope in a number of highly successful popular press books and even some academic works. The author begins by bemoaning that happiness or joy, or some other positive emotion, has been neglected in their academic field, offers some evidence for that fact, explores why joy has been disregarded, and then explains what can be added to the field by bringing in this positive emotion. This structure is most common in the now ­well-​­established field of positive psychology,4 where it seems that thou­ sands of such works have been written, but almost all social science fields have similar works, to the point that a reviewer can wittily claim: “The happiness industrial complex is experiencing an unprecedented boom these days, and, were I a financial adviser, I would strongly recommend investing in happiness futures. Not because jollity itself is booming (moroseness continues to show very strong fundamentals), but because the outlook for ancillary ­markets—​­the sales of pickaxes to happiness p ­ rospectors—​­is exceedingly bullish” (Curtis 2007). So as not to disturb a winning formula, this chapter has covered per­ sonal narratives and statistical evidence to show that joy is almost entirely ab­ sent from contemporary human rights rhetoric. The second and third chapters

18  Chapter 1

will explore why this is the case, and the remainder of the book will address the ­so-​­what question in considerable detail. Chapter 2 provides an ­in-​­depth phenomenology of joy based upon several theoretical frameworks that I find especially helpful in the human rights con­ text, including recent works in affect theory, phenomenological psychology, Lacanian philosophy, and most importantly Audre Lorde’s writings on erotics. Phenomenologies of affect perhaps best capture the intense, on/off nature of joy that leaves a lasting impact on individuals. Affect theory usefully harkens back to Spinoza’s writings to show how affects move us away from our current trajectories and change our potentialities, thus priming us for further affects. The end result of our always changing trajectories and capacities is that the self/body has near infinite possibilities, and can even find joy despite extreme victimization, or even while perpetrating horrendous deeds. Phenomenolog­ ical psychology provides essential tools for broadly conceptualizing joy, espe­ cially in comparison to other positive emotions. Lacan’s work on jouissance nicely illustrates the transgressive elements of joy and provides insight about the ­counter-​­intuitive conclusion that joy can be both wondrous and painful. Individuals and groups are drawn to joy at times, and at times repulsed by it. Lacan, in scattered remarks, attempts to distinguish the patriarchal phallic jouissance, which I show can be tied to the sinister joy of the perpetrator, from feminine jouissance, which can serve as a generative force based upon releasement. But his writings on the latter are famously, and even comically, clumsy and have been rightly subject to with­ ering critiques, especially from feminist writers such as Luce Irigaray and Elizabeth Grosz. To begin to develop a phenomenology of this alternative, generative form of joy, I turn to the writings of African American feminist, lesbian poet Audre Lorde on the “erotic” as a model for a joy that is aleatory, productive, and political. I also discuss recent exciting extensions of Lorde’s writings, especially theories of social erotics. In Chapter 3, I take on the role of happiness prospector with my academic pickaxes and examine many of the philosophical, legal, and historical factors that have led to the elision of joy from human rights discourse and the almost exclusive focus on abuses. My search for lost joy leads back to the hazy begin­ nings of human rights in the Enlightenment, where I find John Locke, with his dread of the passions, culpable for guiding human rights down the joyless path. This theoretical elision of the passions has interacted for centuries with brutal historical realities to further silence joyful human rights advocates. The shushing reached new heights after the atrocities of World War II, and

The Thrill Is Gone  19

peaks with the new Holocaust etiquette that was mobilized in force against Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful. I end with several notable human rights voices who found joy (and dancing) even in the grave twentieth century, including Ho­ locaust survivors and the ­anti-​­Apartheid leaders Nelson Mandela and Albie Sachs. Chapter 4, “Joyful Activists,” begins with a l­ittle-​­known anecdote about Martin Luther King’s joyful pillow fight with his comrades immediately before he was assassinated. I ask whether the civil rights movement would have been as successful without such clowning and moments of joy. Relatively speaking, joy has been examined more in the social movement literature than in other academic fields related to human rights. I provide an overview of this literature by focusing on the “carnivalesque,” both theoretically and in recent tactical carnivals such as the Occupy Wall Street movement. I also look at how erotics and social erotics play major roles in human rights movements and in individ­ ual moments of resistance to oppressive state practices. Then I turn to Mexican performance artist Jesusa Rodríguez and her wonderful playful performances that mock hegemonic power structures by tapping into a primordial ethical power. Her clowning performances lead to a lengthy consideration of clowning for human rights, with a major focus on the transnational NGO Clowns With­ out Borders which, over the past quarter century, has refined their clowning techniques to bring joy to traumatized people around the globe. The chapter ends with an extended discussion of Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero’s use of joyful laughter and his love of clowns as he served human rights victims suffering from abuses by the brutal Salvadoran regime. Chapter 5, “Joyful Perpetrators,” examines the controversial topic of “sin­ ister joy” and explores whether such nefarious types of joy share the same structure as the positive joy experienced in social movements. In this explo­ ration, I extend the recent deconstruction of two interrelated touchstones of scholars’ understanding of human rights perpetrators: Hannah Arendt’s for­ mulation of the banality of evil in her widely read Eichmann in Jerusalem and Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience experiments. Against the dominant par­ adigm of obedience to authorities I provide numerous examples of joyful and sadistic perpetrators, and show that such extreme behavior is part of a contin­ uum that ranges from everyday examples of schadenfreude to sadistic and even demonic joy. The chapter includes extended discussions of two especially proud sadists: Osvaldo Romo, the leading torturer in the early days of the Pinochet regime in Chile, and Anwar Congo, an executioner from Indonesia featured in the recent documentary The Act of Killing.

20  Chapter 1

In Chapter 6, “Joyful Martyrs,” I analyze three paragon examples of how joy plays a critical role in public martyrdoms, especially in their social con­ struction. First, I look at the critical and complex roles played by joy and kenosis in the centuries of reformations and counterreformations in Europe as well as the experiences and beliefs of martyrs of all stripes. The next section looks at the complex place of joy in the martyrdoms that instigated the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt as well as the role of joy among Palestinian sui­ cide bombers during the Second Intifada. I conclude that while it is difficult to ascribe joy to anyone, including martyrs, joy played a major role in the way they were represented by others, as well in their ability to undertake their martyrdoms. However, joyful martyrs can also be constructed as affective de­ viants, as abject individuals who experience joy at the wrong times and thus are considered less than human. Such labeling has occurred with Palestinian suicide bombers and their family members. The analysis of martyrs over the centuries shows that we cannot escape the politicization of human rights even when we focus on joy. Chapter 7, “Human Rights Winners,” begins with the remarkable life and writings of Jacques Lusseyran, a blind youth leader of the French Resistance who spent six months in Nazi detention in Paris and fifteen months in Buch­ enwald. Lusseyran unexpectedly found lightness in suffering during the Ho­ locaust. Others who have faced such profound trauma, what has recently been called polyvictimization, face seemingly intractable barriers to joy and resil­ ience. I then deconstruct the PTSD and resilience paradigms that have be­ come the primary lenses for examining victimization in the field of human rights. Instead, I draw upon anthropologist Nancy ­Scheper-​­Hughes’s writings, especially her extended essay “A Talent for Life,” and recent scholarship on ­post-​­traumatic growth to show that there are other, more empowering ways to approach trauma and survivorship. These literatures point to the important roles of meaning making, subjectification, and ­self-​­expression for finding growth through trauma. Trauma can be creatively transformed and anger can be metabolized into a positive force. For instance, Buddhist meditation and philosophy, especially with their focus on mudita or sympathetic joy, have been found to be especially helpful to simultaneously leading to an emptying of the ego and finding happiness and joy even in the face of trauma and anger. The book concludes with testimonies from two friends who have undergone traumatic experiences that would usually lead to them being labeled victims. But they eschew such a label and consider themselves to be human rights winners.

The Thrill Is Gone  21

A New Human Rights Paradigm I imagine this book opening up new ways of thinking about human rights. Exploring new ground in a field of study can be unnerving as the landscape is mostly bare, with precious few cairns for guidance on which topics need to be covered. On the other hand, I am not constrained by classic works or inter­ pretations in the field that must be addressed. Indeed, by its very nature, see­ ing a field with a new lens, adopting a new paradigm (Kuhn 1962), allows, indeed encourages, a scholar to bring new stories and characters into the nar­ rative. I have tried to choose compelling examples that address fundamental questions about the many possible connections between joy and human rights. An extended excursus through joy sheds new light on several major axi­ omatic cases in human rights. Joy reinforces recent reworkings of accepted Holocaust research, especially Arendt’s writings on the Eichmann trial and the closely connected Milgram obedience experiments. It further questions the earlier dominant understanding of Holocaust survivors as suffering, al­ most universally, from “survivor syndrome.” It sheds new light on toleration and how human rights arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As the volume organically developed, I was surprised by how frequently early modern works appear in its pages, including the Earl of Shaftesbury’s critique of Lockean rational liberalism and the martyrologies of the sixteenth and sev­ enteenth centuries. The Nazi regime and its Holocaust appear frequently de­ spite this being a book on joy, testifying in part to Meister’s (2011) thesis that they have served as cornerstones for the field of human rights. An emphasis on joy brings diverse writers and theorists to the human rights party that were previously rarely invited such as John Foxe, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, Mikhail Bakhtin, Nancy ­Scheper-​­Hughes, and Audre Lorde. Empirical psychology, somewhat sur­ prisingly, makes several significant appearances. I am especially taken by the recent literature on ­post-​­traumatic growth as an antidote to the overreliance on the resilience and PTSD frameworks as well as empirical work on awe, ­closed-​­mindedness, affective deviance, and the ­broaden-​­­and-​­build theory. New theoretical concepts are added to the human rights lexicon including ­ ost-​­traumatic growth, and the erotics, social erotics, expressive arts therapy, p Buddhist terms metta (­loving-​­kindness) and mudita (sympathetic joy). This volume asks the reader to consider numerous new iconic moments

22  Chapter 1

and characters in human rights such as: the martyr’s pyre during the Refor­ mation and ­Counter-​­Reformation, Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, Martin Luther King’s pillow fights, Archbishop Romero’s t­hree-​­­year-​­long “conver­ sion” experience conversing with the poor in El Salvador, Audre Lorde’s anger at the police shooting of t­ en-​­­year-​­old African American Clifford Glover, and the ­self-​­immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi. Readers might be surprised to find clowns playing a significant role in a human rights text, or that sightless­ ness, which is often metaphorically considered the opposite of rationality, “appears” repeatedly throughout the volume.5 Dancing also appears frequently: in addition to the will to dance of Emma Goldman and Audre Lorde mentioned above, the musicians Sting and Peter Gabriel dance with the women of the disappeared of Chile and Argentina; Archbishop Romero dances to the politically charged Spanish song “La Cu­ caracha” (“The Cockroach”); the Holocaust survivor Adolek Kohn returns to the camps and dances with his grandchildren to Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit “I Will Survive”; the noted Israeli dancer Yehudit Arnon embraces movement in Birkenau and then produces dances about the Holocaust and its aftermath; and Jesusa Rodríguez stages mass protest cabarets in Mexico. Roberto Benigni did something resembling a dance at the Academy Awards ceremony. Even Nelson Mandela dances in this book. To confuse matters though, we have Hutu genocidaires festively dancing in Rwanda in 1994, the dancing of the ­cha-​­cha by Indonesian executioner Anwar Congo, and Palestinian mothers of suicide bombers dancing and ululating in apparent celebration of their chil­ dren’s acts. As a thought experiment, consider these moments next to what might currently be considered iconic moments and images in the current human rights paradigm: the skulls lined up at the Ntarama Genocide Memorial Cen­ tre in Rwanda, film footage of the liberation of the European and Asian camps in 1945, Elie Wiesel’s Night, the Nuremburg and Tokyo Tribunals, Arendt’s version of the Eichmann trial, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Elea­ nor Roosevelt’s role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and various military and law enforcement personnel around the globe shoot­ ing into crowds of peaceful citizens. Unfortunately, so many topics must remain uncovered in a single volume. As I mentioned this project to other scholars and activists, they often chimed in with additional suggestions, insisting that I “had” to include x, y, or z. It heartened me that there were so many examples of joyful human rights and

The Thrill Is Gone  23

writers from ancillary fields addressing similar issues. Sadly, so many fascinat­ ing themes, social movements, and human (and nonhuman/animal) rights moments did not make the cut for this book. I encourage other scholars to pursue such topics, and I am enthusiastic about expanding upon these ideas in future works.

CHAPTER 2

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect

What is joy? Joy is elusive, both as experience and object of study. It is a lived experience, an emotion and, in the language of contemporary social theoriz­ ing, an affect. It is multidimensional: physical, spiritual, emotional, and intel­ lectual. If there is some consensus in popular understanding, it is that joy is intense or extreme; there is no halfway experience of joy. We do not speak of someone experiencing a lukewarm joy or having a slightly joyful experience. Of the emotions, it is perhaps the most likely to behave like an on/off switch, with sudden onset, and alas, quick recedence. Fleeting experiences of joy have been dissected by psychologists, memorialized in artwork, and meditated on by mystics, theologians, and philosophers for millennia. So many experiences are lumped under joy that we may be tempted, like US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart faced with defining ­hard-​­core pornography, to throw up our hands and claim, “I know it when I see it” (Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964). By no means is it possible to collate everything about joy in this one chap­ ter. Here, I propose a working phenomenology of joy that, while eschewing a short, tight definition, will hopefully give the reader a sense of joy. My reflec­ tions draw from several theoretical ­frameworks—​­I discuss recent advances in affect theory, phenomenological psychology, Lacanian theory, and Audre Lorde’s writings on the erotic. Recent theories of affect perhaps best capture the intense, unpredictable nature of joy that can radically disrupt an individ­ ual’s potentiality thus potentially creating a new subject. Phenomenological psychology provides some essential tools for conceptualizing joy, especially in comparison to other positive emotions, while Lacan in his famous and at

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  25

times contradictory seminars describes jouissance using a structure that is helpful for understanding the transgressive elements of joy, especially how joy has the potential to transgress the symbolic realm of language, identity, and self. Lacanian jouissance, including the failures of his theory of feminine jou­ issance, will provide some insights to help understand the close relationship between joy and what I will label sinister joy, the joys of human rights perpe­ trators. To get a better sense of the generative possibilities of feminine jouis­ sance and to better understand how joy can simultaneously be an emptying of the ego as well as a vital resource for lifting up the ego, I turn to Audre Lorde’s writings on the erotic. Special mention will be made of the comple­ mentary role that anger can play with erotics. I conclude by offering some hypotheses about joy and human rights that will be explored in the succeed­ ing chapters. The phenomenology of joy that I develop is unorthodox as I tie together thinkers rarely, if ever, considered in relation. I have stitched together a phe­ nomenology of joy that allows me to address in later chapters the issues in human rights that I find most pressing, especially those regarding activists, perpetrators, martyrs, and survivors. Others, of course, will have their own tapestries of joy to weave, and there is plenty of material ready at hand.

Joy as Feeling, Emotion, and Extraordinary Affect While most psychologists and philosophers employ a very broad definition of emotions, to the point that they encompass any felt experience not solely part of cognition, recent theorists of affect have hearkened back to Baruch Spino­ za’s writings to draw (admittedly fuzzy) distinctions between feelings, emo­ tions, and affects.1 And since joy, for Spinoza, is an exemplar of affect, indeed the most powerful of affects, this line of thought is worth exploring in some detail.2 Joy is a feeling, emotion, and affect, but its role as an affect is most crucial for my analysis. First, a feeling is a felt sensation that is mediated by previous schemata. Feelings are “images or corporeal traces first of all” (Deleuze 1988, 48). This initial corporeal stage is the closest to the realm of reductionist psychology. I see a clown and I feel happy. Nonetheless, by itself, an ­odd-​­looking individual with big shoes, red hair, and overdone makeup does not necessarily make me happy, but since I have been exposed a number of times to such peculiar im­ ages, I am not frightened by this monstrosity. Instead, the image conjures up

26  Chapter 2

all sorts of schemata with similar images of surprises, tricks, and laughter so that the mere sight of the strange creature now produces happy feelings. Second, the outward expression of my feeling is an emotion, a display of my feelings that others can observe. When I feel happy at the sight of a clown I smile, I laugh, my eyes light up, I am clearly pleased and drawn to the clown. Emotions have social intentions and social effects. Of course, I have some conscious and unconscious control of my emotions, what psychologists call emotion regulation. When holding a winning poker hand and feeling quite ecstatic, I can willingly emote anxiety or fear or weakness so that others con­ tribute more to my winnings (making me even happier). Sometimes of course, we experience seemingly uncontrollable emotions. Our feelings are such that we cannot help ourselves and we cry or laugh uncontrollably. As we “grow up,” we gain more control of our emotions and do not experience such out­ bursts, or at least usually not in the same manner. The word “outburst” nicely captures the bursting out of our feelings into social emotions. We literally emote in that the term “emotion” comes from the Old French emouvoir mean­ ing to stir up. Our feelings are expelled from our inner world to the social world. The stronger the intensity of the feeling, the more likely we are to have outbursts of emotions. The most intense feelings sometimes reduce our cogni­ tions to mere bystanders, helpless to intervene in controlling our emotions. The intensity of the experience’s impact on the self is the affect. It is how much a self is moved by contact with another body, image, thought, and so forth. The intensity of the feeling, the amount that a perception or experience stirs up our feelings, varies for each individual and for each context. A child reared in a family of clowns who is required to work long hours grudgingly doing chores such as cleaning up piles of silly string at a clown school will not have their feelings stirred up, nor will her body be affected by the sight of a clown in the same way as one who has only seen clowns on television and is now seeing one in person for the first time on her sixth birthday. As this clown example shows, the affect of an experience depends, inter alia, on the percep­ tion, the schemata or noemata held by the individual, and the current context. Our rational mind has much less impact on the intensity of the affect than it does on emotion, as rationality can partially control outward manifestations of emotions resulting from a feeling, no matter how intense the affect. A particularly intense affect has the potential to move an individual to act; it creates a potentiality in the individual. Spinoza explains: “By affect I under­ stand affections of the body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  27

affections” (1994, 154; cf. Massumi 2003, “When you affect something, you are at the same time opening yourself up to being affected in turn” [212]). The individual does not need to emote the corresponding feeling, nor does the individual actually have to make any movement. Emotions can be brought under control and yet an individual experiencing a strong affect cannot help but experience a corresponding feeling and a change in potentiality. Despite cognition, the body is still affected. Even if we show no emotion or action, we are still affected. For the child reared at a clown school, the sight of a gaggle of clowns ex­ iting a tiny car is part of the background of existence. Little is triggered in the body by the experience. The body is on hold, though it continues to be af­ fected by an infinite array of stimuli that interacts with an infinite number of past experiences that could be formed into an infinite number of schemata. The child doing ­clown-​­related chores could sleepwalk through an entire clown performance without being stirred up in any palpable way. But, at any point, an experience such as a novel performance or an intense feeling t­ oward a new clown could cause a profound affectation, could stir the child, leading the humdrum of existence to recede.3 We are bodies/minds that are continuously encountering ­ contexts—​ c­ ontexts that touch us with different intensities as different individuals. They do not just touch our minds or our bodies. They touch us as individuals, as social individuals, as individuals who have been raised within certain dis­ courses that have molded into us certain unconscious displays of emotion and differing expectations of how much we should consciously control our emo­ tions. We are not just individuals in a web of power relations or determined by a range of discourses (see Clough 2007). We are clearly not totally free individ­ uals and yet we are not determined by our situations, at least in a simplistic sense. Taken to its extreme, such theorizing about affects would result in an ­all-​­­too-​­radical empiricism, where we would tally an infinite number of expe­ riences and potentialities for action with little in the way of categorization. Of course we do experience and comprehend patterns to our experiences; most individuals have similar emotions when they share the same feelings. We retain some control of an affect. At a very basic level, we have the conscious ability to turn away from a given situation. We may be moved by a new clown but we may quickly steal away behind a curtain so that our emotions are imperceptible and our affect diminished. We have been affected, in a fairly intense way, but not as much as if we had decided to stay and begin a new relationship. We have the potential to expose ourselves, or not, to different stimuli or control the

28  Chapter 2

context of many exposures to stimuli. We can even mute affects with various ­anti-​­anxiety medicines targeting the pesky amygdala, seat of trauma. Of course, these attempts at controlling affect are conditioned or determined (take your pick) by previous feelings, emotions, affects, thoughts, contexts, and discourses. Affects blow us off course, if we could ever imagine an affectless course. Our trajectories as we move through life are shaped by previous affects but also shifted by current affects. In Deleuze’s terms, affects are variations. The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary affects is helpful, especially to get past the problem of affect theory leading merely to a litany of experi­ ences or a solipsism. The ordinary affect requires minor course corrections, while the major variations of our trajectory require some serious movements of ourselves. We are blown off course, we may have to move dramatically to regain our course or we might have to plot a new course, or even take on an entirely new goal. We have been affected. In Badiou’s (2005) terms, we have experienced an event. Most often, the event will be aleatory; it comes from out of the blue. Affects happen, in the sense that they take place by “hap” or chance (Ahmed 2010, 30); thus the word happenstance. Again, an experience for one person at a specific time may not signal such a variation as it might trigger in another person or at another time. This inherent unpredictability of affects as well as their potential exponen­ tial impacts on our trajectories is summed up famously by Spinoza when he argues that “no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body, that is, no one has as yet been taught by experience what the body can accomplish solely by the laws of nature” (1994, Ethics 3 P2S). Deleuze (1988) simplifies Spinoza’s formulation into: “We still do not know what a body can do” (17). The body is ­open-​­ended and unpredictable for any given encounter. We do not always know even after an affect how the body has been changed, or perhaps “charged” like a particle would be a better term, by an affect. Further, as Spinoza teaches, the capacity to be affected is affected by af­ fects. So, as we are affected, our capacity to be affected changes. An affect is a “passage from one state to another” (Deleuze 1978, 18). Indeed, our capacities writ large change. Our ability to realize our goals changes by what affects we encounter. As affect theorist Brian Massumi (2002) writes, “Each transition is accompanied by a variation in capacity: a change in which powers to affect and be affected are addressable by a next event and how readily addressable they are” (15). Among the affects, for Spinoza joy occupies a privileged place as the most powerful, potentially leading to the greatest changes to the indi­

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  29

vidual. It is the affect that opens up the most possible future affects. Joy with its intensity, sudden onset, and quick recedence, affects the self the most with the most unpredictable of effects. Deleuze writes of Spinoza’s Ethics where he develops his theory of affect that it “is necessarily an ethics of joy: only joy is worthwhile, joy remains, bringing us near to action, and to the bliss of action” (1988, 28). Deleuze’s general summary of affects applies with special force to joy: “You do not know beforehand what good or bad you are capable of; you do not know beforehand what a body or a mind can do, in a given encounter, a given arrangement, a given combination” (Deleuze 1988, 125). Refrains and Tristitia

Positive affects, though, can be neutralized through repetition, what Deleuze and Guattari call refrains. Hearing a great rock anthem like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” can have a profound impact on an individual, but hear­ ing it for the thousandth time on classic rock radio stations or even as the background to a commercial selling automobiles reduces its impacts, which closes off future potentialities. Refrains cut off possibilities. Bertelsen and Murphie (2010) analogize refrains to territories, as spaces of concreteness in a sea of affects. As such, they make possible “new forms of expression but render others inexpressible” (139). Politics then becomes a battle over re­ frains, as attempts to harness affects into logical accounts. Refrains can be both opening and c­ losing—​­some territories are liberating, some territories are hospitable to the Other, some are not, some territories are heterogeneous and some are not. Some refrains are universes that are constantly being under­ stood through their creation, “which appear to have been always there, from the moment we engender them” (Guattari 1995, 17). On the other hand, most refrains are simplifications of the event or of subjectivity. They attempt to harness the ego, to place the ego firmly within a spatial and temporal location. In so doing, they close off potentiality. Refrains function analogously to Spinoza’s term tristitia or pain (also translated as dejection or sorrow), which is the opposite of joy. Tristitia has a profoundly negative affect on the individual, closing it off to future affects and potentialities. While joy, in Spinoza’s teleological scheme leads us to greater perfection, tristitia moves us to less perfection. This distinction between joy as an opening of possibilities and various ways of closing off possibilities will be central to this book. For instance, the early modern thought of John Locke attempted to harness the ego and exclude “gaiety and excitement.” This is the original conservatism of Locke’s political

30  Chapter 2

thought and it is one of the recurring tasks of conservative politics, the “at­ tempt to capture and control affect” (Bertelsen and Murphie 2010, 140). Sadly, refrains do not appear to work quite the same way for negative af­ fects. Though accounts of being numbed to pain and sorrow abound,4 recent psychological work on multiple victimizations show that repetition of trauma has lasting and profound impacts. This polyvictimization will be discussed further in Chapter 7. The account of human rights winners in the same chap­ ­ ost-​­traumatic growth, which unconsciously ter draws heavily on the field of p taps into Spinoza’s insight that only extremely positive affects like joy can counter the extremely negative affect of sorrow. “An affect cannot be re­ strained or neutralized except by a contrary affect that is stronger than the affect to be restrained” (Damasio 2003, 12). As beyond rationality, as ephemeral, joy exceeds and disrupts the realm of subjective experience; it potentially makes the subject anew. Yes, joy is a feel­ ing. Yes, joy is an emotion. But most of all joy is an extraordinary affect, a radical “aesthetic encounter” in the terms of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, that suspends rational and subjective categories (Panagia 2009). Joy r­ e-​­forms the subject. As such, joy has a special place in our experiences, and we should not be surprised that it has carved out such a special place in meditations by phi­ losophers, theologians, and artists. Perhaps we should not be surprised that it has been ignored in modern political theory or human rights discourses, which are grounded so heavily on the premise of a stable ego. We should also not be surprised that joy has largely resisted the dissections of much of em­ pirical psychology.

The Joy of Academic Psychology Not surprisingly, psychologists have studied, analyzed, broken down, and cre­ ated scales of numerous emotions and condensed this voluminous research into textbooks and overarching theories. Nonetheless, many psychologists rightly bemoan the fact that they have not dissected joy and other positive emotions quite enough; that they have “not operationalized positive emotions in a consistent, precise, or theoretically w ­ ell-​­informed manner” (Consedine, Magai, and King 2004, 52). This perhaps applies to joy more than most. Ex­ perimental psychologists face an uphill battle when trying to operationalize joy, and its aleatory nature surely makes it difficult to reproduce in a labora­ tory setting.

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  31

Empirical psychologists have attempted to distinguish joy from other pos­ itive feelings and emotions. Joy, we are told, is not: ­ ell-​­being is a more encom­ 1. Subjective ­well-​­being, because subjective w passing term (Kunzmann, Little, and Smith 2000). 2. Satisfaction or contentment, because while “joy is accompanied by a lot of excitement, satisfaction lacks arousal” (Bracke 2001, 228). 3. Physical pleasures, because “joy is subjectively experienced as a much ‘deeper’ emotion than pleasure, and has been characterized as resulting from an existential ­self-​­transformation” (­Dick-​­Niederhauser 2009). 4. Amusement with much of the differences attributable to laughter, which accompanies amusement but not joy (Herring et al., 2011). 5. Elation or gladness, though “they are all positive, ­self-​­directed, and rel­ atively aroused” (de Rivera et al. 1016) in general, elation involves ful­ fillment of a wish, gladness involves fulfillment of a hope, while joy “involves a meeting with some other person” and the individual has “a perception of feeling whole and ‘in touch’ with the world’ ” which ac­ companies the meeting, and “time is extended” (de Rivera et al. 1989, 1017; cf. Bagozzi 1991). But when pressed to provide a pithy conceptual definition of joy or to take on the even more difficult task of operationalizing joy so that it can be measured quantitatively, things become murky. As Herring et al. (2011) write, “Positive emotion terms such as ‘joy’ and ‘mirth’ have been used somewhat inter­ changeably, and combined descriptors such as ‘happiness/amusement’ and ‘joy/laughter’ are often used” (211; internal citations omitted).5 When pressed to operationally define joy, psychologists, even those who have carefully tried to create distinct conceptual definitions, tend to lose the forest for all the trees, often conflating joy with other positive emotions such as happiness and w ­ ell-​ ­being by using the same operational definitions for each.6 Similar attempts at producing joy in the laboratory using musical and film clips have been quite funky: using a range of music (classical music, Irish jigs, jazz, reggae, South American and Balkan music), a clip from “Singing in the Rain,” a clip of “fig­ ure skater Sarah Hughes reacting to winning the Olympic gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games” which “has been used in prior studies to elicit ‘happiness’ ” (Herring et al. 2011) as well as a clip from the s­ tand-​­up comedy of Robin Williams “to induce joy/amusement” (Britton et al. 2006; Herring et al. 2011).

32  Chapter 2

More formal attempts at classifying emotions also get muddled fairly quickly as they seem to label “fuzzy sets” or constellations of feelings (Shaver et al. 1987). Many psychologists label joy as a basic or primary emotion (Par­ rott 2001), meaning that it can be found in all human societies, and that its experience appears to be universal. However, this conclusion is far from uni­ versal (see Ekman 1999). Plutchik’s (1980) wheel of emotion includes joy as a secondary emotion with the primary emotion being ecstasy, and it is associ­ ated with love. Parrott (2001) created a structure of primary, secondary, and tertiary emotions, in which joy made the cut as a primary emotion, with an interesting set of secondary emotions that included cheerfulness, zest, con­ tentment, pride, relief, and surprise. Algoe and Haidt (2009) label one group of positive emotions as happiness that includes “joy, amusement, satisfaction, gratification, euphoria, and triumph,” while S. Lee and Lang (2009) summa­ rize their ­meta-​­analysis that “joy is associated with two primary motivational tendencies: first, successful approach to a goal and, second, the freedom from harm or danger” (152). Such confusion says almost as much about the nature of joy as it does the limitations of empirical psychology. Joy might be impossible to reduce to an operational definition that is measurable and grasps the essence of a thing. Joy by its very nature eludes conceptualization. Or more radically, joy as strong affect destabilizes subjectification and previous categorizations and thus not only is the concept difficult for the subject to grasp, the very footing on which the subject rests shifts and it lacks a stable ground from which to conceptually perceive the world. With such a destabilizing effect, joy would tear asunder overly rational or analytical theories of emotions, such as those that hold that emotions are a type of thought (e.g., Nussbaum 2003). To better capture such a fluid and overarching concept as joy, I turn to attempts to describe it more phenomenologically. Phenomenologies of Joy

Joy is by its nature a radical “aesthetic encounter,” transcendent to everyday experiences, and transgressive of the ego and its categorizations of the world. It is perhaps closer to an irreducible phenomenon than an object of study. Psychologist Carroll Izard, an expert on emotional development, helpfully provides a nice overview of several phenomenological studies on joy in his classic textbook on emotions. In such studies participants are asked to visu­ alize a specific instance of joy they had experienced in the past and to then describe it or to fill out a j­oy-​­related s­ elf-​­report scale (M. Hoffman 1984;

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  33

Meadows 1975). In Izard’s summary of these studies joy appears as a feeling, an emotion, and an affect. Joy is “a pleasant, desirable, positive, rewarding feeling. It includes a sense of psychological comfort and ­well-​­being. Mind and body are in a ready state to relax or play. There is an absence of mental and physical stress. The feeling is of lightheartedness, which extends to the entire physical and mental self. Movements seem easier, even enjoyable in them­ selves” (Izard 1991, 137). Several aspects can be taken from Izard’s initial description of the subjec­ tive experience of joy. Joy is a positive state, involving a “sense of psychological comfort,” a relaxation of both the mind and body, providing the feeling of lightheartedness. The experience itself seems to have a positive effect on our whole being. Our whole being is affected, and it changes our affect, or stance ­toward the world. Izard (1991) connects the feeling of joy with the awe of a mystical experi­ ence where the world is accepted on its own terms and thus joy further resists conceptualization: “Perhaps one reason why some mystical experiences bring great joy to us is because we stand before a mystery in awe, and realizing that we cannot fully understand it or exhaust its meaning by objective analysis we savor it and appreciate it. Joy makes us feel that we have a distinctive bond between ourselves and the world. Joy is more than a positive attitude ­toward self and the world. It is a special kind of link or bond. This has been described as a keen sense of belonging, or of oneness with the object of joy and with the world” (138).7 This connection to the world changes our sense of self and the way we perceive the world: “It tends to be accompanied by a feeling of tran­ scendence or freedom, the feeling that we are more than or different from our usual selves and that for a moment we exist in the realm of the extraordinary. In ecstatic joy we may feel light and bouncy, or that we could soar, or that we are soaring and that everything has a different perspective because of our unusual vantage point” (138). A joyful person experiences a loss of the self, as it is no longer seen as separate from an objective world. The self is no longer in the privileged posi­ tion of an Archimedean point, but becomes one with the larger world. “Joy is often accompanied by a sense of harmony and unity with the object of joy and, to some extent, with the world. Some people have reported that in ec­ static joy they tend to lose individual identity, as in the case of some mystical experiences associated with meditation” (Izard 1991, 138). This change in positionality and the concomitant change in perception about ourselves is mirrored by a change in perception about the world and its

34  Chapter 2

objects. “Joy increases the individual’s capacity to savor and appreciate the world. This means that the joyful person is more likely to see beauty and goodness in nature and in fellow human beings. While experiencing joy, peo­ ple are more inclined to savor an object than to dissect it or analyze it. They appreciate the object as it is rather than wanting to change it. They feel close­ ness with the object rather than wanting to objectify it and put it at a distance” (Izard 1991, 137). Izard is describing a limit experience where individuals are enmeshed in what Martin Buber (1971) called an ­I-​­Thou relation as opposed to an ­I-​­It relation. The I­ -​­Thou relationship is a hallowing of the world, where the world around us is experienced as a sacred place, whereas the I­-​­It is a world of ontology, of manipulation, of objects being r­ eady-​­­at-​­hand for use, for grasping and overly crude operational definitions. Not only is an I­ -​­Thou rela­ tionship difficult to conceptualize, but the person involved in such an experi­ ence would not seek to minimize the experience by categorizing it. As phenomenologist Brent Robbins (2011) describes it: “They are not thinking about what’s coming next, they’re not thinking about what’s happened. They’re completely in that present moment. . . . ​There is so much to see, so much to feel in this moment. It will never end. It will always be enough, and I never need anything more than what I’m having right now” (17). These meanings of joy parallel key features of mysticism in various tradi­ tions and other similar states described in religious, philosophical, and theolog­ ical writings. They are often described as an overwhelming positive experience that disrupts what psychologists call the subject’s assumptive world. This in­ volves a loss of the self or kenosis, connecting the subject to others and to something larger, leading to feelings of lightness and alertness. Joy involves a powerful affect that deterritorializes the ego, its assumptive world, and its knowledge. Such feelings are common in writings of Christian mystics like St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, St. Angela de Foligno, and Meister Eckhardt, especially when discussing releasement and ecstasy. It can be seen in philo­ sophical analyses of the sublime, and it underpins much of Buddhist thought with concepts such as the ­no-​­self, detachment, oneness, and the four immea­ surables. Such joy resonates with the ecstasy found in Blake’s and Yeats’s po­ etry and is closely connected to positive communal feelings described by social theorists such as Durkheim’s “collective effervescence” and Victor and Edith Turner’s communitas.

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  35

Joy’s Impacts

Joy has a powerful effect on the individual even once the joy has passed. Fol­ lowing Spinoza, the feeling of joy increases the capacity for future joy: “by relating to the thou, I frequently open to the possibility of joy in my life” (Gor­ don 2001, 113). Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s highly influential b­ roaden-​ ­­and-​­build theory of positive emotions effectively translates Spinoza’s insights into the jargon of academic psychology where “positive emotions serve to broaden an individual’s momentary ­thought-​­action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual’s physical, intellectual, and social resources” (Fredrickson 1998, 300; cf. Fredrickson 2001). The effects of joy can lead to an upward spiral of positive affects. Among joy’s many specific positive effects is its ability to promote connec­ tions and empathy with others. It also leads us to become more willing to explore ourselves, others, and the world (S. Lee and Lang 2009; cf. Tomkins 1984). Several empirical studies have shown that joy is negatively correlated with stress and morbidity (Consedine, Magai, and King 2004, 59; cf. Moskow­ itz, Epel, and Acree 2008); and it improves our physical and mental health, and increases our “mental alertness and brain measures of attention and memory” (Riby 2013, 71). Joy also promotes healing and sustains caregivers (Faver 2004). It has been shown to have a direct impact on the success of psychotherapy as well as recuperation from illness, with numerous studies documenting the positive effects of having joyful clowns in hospitals, espe­ cially in children’s wards (discussed in Chapter 4). Joy has another important effect, more epistemological in nature, which will be pivotal for connecting it to human rights, especially when discussing sinister joy below. Recall that joy involves losing one’s self in the presence of something great or overpowering, something that is beyond the control of the self. This experience closely resembles awe and it clearly involves a kenosis or emptying of the self and a shaking of the assumptive world. Psychologist Mi­ chelle Shiota’s empirical studies on awe reveal the epistemological impact of this emptiness. Similar to the formulations of enthusiasm in the long eigh­ teenth century (discussed in Chapter 3) and the description of joy by Izard discussed above, a­ we-​­ful experiences “overwhelm current mental structures” (Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman 2007, 944; cf. Vasalou 2015). ­Awe-​­prone individuals are more likely to accommodate new stimuli in the words of Piagetian theory (see Piaget 1952), which involves a changing of their existing schemata. Assimilationists on the other hand, who tend to be

36  Chapter 2

less ­awe-​­prone, understand new stimuli through their preexisting schemata. They are less apt to change the way they think (Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman 2007, 946; cf. Keltner and Haidt 2003). Awe was also found to be significantly related to feeling part of a larger whole and “was associated with low Need for Cognitive Closure” (Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman 2007, 944).8 Recent psychological research on c­ losed-​­mindedness helpfully connects the assimilationist method of processing novel information with cognitive closure, referring to it as a “seizing and freezing” way of processing informa­ tion (Kruglanski and Webster 1996). In the seizing stage, individuals are more apt to make judgments urgently based upon “readily available and/or incon­ clusive information” (­Acar-​­Burkay, Fennis, and Warlop 2014, 720). The freez­ ing stage refers to “rigidity of thought” which involves “lower sensitivity to alternatives to a target hypothesis, greater resistance to persuasion, greater reactance to people opposing a group consensus, and higher conservatism” (­Acar-​­Burkay, Fennis, and Warlop 2014, 721). It follows from these psychological literatures that joy can serve as a bul­ wark against cognitive closure, which is associated with ways of information processing such as stereotyping, c­ losed-​­mindedness, and authoritarianism. Of course, these traits are especially productive of human rights violations (Kruglanski 2004). We might then wish to strategically mobilize joy in certain places and times to prevent human rights abuses, but alas it cannot be turned on at will. “It is not so easy to locate or schedule joy experiences” (Izard 1991, 132), nor is it easy to reverse c­ losed-​­mindedness. Joy may be difficult to pur­ sue, but we can set the conditions for increased joy by bonding with a com­ munity, pursuing goals, and reducing stress. Psychologist Jacques Lacan through his analysis of jouissance or enjoy­ ment provides a theoretical account of joy’s transgressive structure that will enable us to better understand the paradoxical nature of the self and inten­ tionality within joy as well as joy’s transgressive effects. This account also shows how society is invested in limiting jouissance, including by labeling anyone who pursues jouissance to be an outlaw or abject. Joyful social move­ ments often run up against, and must navigate, these limitations.

Jouissance, Transgression, and Intentionality Jacques Lacan’s famous analysis of jouissance resonates in many ways with the preceding description of joy as a radical affect.9 Jouissance is a French word

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  37

that means enjoyment, but with twists.10 For instance, enjoyment as jouissance always has a sexual connotation as it can be translated as orgasm, and the verb French jouir can mean “to come” in a sexual sense. Jouissance for Lacan is the model of transgression, it pushes beyond cultural norms that exist in what Lacan calls the symbolic realm, and allows victims and others to create a new identity against their interpellation by society. However, as we will see, jouis­ sance is constrained in multiple ways, making its appearance an exceedingly rare occurrence. Lacanian theory begins with three realms of existence: the Real, the Sym­ bolic, and the Imaginary. The Symbolic is mostly the realm of language. It is the repository of social norms and the law. The Real is the realness of things. As the language of the symbolic realm tries to grasp things in the Real, it will always fail. Thus, there is a gap between the Symbolic and the Real, a gap that will lead us to always desire more, but our desires will never be fulfilled. In a similar way, our selves are split between the Real of ourselves, and our identity, which is molded and indeed sanctioned by the symbolic realm. We will always seek to make our­ selves whole, but will be unable. Identity is socially constructed and subject to the process of the Imaginary realm, where the individual projects himself on an image that lies outside the self. Thus, the individual is involved in a continuous process of alienation, whereby it seeks to hold on to a complete image of itself, but one that is alien from it, one that is a fraud (Bowie 1991). The image of the self overshadows the Real of the individual and simultaneously is interpellated by the socially constructed symbolic realm, which usually reinforces the pro­ jected image that has captured the self. The symbolic realm can also disrupt a prior identification created in the imaginary realm, but a new imaginary is then created, one in line with the expectations of the symbolic realm. ­ ell-​­entrenched social norms of Jouissance is our drive to transgress the w the symbolic realm, but it is constrained by what Freud labeled the pleasure principle. The pleasure principle is a law or norm that is part of the symbolic realm that instructs us to enjoy but only up to a point, not to exceed a certain level, not to take the risk of seeking to maximize pleasure. Jouissance as mov­ ing past the limits of the pleasure principle has been called the death drive or “a certain destruction” (J.-​­A. Miller 1992, 26; cf. Žižek 1993, 280), in that we aim past what is the right balance for life at least as defined by the pleasure principle. By the time we are ­full-​­fledged adults, most of our jouissance seems to be drained from us because of our repeated exposure to the numerous so­ cietal pleasure principles, though some remains in our imagination and in “erotogenic zones” (Bowie 1991, 167).

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Jouissance risks both joy and suffering. We move outside socially accepted norms and can experience the greatest joys, but we can also endure the great­ est sufferings, sometimes at the hands of those who police the symbolic realm, who might label us as outlaws. The symbolic realm reins in our pleasure but in its place provides “inherent transgressions” that seemingly substitute for jouissance. These allow us pleasure but only to a point. They might include ­well-​­regulated norms about sex, death, defecation, or in less Freudian incar­ nations, in rooting for sports teams, attending concerts, in pornography, and in legal and illegal drugs (cf. Ehrenreich 2006). Jouissance, beyond such sanctioned inherent transgressions, is not for the faint of heart or for those who crave epistemological closure as it is “a loss of self, disruption of comfort, loss of control, it cannot simply be claimed as an ­ego-​­gratifying identity, but must also frighten those who ‘know’ it” (Gallop 1984, 114). Here, jouissance clearly resonates with joy as disrupting the ego and its schemata. It undoes attempts to systematize it. It is unspeakable and untranslatable. The experience of jouissance deconstructs the ego, the sym­ bolic realm, and definitions, especially the operational definitions of academic psychologists. Jouissance also has profound effects on the Other person: Lacan famously says, “Jouissance is evil . . . ​because it involves suffering for my neighbor” (1992, 184). Why the neighbor must suffer from the ego’s jouissance is not always made clear in Lacan’s work, but it is crystal clear in Freud’s writings where he echoes and expands upon the “Ring of Gyges” parable in Plato’s Republic: “Man tries to satisfy his need for aggression at the expense of his neighbor, to exploit his work without compensation, to use him sexually with­ out his consent, to appropriate his goods, to humiliate him, to inflict suffering on him, to torture and kill him” (quoted in Lacan 1992, 184). In Lacan, a subtler interpretation is more plausible. By transcending the social order of the symbolic realm, the ego puts pressure on the pleasure principle as sanc­ tioned by society. The ego potentially undermines the identity of the neighbor, the rules it lives by, and its comfortable existence. The neighbor also suffers from the preexisting commandments of the symbolic realm, such as the call to love thy neighbor. Such a norm is absurd as it assumes that the Other is not inherently lovable. And, since the Other and the ego are similarly constructed, the parts of the Other that are not de­ serving of love are also found in me, and thus the Christian ideal exposes me to undesirable parts of myself. “And what is more of a neighbor to me than this heart within which is that of my jouissance and which I don’t dare go

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  39

near?” (Lacan 1992, 186). So, as I pursue jouissance, moving out of the sym­ bolic realm to call into question the imaginary projection of myself, I project that which is wicked out into the world. I expose myself, the neighbor, and society to the abject. This exposure of the abject, that which undermines the commandments of the symbolic realm, as we shall see in later chapters, is a crucial human rights function of martyrs, clowns, and activists. They push against the symbolic realm’s specific procedures and rules for when and how the abject can be shown to society, for instance to represent a taboo not to be transgressed. As such, and as we will see in several instances in later chapters, society can label something or somebody as abject and thus minimize their affects. Here, we begin to glimpse the radical political possibilities of jouissance. In addition to putting pressure on the symbolic realm and its construction of my identity and the identity of the Other, it also calls forth those parts of us that are suppressed. Our potentiality is expanded. We realize that we are more than our portrayal by the imaginary and symbolic realms. Jouissance calls into question our desires, including the jouissance of the Other, not in the sense of a neighbor but as the ­Other—​­in most cases the father ­figure—​­whose desires I pursue instead of my own. Lacan’s Four Discourses

To further understand this sublimation of the ego’s desires and the connection between reining in jouissance and ­closed-​­mindedness, consider Lacan’s the­ ory of discourses that he developed in 1969 as a means of deconstructing the Oedipus complex that dominated psychoanalysis up to that point. Lacan ar­ gues, against Freud, that the father figure is already, always castrated in that its power is already limited. There will always be, as with affects discussed above, a remainder or an excess; that which the father figure cannot account for. Of course, for Lacan, the father is to be understood metaphorically as entities that have the power to impose their desires on others. Put in Lacan’s language of discourses, the discourse of the master, the first discourse in his notorious graphics, includes all master signifiers, but will be unable to encom­ pass all of the Real. There is a surplus, what Lacan often labels the objet petit a, where the “a” stands for the French word “autre” or other; that which can­ not be grasped. The master will attempt to sublimate this excess to conceal his inability to master the Real. If the father is successful, even the individual who is interpellated by the master signifier sees himself as being a unity deter­ mined by the master discourse, and forgets the surplus or abject (including

40  Chapter 2

his surplus) that is beyond the master signifier. Note that the research on ­closed-​­mindedness referred to above suggests that some individuals will be more prone to embrace the master signifier, and will enthusiastically ignore the surplus or abject. And yet, the surplus abides as does jouissance. In Lacan’s second discourse, that of the university, the discourse of the master is replaced by that of objective scientific knowledge. This is the mas­ tery by an abstract father figure. Of course, the objective discourse of the university is created and sustained by those considered to be masters. The masters may realize that they will never be able to contain the surplus, and so they create an objective discourse which can better tame it. The objective dis­ course has evolved over time from Platonic forms to Marx’s historical mate­ rialism, to the objective economics of neoliberalism and the reductionisms of behaviorist psychology, all of which seek to account for all of the Real and to tame jouissance. Many hegemonic discourses, mostly analytic, in the field of human rights, similarly claim an objective status by which the entirety of the field can be grasped. These discourses begin to be broken down with the discourse of the hys­ teric (for an excellent reformulation of the sordid gendered history of “hyste­ ria” see Bronfen 1998), where an individual calls into question the hegemonic master discourse, that of the father figure or the objective discourse of the university. This is Don Quixote’s or a martyr’s discourse. This is the realm of the radical enthusiast that Locke and others feared in the early Enlightenment. The hysteric demands that the symbolic realm be replaced by the real, that the knowledge of the father figure be replaced with real ­knowledge—​­it is a call to a radical empiricism that sheds (or brackets) theoretical baggage. However, there is little resolution at this stage because the rebel’s demand for real knowl­ edge cannot be satisfied. The hysteric is unable to build a convincing narrative to account for the real. This is a liminal or i­ n-​­between state that is difficult to navigate intellectually and is often frightening. Finally, the discourse of the analyst is a deliberate subversion of the pre­ vailing master discourse that is initiated by the Lacanian analyst during a therapeutic session. The analyst is able to put the surplus, that which cannot be encompassed by the master discourse, in the most prominent position. With the analyst’s guiding hand, the analysand does not see the surplus as another master, but understands that it is being placed in a prominent place intentionally by the analyst and thus comes to realize that all master dis­ courses are socially constructed by some father figure, whether an individual

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  41

or the abstract discourse of the university. These discourses represent the de­ sires or jouissance of the father figure. Thus, the analysand comes to the real­ ization that he or she has been determined by the master discourse, that the ego is a subject of the master’s jouissance. The ego’s desires have been deter­ mined by the master and are not the ego’s own. Such therapy is a complex and fraught enterprise. The analyst will have the analysand map the “subject’s identifications” as well as their surpluses to iden­ tify how they are determined by the father figure. The analysand is slowly brought to the realization that their desires have been the desires of the Other, the master. This may be the desire to own something, to be like someone, or to have a certain lifestyle, all of which could be the desire of social or familial customs. It could also be an a­ ll-​­encompassing ideology that has closed off the analysand’s possibilities. To counter this master discourse, the analysand must be led to discover their own desires. The first inclination, and most likely a moment of relief, is to see these unconcealed desires as paramount, but the therapist will need to show that even these “new” desires remain desires of Others, such as those of parents that were embedded into the ego, or rules and norms imparted by society, or by leading paradigms in a field. No desire will truly be the ego’s own. At the same time, the patient realizes that their own surplus by which they might be striving is actually the desire of another, like the father. Their fanta­ sies were not their own to begin with and they will never be fulfilled com­ pletely. Thus, the analysand comes to experience their own desires, and their own surplus or objet a, but they must realize that these are partially created through the symbolic realm or master discourse, as well as by the work of the analyst. There is no pure desire of the ego. The individual’s desire is a balance between several causes. Thus, jouissance or enjoyment which strives for the objet petit a, will always be tainted. This realization and this reality terrifies. The self is at the whims of the master who is seeking to use the self to satisfy his plans. Faced with such fright­ ening prospects, the subject can exercise some agency by trying to curry favor with the master by becoming an object of the master’s desire, dressing up in the role of what the master desires. Of course, no matter how attractive the self tries to make itself, it will never satisfy the master or his desires. Or, the self can latch onto a new master discourse, one that will claim to satisfy all the desires of the self. Alternatively, the self can realize that desires are created, and thus attempt to harness their own desires, knowing all along that their

42  Chapter 2

desires will never be satisfied. Nonetheless, most analysands will quickly seek closure, a discourse that will make sense of these complexities, and this drive for closure can result in zealots for a cause. The privileging of the surplus, the objet petit a, is subversive to the original master discourse as well as the discourse of the university. It is also more sus­ tainable than the enthusiastic discourse of the hysteric. The analyst will not impose their jouissance on the analysand, and the analysand will allegedly be content knowing that it will never fully understand itself or the real. The sym­ bolic realm, the imaginary, and the real will coexist in a delicate balance for the ego. They are interconnected in what Lacan refers to as a Borromean knot, where if one was cut, all three would be severed leading to a type of psychosis. The analysts’ discourse “maintain[s] a separation and dialectical tension be­ tween Imaginary and Symbolic identifications, on the one hand and desire in the Real on the other, as does psychoanalytic treatment, hypnotic discourse collapses the three in relation to a single object/person: the masses identify the figure at all levels, thus investing him or her with tremendous psycholog­ ical and therefore political power” (Bracher 1993, 136). Lacan, in perhaps his most optimistic formulation, is hopeful that in the discourse of the analyst, there is awareness that any new totalizing discourse will not be able to capture the Real, and so the analysand will be content with­ out closure. However, the historical evidence suggests that many will not be content living in a world of n ­ ot-​­knowing and will gravitate t­ oward magnetic father figures or ­all-​­encompassing ideologies. Jouissance and Human Rights

The symbolic realm, through propaganda, cultural beliefs, political exigen­ cies, and so forth may call for my torture and death because I am a Tutsi, a Jew, a Rohingya, or an African American. The symbolic realm creates my identity and that of my neighbor and our relationship. By transgressing the symbolic realm I call it into question, as I call into question my identity, and that of my accuser. My assumptive world is disrupted. Jouissance or enjoyment calls for a reformulation or reshuffling of the symbolic realm. At the same time, many individuals will embrace the symbolic realm as an ­all-​­encompassing master discourse that swallows all surplus. Those who strongly desire epistemic c­ losure—​­those who are less a­ we-​­prone in Shiota’s ­sense—​­will be more likely to scurry to a new master discourse. The drive persists for a new discourse that encompasses all of the Real, in that it captures all that had previously been missed (the objet petit a) by the previous Symbolic

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  43

order. This desire to eliminate surplus makes one susceptible to the imaginary realm of ideology. Bracher (1993) applies this logic to political rhetoric to explain how cer­ tain political figures, like Jesse Jackson at the time, satisfy our desires vicari­ ously because they appear to escape the law, they are a form of jouissance that imagines a new reality. Other magnetic political figures like Ronald Reagan and Adolph Hitler appear to fill all desires and encompass any surplus, and yet they merely create another master discourse that maintains a surplus de­ spite all their promises. Even the individual who is interpellated as inferior by the master signifier sees himself as being a unity determined by the master discourse, and forgets the surplus that is beyond the master signifier. This is a hypnotic discourse as opposed to Lacan’s discourse of the analyst that is born from successful therapy. This discussion of Lacanian jouissance also holds a larger lesson for human rights. If jouissance consists in breaking the barrier of the pleasure principle, it can only be attained through a transgression of a prohibition. ­ orms—​ Jouissance requires a prohibition. Human rights instruments and n ­and the academic field of human r­ ights—​­have evolved to the point of being a privileged part of the symbolic realm. Human rights has taken on the role of a pleasure principle that serves as a prohibition against too much jouissance. The human rights discourse interpellates some as victims without recourse and leaves many perpetrators free of culpability. Alongside the pleasure prin­ ciple that limits jouissance, I posit that there is a human rights principle that places limits on the types of human rights that can be emphasized. The human rights principle suppresses all sorts of human experiences, including joy and the passions. And, if I am right that human rights needs to find a place for joy, then the existing human rights principle itself needs to be transgressed. Lacan’s Misogynistic Feminine Jouissance

A critical tension develops between Lacan’s discourse of the analyst with its intentionality directed by the shaman analyst who deliberately subverts the symbolic realm and the aleatory nature of jouissance embraced by phenom­ enologies of joy discussed above and which Lacan also holds. Jouissance is not only transgressive for Lacan, it is aleatory and its effects are impossible to predict.11 Famously, he writes, “It starts with a tickle and ends up bursting into flames” (Lacan 1991, 83). Of course, the analyst attempts to control the jouissance of the analysand, but such a desire is fraught with uncertainty. Not only might the desires of the analyst take over, but jouissance, like joy,

44  Chapter 2

cannot be scheduled in advance. It appears that Lacan briefly tried to work through the necessary role of letting-​­be through his controversial remarks on supplementary or feminine jouissance, but he failed miserably and misogynistically. Feminine jouissance for Lacan is seen in opposition to the intentional phallic jouissance described above through the four discourses. Phallic jouis­ sance seeks to comprehend all of reality and bring it under control, but is unable, thus leaving a remainder, the surplus or objet petit a. We might be tempted to consider phallic jouissance the ideal for Lacan but he famously wrote that phallic jouissance is the “jouissance of the idiot” (1999, 81). As Wilson (2008) pithily summarizes, it is “essentially unsatisfactory, narcissistic, masturbatory, and ­idiotic—​­for male or female” (9). Feminine jouissance, though, breaks with the drive of phallic jouissance, it is the ­letting-​­be or what mystics and Heideggerians call releasement. Fem­ inine jouissance ­ex-​­ists in that it exists outside the symbolic realm and in­ creasingly in the realm of the real. It has the potential to envision a ­non-​­phallic understanding of speech, identity, and language, and thus could be crucial for breaking out of the symbolic realm, especially oppressive symbolic realms. As transcendent and ungraspable, feminine jouissance is frightening “to those who ‘know’ it” and it becomes a subject of dread or hatred for those pursuing phallic jouissance and those in the symbolic realm. It is an “intense, rapturous pleasure which women know and men fear” (Gallop 1984, 114, quoting Marks and Courtivron 1980, 95). There are several sketches of feminine jouissance in Lacan’s writings, but he is unable to adequately theorize a feminine jouissance that escapes the in­ tentional nature of phallic jouissance and thus in his works it fails to be very productive, or ultimately even very transgressive. For Lacan, jouissance can only be an intentional releasement for a goal or for someone. It is an “empty­ ing for ­an-​­Other.” This failure becomes most obvious in his unfortunate de­ scriptions of Bernini’s sculpture “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa.” St. Teresa’s own description of her ecstasies are quite dramatic and erotic: In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there ap­ peared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  45

possibly wish it to cease, nor is one’s soul then content with anything but God. This is not a physical, but a spiritual ­pain—​­though the body has some share in ­it—​­even a considerable share. (Teresa 1957, 210) Lacan’s brief description in his seminar is somewhat ­off-​­­the-​­cuff and possibly ­ eresa—​ tongue in cheek (see Liveley 2003), but still quite problematic: “Saint T y­ ou only have to go look at the Bernini statue in Rome to understand imme­ diately she’s coming, no doubt about it. And what is she enjoying, coming from? It’s clear that the essential testimony of the mystics is that of saying they experience it but know nothing about it. These mystical ejaculations are nei­ ther idle gossip nor mere verbiage, in fact they’re the best thing you can ­read—​­note, right at the bottom of the page, add to them Jacques Lacan’s Ecrits” (Lacan 1998, 70–71). Whether or not this is merely a glib aside, French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray (1985) was pissed and responds with ra­ pier wit: “ ‘Just go look at Bernini’s statue in Rome, you’ll see right away that St. Theresa is coming, there’s no doubt about it.’ In Rome? So far away? To look? At a statue? Of a saint? Sculpted by a man? What pleasure are we talking about? Whose pleasure? For where the pleasure of the Theresa in question is concerned, her own writings are perhaps more telling. But how can one ‘read’ them when one is a ‘man’? The production of ejaculations of all sorts, often prematurely emitted, makes him miss, in the desire for identification with the lady, what her own pleasure might be all about” (90–91). Irigaray wonders why Lacan would go to a male sculptor’s interpretation of Teresa’s experience, when Teresa wrote at length and beautifully on the topic. What does this ­male-​­centered speculation miss? To begin with, it is a silencing of Teresa’s voice as well as the voice of those women between Paris and Rome that could also elaborate on their experiences. Critically, the ­male-​­centered speculation ­ on-​­intentionality of feminine jouissance. For Lacan a cru­ fails to grasp the n cial question is “what is she enjoying, coming from?” For him, there must be an object, ­an-​­Other, that is making her climax. Indeed, Lacan could be miss­ ing the point by focusing on the climax. Lacan does not and perhaps cannot ask about the process that leads to and follows the scene. Finally, “Irigaray was not impressed by Lacan’s assertion that mystics such as Teresa said they expe­ rienced ecstasy but knew nothing about it” (Hayes 1999, 334). Such a move reduces the experience to a type of knowledge that emanates from another source, perhaps the symbolic realm of a master discourse or a father figure.

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Audre Lorde’s Erotic With Lacan providing only a clumsy account of feminine jouissance, we turn to Audre Lorde’s ­well-​­known writings on the erotic, and in subsequent chap­ ters I will also tap into Marcuse’s and Bataille’s writings on eros/eroticism. As with Lacan’s jouissance, Lorde’s erotics is imbricated from the start with sexual meanings. Lorde was a noted poet, writer, feminist, mother, teacher, lesbian in an in­ terracial marriage, and Black activist of Caribbean descent, who as a child was legally blind and spent much of her later years, as captured brilliantly on film ­ fro-​­Germans in Berlin. When presented (Schultz 2012), as an activist for A with her multifaceted identity at the beginning of an interview, she instruc­ tively insisted on adding the term “warrior” (Pache and Dackweiler 2004, 164). Indeed, Lorde’s very identity; or more properly, her balancing of and effortless shifting between, multiple identities is transgressive; by maintaining these dis­ parate and multiple identities she undoes the interpellations or synecdoches that are imposed by the system. She writes, “It has been very necessary and very generative for me to deal with all the aspects of who I am, and I’ve been saying this for a long time. I am not one piece of myself. I cannot be simply a Black person and not be a woman too, nor can I be a woman without being a lesbian” (Lorde 2004, 72). This multiple identity is generative and allows her to better tap into what she famously calls the erotic, a type of feminine joy that evades the misogyny and intentionality of Lacan’s formulations. Indeed, the various iterations of her multiple identities further undoes societal interpella­ tions. She, like all of us, is impossible to categorize completely. What is erotics and how does it fit with joy, awe, and jouissance? Erotics is an emotion, it is an affect, and it is a feeling. It is transgressive, like jouis­ sance, but it does not come from a phallic economy. That is, it cannot be contained by an emphasis on the desire to eliminate the surplus, that which has become abject. Instead, it is a tapping into the power of the abject, and opening to a new way of being against the oppression of the system. “Women have not been taught to respect the erotic urge, the place that is uniquely fe­ male. So, just as some Black people tend to reject Blackness because it has been termed inferior, we, as women, tend to reject our capacity for feeling, our ability to love, to touch the erotic, because it has been devalued” (Lorde 2004, 75; see Brooke Axtell’s discussion in Chapter 7). Erotics supplements phe­ nomenologies of awe that emphasize the perception of great beauty, the

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  47

sublime, and the ecstatic outside the self. Erotics as Lorde describes it, is an opening to the sublime of the self, especially the self that has been subsumed. Like awe, it is a powerful antidote to the overly rational society that Shaftes­ bury worried about (discussed in the next chapter), and against the overly grave society that was Nietzsche’s devil. Like Spinoza’s account of joy as ulti­ mate positive affect, the erotic has the power to radically change our capaci­ ties. However, it need not always be joyful as understood in common parlance. We might experience the erotic at a memorial or when exposed to a moving tribute like Elton John’s performance of “Candle in the Wind” for a friend or the feeling of solidarity and defiance felt at a Black Lives Matter conference such as the one we hosted at the University of Arizona in 2015. The erotic, as we will see below, can even be aroused by indignation. The erotic can be found in the most mundane and the most exalted of tasks: it can be found while “painting a back fence and writing a poem.” Lorde continues: “There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love” (Lorde 1984c, 58). Lorde takes seriously that the erotic can be experienced communally, especially among marginal­ ized communities. It is discovered among women “in our language, our his­ tory, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives” (Lorde 1984c, 55). Having tapped into the erotic, we can never be the same. It is a profound power that bequeaths a profound energy. We are affected! “It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recog­ nizing its power, in honor and ­self-​­respect we can require no less of ourselves” (Lorde 1984c, 54). Like the phenomenologies of joy developed by Izard, the erotic is refreshing and replenishing, it gives our life a renewed sense of pur­ pose. It “colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience” (Lorde 1984c, 57). Or as she begins her famous essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”: “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate it­ self, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change” (1984c, 53). We come to deeply understand, and be in tune with, ourselves, and others. This is an I­ -​­Thou relationship not only with the other, but with ourselves and the two are symbiotic. Our ­self-​­connection reminds us of the limitless capacities in ourselves and in others that transgresses the symbolic realm. Lorde writes, “That s­elf-​­connection shared is a measure of the joy

48  Chapter 2

which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife” (1984c, 57). This connection with others, because it points to a commonality that we share despite differences, breaks down boundaries created by the symbolic realm. This is the potential for a social erotics, this is a “sharing of joy” or sharing of erotics that taps into a subjugated power and has the ability to raise up the members of the erotic community together. Not surprisingly, the erotic is “feared” because of its inherent transgressiveness that resists ­co-​­optative inherent transgressions. It radically challenges what Lacan calls the father fig­ ure. “For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and ­self-​­affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and ­anti-​­erotic society” (Lorde 1984c, 59). Thus, the erotic fruitfully combines ethical joy and enthusiasm in ways that the Earl of Shaftesbury (discussed in Chapter 3) could never have considered. Lorde writes, “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, ­self-​ e­ ffacement, depression, ­self-​­denial” (1984c, 58). Lorde’s erotic community resists utilitarian relationships where one uses “another’s feelings as we would use a kleenex” (1984c, 58), and it resists any form of community without consent as that would devalue and stifle the erot­ ics within the other person. The erotic qua erotic is the opposite of abuse. The erotic lifts both parties. The social erotic lifts the community. The erotic though, with its roots in difference, is not akin to nationalism or an “us against them” attitude. It resists any type of hypnotic jouissance, where a new father figure is put in place, which would interpellate members of the community as inferior. It is finding connection, an ­anti-​­hegemonic connection that finds commonalities in that which has been subjugated, be it identities or feelings. It is both a subjectively felt experience and an objectively shared experience. The erotics is an increase in knowledge, but not the knowledge that seeks to comprehend and tame the empirical world. Instead, it is a tapping into “our deepest knowledge” by drawing upon that which belongs most to ourselves, that which resists interpellation by the symbolic realm. The erotic cannot be encapsulated by Lacan’s diagrams or in his sexist musings on Saint Teresa, or even the intentionality of the analyst. It is aleatory. To an extent, it can be fa­ cilitated but not planned.

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  49

Audre Lorde’s Anger

Anger surprisingly complements the erotics in Lorde’s writings. Anger and related terms such as outrage and resentment have had a checkered history in social theory. Partly this is due to the denigration of strong passions that are unbecoming of a liberal citizen. For instance, social theorist Martha Nuss­ baum recently concluded that “all anger is inappropriate” (2016, 271) because it leads to vengeance, retribution, and narcissism. Seneca, in the first century, held anger to be “the most hideous and frenzied of all the emotions,” “closed to reason” and “wholly violent” (quoted in Srinivasan 2016, 33). Nietzsche famously held that resentment is part and parcel of slave morality as it is the emotion of the lesser men who have missed their opportunity to act. Other thinkers have been keen to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate angers, but this is often done from a privileged position, serving to ostracize those who express inappropriate angers. Perhaps no thinker has done more to claim a rightful space for anger of oppressed people, and especially for women of color, than Audre Lorde. Lorde holds that banishing anger from the polis or distinguishing between appro­ priate and inappropriate angers is too often used to retain the status quo.12 Feeling anger, expressing anger, acting upon anger are all threats to the status quo. According to Sara Ahmed (2010), drawing upon Lorde’s works, those who express anger and do not “properly” appreciate current conditions are branded as “affect aliens” or what research psychologists call “affective devi­ ants.” Such branding reduces dissent. Anger is transgressive. It forcefully claims that the current conditions are unacceptable. To listen to my anger is to realize that current conditions are out of tune with something deep inside of me. Tapping into anger not only in­ structs us about current social conditions, it can, like erotics, inform us of who we ­really are, and how we should be treated. Anger is wrapped up in knowl­ edge and it moves us to act. As Lorde writes, “Anger is loaded with informa­ tion and energy” (1984b, 127). It is to tap into the erotic, to imagine a different world. No wonder anger frightens. When harnessed “for corrective surgery,” anger is an “approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees” (Lorde 1984b, 130). Oppressed peoples can draw on lifetimes of anger for strength and resolve. As Lorde (1984b) writes, “Every woman has a ­well-​­stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being” (127) Power structures though do not respond

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well to the anger of oppressed peoples. Power structures must conspire to make oppressed peoples fearful of expressing anger. “For women raised to fear, too often anger threatens annihilation” (131) because of backlash from patriarchal power, who will further marginalize such individuals painting them as irrational (or inappropriate in Nussbaum’s work), killjoys, unappre­ ciative, less than human, or less than citizens. Lorde, with her multimodal identity and through tapping into the erotics as to who she ­really was, has made anger a sword to wield against oppression. “I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing.” But when harnessed and expressed, anger can teach us a lot about where folks ­really stand. “My anger and your attendant fears are spotlights that can be used for growth in the same way.” Anger and its re­ sponse shows “who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies” (Lorde 1984b, 124–127). Lorde wrote much about anger in the context of racial tensions within the feminist movements of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Women’s move­ ments in the 1960s and 1970s honored and sought insights into anger through consciousness raising, but rarely did they deal with the anger between groups of women. As a Black, lesbian, feminist, Lorde felt marginalized within the women’s movement, and when she expressed anger at other feminists, she was marginalized even more. White feminists responded to her anger with defen­ siveness or guilt, neither of which were very productive. She documents the everyday racisms that she experienced in the mostly White women’s movement in her keynote talk at the National Women’s Stud­ ies Association (NWSA) conference in 1981, as well as the deep fear that White feminists felt when confronted with Black women’s anger. To listen to anger is to be challenged, to have one’s place in the sun called into question. Patiently listening to anger is especially difficult for activists. When those who devote much of their time fighting for social justice are even tangential targets for anger, they feel undervalued and threatened, and they often respond with guilt or resentment or anger (cf. MacLachlan 2010, 430). While anger, espe­ cially from women of color, is too often labeled as inappropriate, ­ill-​­timed, and defeating key alliances, for Lorde it is edifying and generative. “When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar” (1984b, 131). Patiently listening to anger, and connecting with the deep pain of another, teaches us a “second reality” that had previously escaped our understanding. This is not just knowl­

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  51

edge of anger, but calling into question our assumptive worlds. Lorde writes, “I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions under­ lining our lives” (Lorde 1984b, 127). Lorde is cognizant of her relative privilege as a renowned poet and profes­ sor. She too has something to learn by listening to other women’s anger, espe­ cially when she is partially culpable for their anger. These include other women of color who have had different journeys in dealing with societal op­ pressions. Lorde’s multiple identities point to the many ways that she can be oppressed and the multiple ways that she can contribute to the oppression of other women. She graphically explains: What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face? What woman’s terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of s­ elf-​ ­scrutiny? I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university. If their full bellies make me fail to rec­ ognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose children do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children because her insides are rotted from home abortions and sterilization; if I fail to recognize the lesbian who chooses not to have children, the woman who remains closeted because her homophobic community is her only life support, the woman who chooses silence instead of another death, the woman who is terrified lest my anger trigger the explosion of hers; if I fail to recognize them as other faces of myself, then I am contrib­ uting not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mu­ tual empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or for further separation. I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is anyone of you. (Lorde 1984b, 132) In the poignant poem, “Who Said It Was Simple,” Lorde describes the increasing complexity of fighting against interlocking oppressions. She begins with “There are so many roots to the tree of anger / that sometimes the branches shatter / before they bear.” Lorde expresses her anger as an outsider among White feminists because it is also cast by race and sexuality, among other things. The weight of all these oppressions can break the tree before they

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are all addressed. In this poem, she observes feminists at a coffee shop before a march complaining about their “help.” They are oblivious to the ­light-​ s­ kinned Black counterman who serves the White women before a Black cus­ tomer, the White women oblivious to their many privileges. As she looks back at herself in the final stanza, she wonders: “and sit here wondering / which me will survive / all these liberations.” Lorde wonders which of her selves will remain unrecognized by the many liberatory struggles and implies that she might be called on to sacrifice part of her identity in order to fit in with the liberatory struggle. Even if they are successful, she will not be free. But the results of the struggle are u ­ nknown—​­they cannot be predicted. Since anger from oppressed people is usually labeled as inappropriate or wrongheaded and then dismissed as potentially violent, Lorde feels compelled to juxtapose the anger of the oppressed with both hatred and violence. Despite the backlash from the privileged in society, the threat does not come from righteous anger, but from the hatred that oppresses. Anger is an appropriate response to oppression, to current social conditions. “Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change” (Lorde 1984b, 129). Hatred’s death and destruction can be quotidian and interper­ sonal such as Lorde’s moving description of the hatred etched on a White woman’s contorted face as she had to sit next to the ­pre-​­­school-​­age Audre Lorde on a crowded subway (1984a, 147–148). Hatred can also be mobilized on a grand scale, even if its roots are interpersonal. “It is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomizes our daughters and our earth” (Lorde 1984b, 133). Lorde’s most a­ nger-​­filled poem, “Power,” was drafted in seething rage at racism, misogyny, and violence shielded by the color of law in a famous inci­ ­ en-​­­year-​­old African American Clifford Glover was dent in New York City. T walking with his father in New York City in 1973 when they were approached by two undercover police officers. In fear of being robbed, Clifford and his father ran away. Patrolman Thomas Shea shot Clifford at least two times, claiming that Clifford had a gun. The killing led to ­large-​­scale protests against police violence and discrimination. While driving, Lorde heard of the ensuing verdict finding Thomas Shea innocent in the shooting. Lorde pulled over and in rage she tried to capture her emotions in a poem. She dreams that she is

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  53

“trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds” where the “blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders is the only liquid for miles” (Lorde 1997, 215). Lost in this desert Lorde is struggling “to make power out of hatred and destruction.” The next stanza eschews verse for a lucid and damning account of the main facts of the case: A policeman who shot down a ten year old in Queens stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and there are tapes to prove it. At his trial this policeman said in his own defense “I didn’t notice the size nor nothing else only the color.” And there are tapes to prove that, too. (Lorde 1997, 215) She ends with a thought experiment of what would happen if she or any op­ pressed person would respond to the killing and acquittal with poisonous hatred and violence. What if she were to attack an ­eighty-​­­five-​­­year-​­old White woman? A Greek chorus would declare the White woman to be innocent, and White society would be confirmed in their judgment about African Ameri­ cans, the Other: “what beasts they are” (Lorde 1997, 216). For the oppressed, anger cannot risk turning to hatred or violence. Recently, Sara Ahmed (2010) has found inspiration in Lorde’s writings to further extol the important role that anger can play for oppressed peoples. Most interesting for this project is her concomitant critique of the happiness industrial complex that preaches that we all should just be happy. Happiness marginalizes. Even the mere presence of an unhappy figure such as the “angry black woman” (67), the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, or the melancholy migrant can serve as a downer for those who want to be content in their hap­ piness/privilege. Such unhappy figures break the happy mood of familiar in­ stitutions like the family, groups of friends, and the larger society. These figures disappoint and so they are further othered and further culpable be­ cause of their stance that questions existing arrangements. Their righteous anger when expressed further casts them as abject, as those who just do not get it. For Lorde and Ahmed anger is not to be feared or to be silenced, it is a perfectly appropriate response to oppressive social conditions. This righteous anger though, in a similar fashion as erotics, can be generative because it can help imagine a different future. As Ahmed writes, “Affect aliens can be creative:

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not only do we want the wrong things, not only do we embrace possibilities that we have been asked to give up, but we create life worlds around these wants” (218). In an essay written two years after the NWSA address that called out White feminists, Lorde tempers her enthusiasm for righteous anger, pointing out its inherent limitations; namely, that it is an incomplete knowledge that can be dangerous by itself, even potentially turning into hatred. “Anger can corrode the self (like ‘a pool of acid’), can mask pain and fear, and always fo­ cuses on past hate and harms, not a future vision” (Olson 2011, 302–303). Lorde had to “learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do not tear us apart” (1984b, 129). When anger is “harnessed” and “articulate(d) with preci­ sion” (1984b, 131), anger complements erotics. It is reaching down into the depths of our being to claim a new identity, and its effects when channeled correctly can be immense. Anger, like erotics, can tear asunder assumptive worlds. It is a type of ­rights-​­claiming with force behind the words. It is a way, often the only productive way, to express erotics, the common shared energy. Erotics provides resources within each of us, provides us with a shared vision. By reaching down into ourselves and tapping into both anger and erotics, we can jointly see common enemies, common oppression, and common bonds. Banishing anger, erotics, and joy therefore strips marginalized peoples of their most important tools for connecting, for presenting claims, and for imagining a different future. Social Erotics

Several scholars have drawn on Lorde’s erotics to more fully develop “social erotics.”13 For instance, Chela Sandoval (2002) sketches a dissident globaliza­ tion that resists the ­co-​­opting forces of economic and political globalization with their “true vanilla erotics” by drawing upon social erotics built on “love drawn from mythical and forbidden territories c­ ome-​­­to-​­life” (20–21). This is an erotics engaged in “reading power everywhere and always,” that “willingly inhabit[s] an eccentric consciousness,” and works “­toward the goal of egalitar­ ian redistributions of sexed, gendered, raced, physiological, social, cultural, and/or economic powers” (27). In short, this is a transgressive force built upon love that does not reduce alterity and is constantly alert to c­ o-​­optative inherent transgressions. Jafari Allen (2011) develops and applies a very similar conception of Lorde’s erotics, which he calls “transcendent erotics and politics” (3) in his wonderful ethnography of Black Cubans’ “­self-​­making.” This is an erotics

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  55

“ranging from momentary transcendence in flashes of s­ elf-​­awareness, love relationships, or communitas, to transgressions of the hegemonic rules of a particular public, to the potential transformation of standard practices of the public” (3; cf. Sheller 2012). His i­n-​­depth ethnography, a deep hanging out through participant observation, shows how a range of folks who are outside, basically abject to, the Cuban system, such as transgender performers, sex workers, and lesbians, are able to reclaim private and public spaces for erotic ­self-​­making through dance, support groups, and work. These Black Cubans are able to “assert their bodies and minds not only as instruments of pleasure and conduits to joy and perhaps transcendent connection to a beloved com­ munity but also for mundane purposes that may merely make it easier for an individual to live day to day” (94). These practices of social erotics are expres­ sions of a positive set of human rights “like bodily integrity, freedom from harm, freedom to fantasize, and so on” as well as “a process of making inten­ tional interventions in a potentially malleable world” (95). Carrillo Rowe (2012), in her discussion of erotic pedagogy, describes so­ cial erotics in terms very similar to those used by St. Teresa. While St. Teresa describes a penetration that removes her entrails leaving her “utterly con­ sumed by the great love of God,” erotic pedagogy is a splitting open of “en­ fleshed knowledges.” “ ‘You must plunge your fingers into your navel, with your two hands split open.’ As this work becomes the grounding of your spir­ ‘gills grow on your itual, intellectual, emotional, and political ­practice—​­ breasts’ because, you find, you can breathe underwater’ ” (1047, citing Anz­ aldúa 1987, 186). When not reduced by the pornographic gaze of the male analyst or compelled to explain itself in the language of the symbolic realm, this experience transgresses the pleasure principle and fundamentally affects the body to the point that one “can breathe underwater.” Social erotics rein­ forces and expands Spinoza’s insight that we do not yet know what the body is capable of.

Conclusion This chapter has explored some of the exciting ways that positive emotions/ affects like joy are being rethought in several different discourses. Joy as a radical affect has the power to radically transgress hegemonic symbolic ­realms—​­misogyny, racism, ­colonialism—​­including the hegemonic discourses that have developed in political theory and human rights.

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As more theorists take on the task of understanding and disrupting hege­ monic discourses, the power of such discourses seems to be ­all-​­encompassing, always quickly filling in any cracks in their edifices, throwing us off the tracks of real transgression through sanctioned or inherent transgressions, and sub­ stituting what Chela Sandoval called “true vanilla erotics” for what Jafari Allen called “transcendent erotics and politics.” Even human rights eschews joy and transgression and creates itself as a human rights principle not to be sur­ passed, invested with vestiges of patriarchal and institutional authority. ­Individuals—​­especially the m ­ arginalized—​­are often left with our arms out­ stretched wondering is there any avenue that can break down “the system” to start anew. Joy, I contend, invites us to keep our arms outstretched and wel­ come a powerful affect that breaks through the hegemonic discourses. This phenomenology ends with several nagging questions or aporiai that need to be considered in any joyful human rights. The first set of questions acknowledges that human rights are connected to human rights abuses not only historically but ontologically, and thus asks whether joy can provide an alternative moral guide for human rights. Most understandings of joy or jouissance involve a transgression of hegemonic normative orders, but does joy provide some sort of ethical direction? Does joy have enough of a moral center in and of itself? How do we differentiate types and experiences of joy, including what I label sinister joy? One cannot talk about joy in human rights work without acknowledging that human rights abusers often experi­ ence something akin to joy; joy has been embraced by some of the nastiest regimes in history. So, how are we to distinguish authentic joy and sinister joy? This distinction is clearly important and yet it rarely has been directly considered. Human rights work already deals with the most extreme of human feel­ ings, emotions, and affects, and I am arguing for consciously bringing joy into the mix with its potential to radically alter our capabilities. Both joy and sin­ ister joy can cause an overwhelming affect on the body. They will move the body to act. The body will never be the same. Its potentialities are substantially altered. Spinoza’s phrase that we still do not know what a body can do applies to both authentically joyous occasions and those of the greatest evil. It is al­ most unimaginable to consider that someone could feel compelled to dance the ­cha-​­cha when revisiting the place where he killed hundreds of people with his bare hands, as we see in the chilling documentary The Act of Killing. Joy and sinister joy involve a transgression of the symbolic realm. They involve a fundamental r­ e-​­questioning of moral values and laws. From the phenomenol­

A Phenomenology of Joy as Transgressive Affect  57

ogy above we can conjecture that sinister joy will more likely be marked by epistemic closure, that of disregarding other discourses, and of acting with certainty. Joy will be more likely marked by openness or awe at being, what Kant called the sublime. A second set of questions revolves around the pitfalls of attributing joy to victims and martyrs. Ascribing joy to victims can be a way of deeming some­ one to be “happy enough” and to thus reduce their suffering; that they are experiencing all the happiness they need or are likely to accrue. Ascribing joy fuels good conscience (and donations). Consider the amount of ink wasted over centuries declaring the poor or even slaves as happy. In such cases, we can rest easy believing we have done enough for the Other. Such a ploy lessens our culpability for their suffering and aids in complacency. It is to engage in a colonial project of good conscience. Similarly, is joy necessarily exclusionary? Feminist theorist Sara Ahmed (2010) has forcefully argued that ubiquitous calls for us to be happy cast a negative light on those who have legitimate complaints, such as feminists who are labeled “killjoys” because they fail to understand how great a society mod­ ern consumer society is, and should just be happy. Feminists and their cri­ tiques are “othered” through the heralding of happiness. In the concluding chapter of The Promise of Happiness, Ahmed hints, with reservations, that joy, ­ pen-​­endedness, might escape the limits of happiness (214–215), but with its o is joy, as I describe it here, transcendent enough to disrupt such social norms to resist this othering process? Ahmed also claims a critical role for anger, which she sees as being neu­ tered by the happiness turn in the social sciences. As we saw above, Audre Lorde’s writings provide a useful framework to show the somewhat surprising connection between joy and anger. Joy and anger can interact to produce a positive productive feeling from the depths of the person, that “can be good and even virtuous, both an emotional ‘commitment to certain moral stan­ dards’ and, simultaneously, a testimony to that commitment” (R. Wallace 1994, 69, quoted in MacLachlan 2010, 422). This odd coupling will be further explored in Chapter 7, where I discuss human rights survivors, Buddhist joy, and expressive arts therapy. This connection offers perhaps the most promis­ ing way to distinguish joy from happiness. While joy can be tethered to anger, happiness and anger seem inimical. Finally, what is the relationship between the loss of self or kenosis that is an integral part of joyful experiences as well as a hallmark of much recent contemporary ethical thought, and the attempts by human rights abusers to

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wipe out the selves (and lives) of others? Seen from the obverse point of view, how does joy inform the demands of human rights victims who claim that they too are human and have dignity that must be respected? Each will involve a loss of the self, and subsequent ­re-​­founding of the self, but what this looks like will differ between authentic and sinister joy.

CHAPTER 3

Whither Joy?

In the first chapter, I laid out compelling statistical and anecdotal evidence demonstrating the elision of joy from current human rights discourses. Such a stark disconnect between joy and human rights, especially in today’s anar­ chical, rhyzomatic world where all is interconnected, cannot be mere happen­ stance. This chapter examines significant historical, philosophical, and legal factors that have led to the near total absence of joy from human rights dis­ course and the almost exclusive focus on abuses. We begin by journeying back to the origins of human rights to search for fundamental causes for this dis­ connect, and we will be on the lookout for missed opportunities to connect the two. I also begin to consider the potential risks inherent in mixing the two. Perhaps there are good reasons for not even considering linking human rights and joy. This genealogy takes us to the heart of the liberal project. We find that in the painfully long eighteenth century, it is not just joy that is elided but the passions in general. Liberal theories of rights were most often developed as a bulwark against the passions and the unconstrained nature of those infused with passions, especially individuals and groups supposedly unhinged from reason, such as those branded as religious and political zealots. While “joy” per se was rarely explicitly considered in the philosophical and political tracts of the time, though it was discussed widely in theological sermons and trea­ tises (Potkay 2007, 73–94), its fellow traveler, “enthusiasm,” was subject to considerable debate and scrutiny, especially as religious and civil wars contin­ ued to haunt Europe.1 This chapter will mostly detail the stories of enthusiasm and humor, though I will discuss the relationship between joy and enthusiasm in the context of Shaftesbury’s writings. For now, let me say that all three are

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fellow travelers. Joy is most helpfully defined as a type of enthusiasm; both point to something that is beyond rationality and they have a profound affect on the individual and the community. Humor has also been tied to joy, but it need not be, as many of our most ­awe-​­ful moments do not involve humor per se. However, humor as will be described below is crucial in distinguishing types of enthusiasm and can be a major component of joy. Human rights were forged in a time of dread and have been polished over centuries in response to notorious abuses. These historical events conspire with theoretical justifications to almost completely elide joy from rights dis­ courses. The passions have periodically resurged and played a larger part in political and rights discourses, but the passions have gotten carried away, as Locke and other liberal theorists warned, and rights discourses have had to serve as bulwarks against the passions, such as during and after World War II. These political labeling moments are mutually reinforcing. Liberal, rational thought is able to blame both nonrational historical events and passionate philosophical currents for the abuses of such extreme political moments as the Reign of Terror, Nazism, China’s Cultural Revolution, Indonesia’s ­anti-​ C ­ ommunist purges in 1965–1966, and others. On the other hand, proponents of the passions have their own punching dolls wherein Western rationality appears to run amok, such as the routinized butchery of World War I or the bureaucratization of Stalinist and Nazi death camps. Recently, passionate, often even joyful, activists have railed against the hyperrationality of the glo­ balized neoliberal market system, which has been implicated in a wide range of structural violences (poverty, income inequality, racism, patriarchy, climate stress) that are human rights abuses in and of themselves and simultaneously fuel a panoply of other abuses. More fundamentally, centuries of finger pointing by both sides of the ­rationality-​­passions divide has meant that political and philosophical argu­ ments often lean heavily upon the rhetoric of human rights abuses, which serve as a cudgel to be wielded against political and philosophical opponents. While proponents on both sides of the ­rationality-​­passions debates can point to various human rights triumphs, such successes are not as persuasive, espe­ cially on the visceral level (incidentally, the arena of passions), as pointing to the ­blood-​­stained guillotine, ­no-​­man’s land, or the gas chambers. ­Places—​ ­even entire countries, people, and time ­periods—​­are reduced to synecdoches that are synonymous with atrocities: Verdun, Srebrenica, Siberia, Auschwitz, Dresden, Sabra and Shatila, Rwanda, Eastern Congo, Robespierre, Nanjing, 9/11, and so on.2 Human rights abuses consecrate a place as hallowed, freezing

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the abuses in time and packaging them to be wielded in rhetorical arguments at a later moment. Human rights abuses seem to haunt all philosophical and political discussions and only stubbornly give up their position at center stage. Legal theorist Alan Dershowitz (2005) in Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origin of Rights even takes the next logical step and renounces philosophical or religious arguments for the foundations of human rights to claim that human rights abuses by themselves should serve as the foundation for legal rights. We are, Dershowitz argues, more likely to agree that the Ho­ locaust or slavery is wrong, than to agree that a divine being, or some other ultimate arche, undergirds human rights.3 Dershowitz’s theory is perhaps the logical endpoint in connecting abuses and human rights, but it has an ­all-​­­too-​ r­ eady accomplice in a hegemonic way of philosophizing built upon the dread of the passions.

The Lost Joy of Philosophy Philosophy begins in awe (thaumazein, see Plato, Theaetetus 155d) and ends in cold analytics. The general tenor of joy is the opposite of philosophical analysis as it develops in the “Western” world. Joy is a forgetting of the self, a uniting with others in the world, the height of the passions. It is usually more associated with the irrationality of mystics, lunatics, and blasphemers than with lone philosophers lost in thought. The relatively few major philosophers who have embraced ­joy—​­Spinoza, Foucault, Lacan, Bataille, Deleuze, Guat­ ­ ut—​­are mostly skeptical of liberalism and human tari, and Nietzsche stand o rights, and are handled with extreme caution by human rights scholars and activists. On the other hand, ­so-​­called philosophers of rights such as Locke, Kant, and Rawls have mostly embraced rights from a cold, abstract, analytical posi­ tion. Human rights theorizing has mostly relied on a deductive (armchair) type of philosophizing aimed at creating an objective science of politics founded in rationality. This epistemological component is crucial as early, and even some recent, rights theorists craved scientific certainty based upon rea­ son, which for Locke and other liberal thinkers had to be uncontaminated by the passions. This bracketing also has a historical component, as the earliest rights theorists were trying to build a rational politics to counter the often extreme religious and political passions of their time that were tied in their minds to endless strife. This stereotype has been so influential that it will be

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helpful to journey back to the Enlightenment beginnings of rights to under­ stand why the passions have been forced underground and whether there is any basis for igniting the passions in human rights work.4 John Locke and the Long Eighteenth Century’s ­Pooh-​­Poohing of Enthusiasm

Perhaps the paragon example of dismissing joy and other positive emotions in early liberal thought is found in the lively debates about enthusiasm and enthusiasts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Enthusiasm in an­ cient Greek meant to be infused or inspired by God, and during the English Civil War in the 1650s it came to mean excessive religious zeal at the expense of rationality and was applied to groups such as the Levellers and Puritans, as well as being mobilized during various witch hunts. In the later seventeenth century, it became a ­wide-​­ranging and rather vague epithet that was liberally applied to liberal groups who sought political and religious reform. The de­ bates between enthusiasts and a­ nti-​­enthusiasts were fueled by immediate po­ litical concerns: the rise in political and theological power of enthusiastic religious sects, civil wars, and large movements of religious enthusiasts seek­ ing safe haven. While Locke and other liberal thinkers frame their critiques of enthusiasm mostly in philosophical, especially epistemological, terms, these historical events serve as a palpable backdrop to their arguments, just as the religious wars and persecutions in England and elsewhere were major factors at the inception of Enlightenment political thought a generation or two be­ fore. These very present historical crises lend weight to the claim that John Locke’s political thought is a philosophy of dread (cf. Chaplin 2001). His po­ litical thought including his theories of rights, especially as developed in the Second Treatise of Government, is commonly framed as anxiety over the pre­ cariousness of individual property, but he also appears to suffer from a dread of class disorder, religious disorder, and epistemological disorder.5 For instance, Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding with its epistemological critique of enthusiasm drives an early wedge between reason on the one hand, and revelation and enthusiasm on the other. For Locke, re­ liance on religious enthusiasm or revelation for knowledge claims fails episte­ mologically because it is inherently tautological and politically, it is dangerous because it undermines the stable political order. “For, if I mistake not, these men receive it for true, because they presume God revealed it. Does it not, then, stand them upon to examine upon what grounds they presume it to be a revelation from God? or else all their confidence is mere presumption: and

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this light they are so dazzled with is nothing but an ignis fatuus [illusion], that leads them constantly round in this circle; It is a revelation, because they firmly believe it; and they believe it, because it is a revelation” (Locke 1690, chap. 19, para. 10). Thus, revelation is anathema to knowledge because it eschews any grounding in reason. Of course, Locke will approve of divinely inspired books such as the Bible when they are supported by both faith and reason. Revelation on its own draws Locke’s ire and leads to his unfortunate comparison between revelation and blindness: “He that takes away Reason to make way for Reve­ lation, puts out the Light of both, and does much what the same, as if he would persuade a Man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote Light of an invisible Star by a Telescope” (1690, chap. 19, para. 4). Revelation and enthusiasm are equated with blindness to distinguish them from the En­ lightenment project. Further, the enthusiast is unable to justify himself in the polis to other rational beings; the enthusiast “does not know and cannot ac­ count for how he has arrived at particular revelatory knowledges” (J. Rosen­ berg 2010, 475). Locke’s dismissal of enthusiasm clears the ground for him to build up his liberal political thought between individuals who follow Reason, what he calls the law of nature. For him, rights are ­self-​­evident, at least for rational beings (cf. Simmons 2011), those who follow the correct reason and not enthusiasm; those who have not put their eyes out by relying too heavily on revelation.6 With this exclusionary thinking, it should not be too surpris­ ing that Locke can argue for the denial of rights to supposedly inferior groups such as indigenous peoples and slaves, or those of lower classes who were supposedly more drawn to enthusiastic sects (cf. Potkay 2007, 6–7). They are beyond rationality and thus not qualified for a speech community based upon Reason (cf. Rancière 1999). However, as we shall see below, for Hume and Shaftesbury and other defenders of enthusiasm, it is the overly reasoning sub­ ject who is not critical enough for the spirit of liberty. They will argue that we need those who embrace enthusiasm, those who will call the rational order into question, as it is the uncritical following of reason that leads to slavish subjects. Locke’s Dread of Joyful Martyrs and the Birth of Religious Toleration

In addition to Locke’s political theory founded in the precariousness of private property and epistemology grounded in a palpable dread of enthusiasm, allow me to foreshadow part of Chapter 6 by discussing Locke’s dread of joyful martyrs and its relationship to his eventual defense of religious toleration. We

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start by exploring a counterfactual: would Locke have embraced toleration if the martyrs were not so joyful? Besides the Bible, John Foxe’s monumental Book of Martyrs was perhaps the most read and w ­ ell-​­known book of Locke’s time.7 The overarching lesson of Foxe’s account is that religious persecution often backfires as those deemed to be heretics embrace, often joyfully, their persecution be it imprisonment, torture, or execution. Instead of stamping out religious fervor, persecution enhances it. Public executions, such as those at Tyburn outside London, were festive occasions for spectators and victims alike. Indeed, they appear to have been arenas where the passions were very much in play, with many onlookers being converted by witnessing the enjoyment of the supposed victims. Ac­ counts abound of dismayed authorities witnessing what they had hoped would be bloodthirsty spectators actually showing compassion for the ­condemned—​­even drinking a toast with the martyr Joyce Lewes on her way to the pyre (Cunningham 2012). Foxe (2011) writes, She was brought to the place of execution. And because the place was far off, and the throng of the people great, and she not acquainted with the fresh air, (being so long in prison,) one of her friends sent a mes­ senger to the sheriff ’s house for some drink; and after she had prayed three several times, in the which prayer she desired God most instantly to abolish the idolatrous mass, and to deliver this realm from papistry; (at the end of which prayers the most part of the people cried, Amen; yea, even the sheriff that stood hard by her, ready to cast her in the fire for not allowing the mass, at this her prayer said with the rest of the people, Amen;) when, she had thus prayed, she took the cup into her hands, saying, “I drink to all them that unfeignedly love the gospel of Jesus Christ, and wish for the abolishment of papistry.” When she had drunk, they that were her friends drank also. After that a great num­ ber, specially the women of that town, did drink with her; which after­ ward were put to open penance in the church by the cruel papists, for drinking with her. When she was tied to the stake with a chain, she showed such a cheer­ fulness that it passed man’s reason, being so well colored in her face, and being so patient, that the most part of them that had honest hearts did lament, and even with tears bewail the tyranny of the papists. When the fire was set upon her, she neither struggled nor stirred, but

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only lifted up her hands t­ owards heaven, being dead very speedily: for the ­under-​­sheriff at the request of her friends had provided such stuff, by the which she was suddenly despatched out of this miserable world. (bk. 12, sec. 21) Instead of reaffirming the authority of the state religion, the spectators often came to question their own faith and even the justness of the state (cf. Ishay 2004, 89). The state appeared powerless, even manipulated, by executing those who desired martyrdom. Such a carnivalesque atmosphere with passions in play (cf. Foucault 1979, chap. 2) must have been abhorrent to Locke’s sensibil­ ities, especially his desire for order and for rational justifications for political actions. Not surprisingly, one of Locke’s most famous arguments for toleration is that persecution is not effective. Matters of the soul cannot be imposed ef­ fectively by the persecutor.8 Nonetheless Locke was not always an advocate for toleration of religious differences. He went through a ­well-​­documented conversion of his own on this issue. In his letters and unpublished essays of the 1660s, Locke was an authoritarian defender of the state against radical religious views and yet by 1689, he published one of the most thorough and influential defenses of reli­ gious toleration. Tracing this evolution of Locke’s views further reveals the connection between his defense of toleration and his sense of dread, especially of the passions. In the years leading up to Locke’s greatest writings, including those works that lay the philosophical justifications for religious toleration, Parliament re­ acted to an uptick in religious fervor with a series of harsh laws known collec­ tively as the Clarendon Code (passed between 1661 and 1665) which, inter alia, mandated the use of the Book of Common Prayer and banned meetings of five or more people for worship who were not members of the Anglican Church. Notably, France too was witnessing a new wave of ­anti-​­toleration with Louis XIV’s revocation of the tolerant Edict of Nantes. This revocation gave official imprimatur to severe persecution of Protestants, including the destruction of Huguenot churches, the closing of Protestant schools, and at­ tempts at forced conversions of Protestant leaders. Thousands fled France, many to Holland where Locke was also a refugee. Famously, Locke befriended many of the Huguenots and closely followed their plight throughout the 1670s and 1680s (see Marshall 2006; Savonius 2006). In the midst of these historical events and political debates, Locke wrote his influential treatise on religious toleration in 1685, which, in my (weakened)

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eyes, attempted to do the same thing for religious passions as he did for polit­ ical passions in the Second Treatise on Government (see Tate 2009). Locke’s dread focused on mob rule, destruction of private property, and destruction of civil society.9 Persecution, however, would not advance his ends, only un­ dermine them. Only reason or light in Locke’s metaphor can lead to conver­ sion: “It is only light and evidence that work a change in men’s opinion; and that light can in no manner proceed from corporal sufferings, or any other outward penalties” (Locke 1991, 19). Thus, conflicting religious views must be tolerated in order to advance political stability. Indeed, political stability for Locke will allow light or Reason to work most effectively and thus will more likely lead to conversions. For political, epistemological, and now religious reasons, Locke will tolerate almost any belief as long as it does not undermine the political order. “The care of each man’s soul, and of the things of heaven, which neither does belong to the commonwealth nor can be subjected to it, is left entirely to man’s self ” (Locke 1991, 44).10 Thus, religious toleration is yet another justification to guarantee rights for the people to live as they like. The importance of political order in Locke’s argument for toleration is further shown by Locke’s refusal to extend toleration to Catholicism, because the An­ glican political order was ultimately based upon the sovereignty of the state tied to the Anglican Church and could not answer to another temporal leader. Locke’s views on rights, including the right to practice nonconforming religions, were soon ensconced in English law when Parliament passed the English Bill of Rights in 1689 with its prohibition of “cruel and unusual pun­ ishments” as well as the Toleration Act of 1689, which lifted many of the pun­ ishments for dissent especially for nonconformist Protestants. The political and legal victory of Locke’s justification for the liberal state, religious tolera­ tion, and civil political rights, also legally and politically enshrined Locke’s foundation for human rights based upon the dread of extreme passions such as enthusiasm and joy. Locke’s critique of enthusiasm in the name of political order has been embraced or tacitly accepted by most liberal political theorists to the present day, and led to the near complete elimination of passions from political theory (see Walzer 2002).11 Hall (2002) rightly claims, “as with justice, the central liberal goals of impartiality, rule of law, and tolerance are all conceived as reason’s attempt to protect against passion” (733). Martha Nussbaum (2016) in her discussion of the proper passions for the rational liberal citizen con­ cludes that “all anger is inappropriate” (271). That rationality has become the minimum condition for politics and rights can perhaps be seen most clearly

Whither Joy?  67

by asking the rhetorical questions: how often in a liberal polis is someone denied full rights because they were not passionate enough? Which should be followed by: how many have been denied full rights, deemed to be s­emi-​ c­ itizens (see Cohen 2009), because they are not considered rational enough? Of course, the lack of adequate or appropriate rationality has been one of the chief criteria for withholding rights from women, felons, those with supposed mental disabilities (infamously labeled imbeciles by Oliver Wendell Holmes in Buck v. Bell 1927), children, and others.

Hume’s and Shaftesbury’s Defenses of Enthusiasm Locke’s work though was just the first major volley in the ongoing battle be­ tween reason and the passions, which included several spirited defenses of enthusiasm, as well as those who sought a middle ground between the pas­ sions and reason. Hume’s Faint Praise of Enthusiasm

Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) simultaneously expanded upon Locke’s critique of enthusiasm, and tempered it by juxtaposing enthusi­ asm with superstition. Hume’s writings also point to how enthusiasm could play a significant role in human rights discourse by challenging overly rational political orders. The mind of the enthusiast, according to Hume and in line with Locke’s critique and Lacan’s discussion of jouissance, thinks great things which are beyond the realm of the rational mind: “A full range is given to the fancy in the invisible regions or world of spirits, where the soul is at liberty to indulge itself in every imagination, which may best suit its present taste and disposi­ tion” (Hume 1987, 74). Enthusiasts, especially the religious enthusiasts of his time, claim a special relationship with the divine, and thus can challenge worldly powers. This is not Locke’s use of reason to connect with the divine to tap into natural law, but an emotion unhinged from reason. Hume admits that “the imagination swells with great but confused conceptions, to which no sublunary beauties or enjoyments can correspond” (Hume 1987, 74) and that such religious or superstitious enthusiasm gives the individual overconfidence as he believes he is touched in a special way by the divine. Here again, we see the blindness trope, with Hume writing, “In a little time, the inspired person comes to regard himself as a distinguished favourite of the Divinity; and when

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this frenzy once takes place, which is the summit of enthusiasm, every whimsy is consecrated: Human reason, and even morality are rejected as fallacious guides: And the fanatic madman delivers himself over, blindly, and without reserve, to the supposed illapses of the spirit, and to inspiration from above. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of ENTHUSIASM” (1987, 74). An embrace of enthusiasm, according to Hume, has a pernicious effect on politics. The enthusiast eschews current trappings of politics and religion. They buck the current order with their “contempt of forms, ceremonies, and traditions” and in “presumptuous pride and confidence” reject any human mediation with the divine and thus, “it naturally begets the most extreme resolutions” (Hume 1987, 76–77). Faint praise indeed! Hume equates the enthusiast with a madman and enthusiasm with extremism and presumptuousness. And, in enthusiasm, “the imagination swells with great but confused conceptions.” But, instead of seek­ ing to banish enthusiasm as does Locke, Hume sees enthusiasm as having some redeemable qualities. First, the dangers of enthusiasm are naturally tem­ pered as they are ­short-​­lived. It “produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust them­ selves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before” (Hume 1987, 77). One wonders though if having the resulting calmness and serenity is worth enduring “the most cruel disorders in human society.” De­ spite this risk, Hume sees enthusiasm at least preferable to superstition, which creates tame groups of individuals primed for slavery. Recall that the Catholic Church with its “Popism” was Hume’s prime example of superstition. “Super­ stition, on the contrary, steals in gradually and insensibly; renders men tame and submissive; is acceptable to the magistrate, and seems inoffensive to the people” (Hume 1987, 78). Part of the problem with superstition is its uncriti­ cal nature; that it does not reflect back on existing social structures, which enthusiasm does. Thus, Hume can conclude that, “superstition is an enemy to civil liberty, and enthusiasm a friend to it”: because “enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition, on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery” (Hume 1987, 78). So, why would anyone today embrace something that potentially produces “the most cruel disorders in human society” and is “destructive of all ecclesi­ astical power”? For my purposes, enthusiasm may not be a friend to a stable liberal order, but it might be a useful accomplice to a radical human rights that

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is critical of rational and stable liberal orders. After all, enthusiasm with its “disdain of authority” “is amenable to the ‘spirit of liberty’ ” and could be es­ sential for the idealism of human rights. Advances in human rights often need to uproot the current moral and political hierarchies as well as structural vi­ olences in the face of overwhelming political power. Enthusiasm seems ideally suited to such a task. Human rights requires idealism and greatness and as Coleridge wrote, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and s­ wallowing-​­up of self in an object dearer than self, or in an idea more vivid?” (1871, 433). Political theorist Jason Frank (2005), in a sustained critique of deliberative democracy from the standpoint of enthusiasm, makes a similar argument: “While deliberationists occasionally recognize the importance of noise, theater, declamation, testi­ mony, and protest to ‘gain attention,’ their tendency to reduce insurgent poli­ tics to noncooperative assertions of political interest is insufficiently alert to the importance of spaces of political insurgency to the vivifying articulation of wrongs in a democratic polity” (Frank 2005, 391). To push this need for enthusiasm further, we should ask whether the reli­ ance on rationality for political order is itself a form of superstition and thus needs to be tempered by something like enthusiasm. If the embrace of ratio­ nality is due to a sense of dread, might it not spring from similar foundations as superstition? Hume considered “weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance” as “the true sources of Superstition” (Hume 1987, 78). From my interpretation of Locke’s works above, “fear and melancholy” surely can be seen as “true sources” of his defense of Rationality. The difference between superstition and rationality (seen as a dread of the passions) would then hinge upon “ignorance.” However, both sides in the r­ationality-​­passions debate brand the other as ignorant for neglecting or at least minimizing a major source of human knowledge. Perhaps, rationality as a form of superstition needs to be tempered just as much by enthusiasm, as enthusiasm needs to be tempered by rationality. An overly rational political order primes individuals for slavery, or more historically accurate, accepting of slavery and other human rights abuses. Thus, I turn next to the writings of the Earl of Shaftes­ bury who argued for the important place for both enthusiasm and rationality in knowledge, ethics, and politics and warned against the evils of taking our­ selves too seriously.

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The Third Earl of Shaftesbury on Enthusiasm: Good Humor as ­Anti-​­Gravity

The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1671–1713) was one of Locke’s greatest c­ ritics—​­despite the fact that, or possibly because, Locke famously served as his childhood t­ utor—​­as well as enthusiasm’s strongest pro­ ponent at the time the term approached its nadir and had become something of a universal epithet (see Boyer 2003, 185; Farr 1988, 58; Pocock 1997, 10). Shaftesbury, with his philosophy based upon intuitive reason and moral sense theory, opposed other Enlightenment thinkers who sought to build politics and rights on a constricted view of human nature, one that discards the pas­ sions such as enthusiasm and joy and relies almost exclusively on ­self-​ i­ nterested rationality. He famously wrote, “They would new frame the Human Heart; and have a mighty Fancy to reduce all its Motions, Balances and Weights, to that one Principle and Foundation of a cool and deliberate Self­ ishness” (Shaftesbury 1999a, 54). Not only does Shaftesbury revive the pas­ sions against a narrow (and selfish) view of Reason, his writings point to a possible diagnosis and antidote for individuals and social movements, like political science and human rights, that tend to take themselves too seriously. Shaftesbury does not share Locke’s dread of enthusiasm, but he is fearful of enthusiasm mixed with moral certainty and ­closed-​­mindedness. For Shaftesbury, and in line with modern affect theorists, human nature is much more complex and much more organic than the dominant mechanistic models of his time. The mind is actively forming the world as it is formed by the world. It is constantly being affected. This is not just the rational mind, but rationality informed by enthusiasm, a divine inspiration. Enthusiasm is not at the expense of rationality, but enhances it because it taps into something “more than human” and “beyond life” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 38; see the excel­ lent discussion in Amir 2014, 27–29). It is a type of creative imagination that has every bit as much, if not more, validity than Locke’s reason. “The intellect is able to articulate aesthetic truths that we initially only sense” (Boyer 2003, 190). But, because enthusiasm is an emotion that exceeds reason’s capacity to capture it, it is “the hardest thing in the world to know fully and distinctly” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 37).12 Thus, it will be difficult to define enthusiasm just as it is to provide a succinct operational definition of joy. It should be noted that Shaftesbury develops a robust conception of joy from doing good works, what Potkay (2007) calls ethical joy, but interestingly this ethical joy in Shaftesbury is more akin to Stoic views of joy such as that

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of Marcus Aurelius (96–101) and is only tangentially related to enthusiasm. Ethical joy for Shaftesbury brings oneness with others and with the world around us, but perhaps due to Shaftesbury’s desire to distance himself from contemporary theological discourse, there is not the losing of the self that is critical to his account of enthusiasm or later formulations of joy. By doing good work, we may not lose ourselves as enthusiasts might, but we do have a better understanding of our part in the social world. It will remain to later writers, such as Audre Lorde and bell hooks, who reflecting on and feeling the lived experience of inexorable structural violences and pernicious invisible ideologies, develop an ethical and social joy that transcends current social structures to tap into an enthusiastic or erotic ethical joy. Such a joy will dis­ rupt and reinvigorate the self in a much greater way than that of Shaftesbury’s ethical joy. The kernel of later formulations of joy developed in this work share more with Shaftesbury’s account of enthusiasm than with his writings on eth­ ical joy. And the displacement of joy from human rights work is decidedly due not to its adherence to a secular ethical joy that draws upon Stoicism, but to the enthusiasms of joyful people who threaten to get out of hand. For Shaftesbury, while enthusiasm is perhaps most easily seen in great works like those of poets, lovers, religious figures, heroes, orators, and philos­ ophers, we are all prone or susceptible to enthusiasm, or at least “almost all of us know something of this principle” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 39; cf. Boyer 2003). Enthusiasm is not merely a subjective or solipsistic experience. Shaftesbury nicely describes what has been recently called a transmission of affect (Bren­ nan 2004; cf. Klein 1997). Enthusiasm is social through the sensing of how other bodies are affected. Shaftesbury describes this phenomenon: “The very breath and exhalations of men are infectious, and the inspiring disease spreads by insensible transpiration” (1999b, 32). Just how this “insensible transpira­ tion” takes place is not fully developed in Shaftesbury. He does argue that enthusiasm can be tempered or greatly enhanced through its transmission. Enthusiasm is located in a specific person with its rationality and is connected to a community. There is simultaneously a raising of the self but also an inter­ connectedness with the whole. The self is risen u ­ p—​­but is also simultaneously aware of the special divinity in all others. It is through enthusiasm that we are drawn out of ourselves to connect to others and the rest of the world and it can be argued to serve as the foundation of Christian charity (Potkay 2007, 99). It was a type of tempered enthusiasm that I experienced on the desert patrols and with family members from Ciudad Juárez, described in the first chapter. But Shaftesbury also shows how enthusiasm can be greatly enhanced

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by pointing to the extreme case of a panicked crowd. “When people are in this state, their very looks are infectious. The fury flies from face to ­face—​­the disease is no sooner seen than caught” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 13). Those not caught up in enthusiasm who witness such a panic are horrified as “they saw in men’s faces something more ghastly and terrible than at other times is ever expressed on the most passionate occasion” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 13). Enthu­ siasm is also transmitted in an indirect way, as those who experience enthu­ siasm will seek to spread the word far and wide. So, even if we do not experience it directly, when we hear or read about great miracles and myster­ ies we are susceptible to “a sort of enthusiasm of second hand” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 31). While Shaftesbury embraces enthusiasm as a friend of rationality and for building a sense of community, he is wary of the resulting dangers when en­ thusiasm is combined with what he calls the “specious pretext of moral cer­ tainty” (1999b, 31). For Shaftesbury there is no authority on earth that can always be correct, especially on matters of enthusiasm. Instead of seeking epistemological certainty as Locke and Hobbes did, Shaftesbury fears it and he spends much of his famous “Letter on Enthusiasm” deriding those who take their enthusiasm too seriously. According to Shaftesbury, individuals and societies will most likely em­ brace enthusiasm with certainty when they have suffered some type of ca­ lamity, when they are suffering from melancholy. This melancholy seems to be ­self-​­reinforcing. It is born of seriousness in serious times, and it breeds additional seriousness. Those who take on such a serious tone are resistant to any attempt that might call into question their seriousness. They will claim that the issue at stake is too grave for ridicule, but Shaftesbury worries that such claims are a form of imposture masqueraded by an air of graveness. “Let us first see whether they r­eally are grave; for they may be very grave and weighty in our minds and yet very ridiculous and impertinent in their own nature” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 10). Of course, Shaftesbury is in agreement with Locke that we should not rely on force to curb the excesses of enthusiasm, but holds that it would be ineffective because it would enhance the under­ lying melancholy thus increasing the seriousness. “To apply a serious rem­ edy, and bring the sword or fasces, as a cure, must make the case more melancholy, and increase the very cause of the distemper” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 13). Instead, the magistrate who wants to curb enthusiasm should do so “with a kind sympathy entering into the people’s concern” and try to soothe the people’s melancholy and “endeavor, by cheerful ways to divert and

Whither Joy?  73

heal it” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 14). Counterintuitively then, the remedy for ex­ cessive enthusiasm is cheerfulness. Shaftesbury though is not dismissing seriousness in toto. To determine whether something is truly grave and deserves reverence, we must call it into question and the first step in this process is to interrogate ourselves. Are we experiencing melancholy or are we in good temper and able to judge rightly whether our enthusiasm is justified? If we do not take this first step, we will “under a presumption of gravity have allowed ourselves to be most ridiculous” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 11). Once we are sure that we are not suffering from mel­ ancholy then, we must apply ridicule to the object of our enthusiasm to see whether it should be truly taken seriously.13 Thus, Shaftesbury is one of the few to develop a philosophical argument for a right to ridicule, or what he calls the “freedom of raillery.” Enthusiasts of all stripes, as well as our own thinking, should be subjected to ridicule “for against serious extravagances and splenetic humours there is no other remedy than this” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 15). It is critical to reiterate that Shaftesbury is not dismissing enthusi­ asm, but proposing a method of using the tool of humor or raillery to distin­ guish types of enthusiasm; namely what he calls “noble enthusiasm” from the “savage air of the vulgar enthusiastic kind” (Shaftesbury 1999a, 246). Structurally reminiscent of Mill’s argument for the marketplace of ideas developed more than a century later, Shaftesbury argues that if the object of enthusiasm is worthy of such reverence it will be made stronger by being subject to ridicule and good humor, and if it is not worthy, it will be shown to be ridiculous by good humor. Shaftesbury’s prime example of the freedom to ridicule and its positive effect on its subject is Socrates laughing at himself during the performance of Aristophanes’s Clouds. Standing up in the theater so that everyone could see his not so flattering countenance in comparison to the exaggerated mask worn by the actor on the stage did not diminish him, but added to Socrates’s stature. Shaftesbury then looks back at English policy against sectarianism and that of other nations in the preceding centuries and claims that governments had become too grave. Society and the government had allied with various religious views and taken upon themselves the very serious task of saving souls. The effects were pernicious as it “made us leap the bounds of natural humanity and out of a supernatural charity has taught us the way of plaguing one another most devoutly” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 15). While the government had left alone enthusiasm in all other matters such as love, poetry, and art, in religion it took on an overly grave stance, which led to the opposite effect, of

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breeding all sorts of splinter groups and “bad” theology. Playing with this backfiring effect, Shaftesbury wonders, if the government were to step in and ban the enthusiasm of poetry and poetic accoutrements, soon, “old people and young would be seized with a versifying spirit . . . ​forests would be filled with romantic shepherds and shepherdesses; and rocks resound with echoes of hymns and praises offered to the powers of love” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 16). When the Romans in the first centuries of Christianity and the English Catholics in the time of Queen Mary sought to silence religious enthusiasm through persecution it only strengthened enthusiasm. Thus, when Shaftes­ bury discusses the immediate controversy of his day, the arrival of a recent wave of French zealots to England, he thought it would be doing them a favor to grant them the martyrdom they were actively seeking. Instead, England so far had only subjected them to ridicule in puppet shows in the markets and squares, including the famous St. Bartholomew Fair.14 Subjecting them to rid­ icule halted the transmission of affect. Shaftesbury then speculates as to what would have happened to early Christianity if instead of persecution, it was met by puppet shows. It seems the movement might have died out “if they had chosen to bring our primitive founders upon the stage in a pleasanter way ­ ear-​­skins and p ­ itch-​­barrels” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 22). The wisest than that of b nations do not persecute enthusiasts but “let people be fools as much as they pleased, and never to punish seriously what deserved only to be laughed at” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 12). So, I only partially concur with Frank’s (2005) conclusion that Shaftesbury “treats enthusiasts as if they were comically deluded clowns” (387). Some en­ thusiasts are “comically deluded,” but it is up to clowns with their ridicule to test whether their enthusiasm is in fact “noble” or whether they are falsely taking on the airs of gravity. Against excessive gravity, good humor is “the best security” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 17). Essayist Joseph Addison writing in The Spectator just after Shaftesbury’s “Letter on Enthusiasm” was published in 1711 also famously connects the enthusiast to a clown, an “obstinate clown,” and like Hume distinguishes enthusiasm and superstition: “An Enthusiast in religion is like an obstinate clown, a superstitious man like an insipid courtier. Enthusiasm has something in it of madness, Superstition of folly. Most of the Sects that fall short of the Church of England have in them strong tinctures of Enthusiasm, as the Roman Catholick Religion is one huge ­over-​­grown body of childish and idle Superstitions” (1711). Most commentators focus on the first part of this passage, but the second part deserves attention as well. Addison places the obstinate clown of enthu­

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siasm in those Protestant sects that do not meet the official state religion of the Church of England. They call it into question and do so obstinately and with “a kind of excess in devotion” (1711) which Addison equates with enthu­ siasm. Here, Addison is pointing to a correct type of devotion which can be equated to Shaftesbury’s noble enthusiasm: “Devotion opens the Mind to great Conceptions, and fills it with more sublime Ideas than any that are to be met with in the most exalted Science; and at the same time warms and agitates the Soul more than sensual Pleasure” (1711). And whereas Addison proposes rationality as an antidote to passions, Shaftesbury argues that enthusiasm needs to be tempered or tested by rationality and good humor. Yet, each called for a type of enthusiasm (Shaftesbury) or devotion (Addison) to serve as an antidote to excess rationality, be it in philosophy, religion, or science. Addison sharply attacks such an overreliance on rationality: “A State of Temperance, Sobriety and Justice without Devotion, is a cold, lifeless, insipid Condition of Virtue” (1711). Human Rights, Human Rights Crusades, and ­Anti-​­Gravity

Reading enthusiasm through Hume’s and Shaftesbury’s writings, we can con­ clude that the enthusiast and the clown are necessary for civil liberty and human rights. The enthusiast with mind opened to great things serves as a check on excessive Rationality and advances the “spirit of liberty” by serving as a check on society and its institutions. However, enthusiasm threatens to take itself too gravely, becoming too certain of its inspired truths. Thus, the clown is needed to subject the enthusiast to ridicule. This formulation is mir­ rored almost two centuries later in Nietzsche’s writings on what he calls his devil, “the spirit of gravity” that can be killed by laughter: “And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of ­gravity—​­through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!” (Nietzsche 1968, 153). Just as we are all potentially subject to excessive enthusiasm, we are all potentially subject to excessive gravity. Excessive enthusiasm can come in all stripes and take on all sorts of guises. Indeed, in a strange twist where the cure becomes the disease, the battle against excessive enthusiasm in its more zeal­ ous formulations can take on the air of excessive enthusiasm. As political theorist James Farr (1988) points out, those who opposed enthusiasm during the Scottish Enlightenment and zealously embraced the science of ­politics—​ ­just as the behavioralists in the twentieth century clung to an exceedingly narrow science of p ­ olitics—​­were engaging in their own enthusiasm, though

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they would be loath to name it as such. Similarly, Frank (2005) points out that the ­anti-​­enthusiast movements of the eighteenth century were “frequently marked by its own fanaticism” (391). In the name of gravity and epistemolog­ ical certainty, the movements took themselves and their rational methods too seriously. They claimed that dismissing enthusiasm would allow for certainty in all fields, including science, politics, and philosophy; but the enthusiasts claimed that avoiding the passions in politics can be its own enthusiasm, that such exclusive reliance on rationality was closing off much of reality. Just as liberalism elided the passions and took itself too seriously, human rights movements at times elide the passions and threaten to become too grave. As early as the English treason trials of 1794, human rights crusades became equated with a dangerous enthusiasm. For instance, at the trial of the radical Thomas Hardy, the prosecutor argued that “the idea that by the estab­ lishment of the Rights of Man, universal peace would be established through­ out the world” was “an enthusiasm dangerous in the highest degree” (Mee 2003, 100). While these ­eighteenth-​­century critics were attempting to limit the reach of human rights mostly for political and economic motives, they were correct to suggest that human rights can breed its own enthusiasm as evidenced by various noncritical human rights crusades in the past couple of decades. For example, hundreds of thousands of ­well-​­meaning human rights activists were mobilized mostly in the United States to fight passionately in the ­ill-​­conceived Kony 2012 movement and the uncritical ­anti-​­trafficking movement that has swept the globe. Each of these movements has been marked by excessive enthusiasm combined with moral certainty just as Shaftes­bury warned and has lacked even a basic understanding of the com­ plexity of the issues or even the empirical facts. Most importantly, they did not consider the collateral damage to vulnerable populations with such crusades. Human rights crusades can spawn human rights abuses. In my home state of Arizona, under the guise of fighting sex trafficking, a university social work professor teamed with local police to round up large numbers of consensual sex workers in the name of finding and “helping” sex trafficking victims. Instead of locating such victims, they ended up harming a number of sex workers who are already persecuted by law enforcement and by the larger society (Wahab and Panichelli 2013; Jones 2014). In such cases of excessive enthusiasm, we need an antidote such as a clown to apply raillery to help us distinguish whether we are being too grave and in some cases downright ­ridiculous—​­not to mention, abusive.

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The Twentieth Century: Too Serious for Enthusiasm Liberalism’s distrust of extreme passions also has historical roots. The ­eighteenth-​­century philosophical and theological debates that pushed enthu­ siasm into a corner were grounded in the immediate events of the time, and these debates were seen as a fight between those who preserved the status quo against various forms of disorder.15 As liberalism developed and became hegemonic, its staunchest critics have rightly seen the elision of passion as integral to the liberal enterprise and have famously advocated for a privileged place for the passions. Some, like Marx and Nietzsche, have also called for an elision of rights, while others try to sep­ arate out the close connection between reason and rights and retain rights, but from a more passionate perspective. Nonetheless, those philosophers who em­ brace joy the most are usually ambivalent ­toward or repulsed by liberal notions of human rights; think of Foucault, Lacan, Bataille, and Nietzsche. Human Rights Flow from Human Wrongs

Human rights has its own additional unique inertia for joylessness and eliding the passions. The movement ­toward human rights ebbs and flows. They were taken more seriously in the seventeenth century in England, the late eigh­ teenth century, the 1860s and 1870s, the 1940s, the 1950s, and 1960s in the colonized world and among marginalized peoples in the developing world, and the 1980s and 1990s. Each advance in rights discourse and rights efficacy appears to be intimately connected to chaos, disaster, and tragedy. English civil wars, monarchical excesses, and ­decades-​­long religious wars led to fer­ vent theoretical writings on rights by Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others to stem state power. The fight against relatively tyrannical kings of various stripes spawned the great rights documents of the late eighteenth century. The bru­ tality of the first modern wars, the exploitations of ­laissez-​­faire capitalism, and massive movements of people led to a push for a new understanding of rights in the late nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, rights are reinvigo­ rated in the fights against colonialism, genocides, and ethnic cleansing, as well as the struggles against the evils of totalitarianism, racism, and patriarchy. Human rights flow from human wrongs, or at least advances in human rights law and understanding “human rights as accountability” flow from human wrongs. The creation of new civil and criminal laws at any level usually follows the same dynamic as they are created in response to violations of the

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law, as interstices are exploited, or ways to exceed the spirit of the law are created. At such times, law must be expanded to rein in the behavior per­ ceived to be harmful and to categorize the perpetrator as an outlaw. Similarly, human rights abuses lead to new advances in human rights law (and human­ itarian law). Indeed, just about the entire canon of human rights law was drafted in response to human rights tragedies. Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide to make sense of the atrocities against Armenians during World War I, and against Jews and others in Eastern Europe during World War II (Power 2002). Similarly, the extraordinary verb “to disappear” (of persons) was not used until rampant abuses by Latin American leaders, nor was the ­Inter-​­American Convention on Forced Disappearances of Persons required before such abuses. The Afrikaans word Apartheid enters the human rights lexicon with the brutal segregation of the races in South Africa, and then the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid is drafted. The Lieber Code of 1863 was needed because of the mistreatment of prisoners of war and occupied peoples during the Civil War, and then the notion of war crimes was subsequently revised and expanded with The Hague and Geneva Conventions as modern warfare developed and with the atrocities of World War I and World War II. The phrase “crimes against humanity” was first used in reference to the Atlantic slave trade, and later expanded during King Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo, and the subse­ quent extermination of Armenians. In the US, the Civil War Amendments are clear responses to human rights abuses as are the Civil Rights Acts and nu­ merous famous court cases. It is important to note that, like law in general, unless an action is forbidden, it is allowed. So, until treaties or other instru­ ments are developed, certain human rights abuses are allowed and individuals may not even be aware of their concomitant human rights. Some widespread human rights abuses have yet to be named, or at least named as such, and are thus not censured, such as the proxy wars during the Cold War and the suf­ fering of migrants in Arizona’s deserts and in North Africa, the Mediterra­ nean, and other places around the globe. Similarly, institutions of human rights accountability gain strength after atrocities. Unspeakable atrocities compelled the creation of the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials and afforded them legitimacy. Without the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the subsequent international criminal tribunals (the ICTR and ICTY) would have never been conceived, and their creation led di­ rectly to a growing consensus for the need for an International Criminal Court. These institutions have an inertia to them, and so S­ ikkink (2011) can aptly refer

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to a “justice cascade” with various streams. Each stream begins with an idiosyn­ cratic case or two, and then something of a snowball effect occurs wherein the accountability mechanism gains momentum. Intertwined with accountability, human rights becomes more about rational legal institutions than about every­ day felt experience of ordinary people. Originally a rationally derived philo­ sophical concept, rights are further rationalized by becoming almost synonymous in some circles with the objectivity of blind justice; a justice that is based upon the eschewing of passions by the adjudicators. Human rights law develops progressively. Once rights are realized, activ­ ists do not rest, they rarely dwell on their successes. They move to the next cause, they seek to entrench their ­hard-​­earned rights and to expand them to new levels or new groups. The passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaw­ ing segregation and the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote in the United States were as much beginnings as endings. It is not too much to say that “wrongs make rights” in the sense of creating laws and ac­ countability mechanisms for abuses. Dershowitz’s (2005) theory mentioned above that wrongs are the foundation for legal rights, in a ­quasi-​­philosophical sense, is true in this limited way. The foundation of human rights treaties and institutions is not some divine being or philosophical deductions from a pos­ ited human nature, but a response to human injustices. Human rights are fueled and haunted by human rights abuses. Human Rights and Joy After World War II

Particular emphasis should be placed on World War II and its aftermath v­ is-​ à­­ -​­vis the conflation of human rights and human rights abuses. The shockingly widespread and previously unimaginable atrocities shook many people to their very core, with many wondering if “Western” civilization and its trap­ pings had come to an end. Often forgotten in our collective memories, World War II was consecrated as solemn even at the time of its victory, as the end of the war marked by the dropping of the bombs in Japan did not bring antici­ pated celebrations. Recall that the iconic photos of spontaneous celebrations in New York’s Times Square, in London, and in Paris, marked V ­ -​­E Day, vic­ tory in Europe, several months earlier. Even these famous celebrations, though, were tempered by the discovery of atrocities in the death camps, and the realization that the battles ahead in the Pacific theater would be devastat­ ing. The ultimate Allied victory against the Japanese in the Pacific in August 1945 evinced a muted response because of the awesome destruction wrought by atomic weaponry. Not all Americans were as sanguine about the weaponry

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as President Truman and his advisers are often portrayed. A sense of dread and imminent world destruction pervaded. Zoellner (2010), in his recent ­in-​ d ­ epth history of uranium, refers to it as a “collective pause” (73). The New York Sun called it a “sense of oppression” and newscaster Edward R. Murrow poi­ gnantly stated, “Seldom if ever has a war ended with such a sense of uncer­ tainty and fear with such a realization that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured” (Zoellner 2010, 73).16 Zoellner further quotes the president of Haverford College, “Instead of the anticipated wave of national­ istic enthusiasm, the general reaction was one of unconcealed horror” (73); and James Agee wrote that the dropping of the atomic bombs was “an event so much more enormous that, relative to it, the war itself shrank to minor significance. The knowledge of victory was as charged with sorrow and doubts, as with joy and gratitude” (Zoellner 2010, 74–75). A general consensus emerged after World War II that “we,” including “our” philosophies and human rights, are now indelibly marked by these ca­ tastrophes and that “our” politics, philosophy, and culture must always be cognizant of the atrocities and what they represent. In fact, many speculated about the extent that atrocities were a function of the society, culture, and thought of “Western civilization.” ­Franco-​­Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who lost much of his family in the Holocaust, rightly asked, “Can we speak of an absolute commandment after Auschwitz? Can we speak of moral­ ity after the failure of morality?” (Levinas et al. 1988, 176). While it is com­ monplace to claim that philosophy arises from ashes, for instance from the diseased democracy that led to the fall of the Athenian empire in Plato’s case or the ashes of the Napoleonic wars in Hegel’s, there was an especially ­heart-​ ­wrenching and ­wide-​­ranging discussion of whether philosophy could be re­ born after Auschwitz. Auschwitz, synecdochized as a generic term that represents brutal, cruel, mass, and widespread systematic death as a form of genocide, appears to be such a break in the fabric of civilization that it calls into question all those truths that were previously accepted. That philosophiz­ ing, thinking, and creating from Auschwitz has become an important trope and synecdoche can be seen by abundant book titles such as Can One Live After Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader by Theodor Adorno (2003), which includes the essay “Education After Auschwitz” as well as the essay “Cultural Criticism and Society” where Adorno famously wrote, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (162); Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism; Susan Gubar, Poetry After Auschwitz: Remembering What One Never Knew; Balázs Mezei, Religion and Revelation

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After Auschwitz; Carole Lambert, Ethics After Auschwitz? Primo Levi’s and Elie Wiesel’s Response; Gavriel Rosenfeld, Building After Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust; Carol Rittner and John Roth, “Good News” After Auschwitz? Christian Faith Within a ­Post-​­Holocaust World; Dom­ inick LaCapra, History and Memory After Auschwitz; Eva Schloss and Karen Bartlett, After Auschwitz: A Story of Heartbreak and Survival by the Stepsister of Anne Frank; Risa Sodi and Millicent Marcus, eds., New Reflections on Primo Levi: Before and After Auschwitz; Catherine Chatterley, Disenchantment: George Steiner and the Meaning of Western Civilization After Auschwitz; J. Hil­ lis Miller, The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz. Interestingly, almost all these “after Auschwitz” books were written in the past two decades and not by the generations living in the immediate after­ math of Auschwitz or those who actually survived Auschwitz. Meister (2011) carefully shows how the trope of Auschwitz continues to serve as a corner­ stone of contemporary human rights discourses as marked by labeling cruelty as the prototypical human rights abuse (16). Life Is Beautiful and . . . ​Joyful? Benigni as a Response to Adorno

The most obvious way to mark the catastrophe of Auschwitz has been through solemnity. Many leading thinkers have even wondered whether it is appropri­ ate to write poetry (Adorno) or even to create literature (Wiesel) after Aus­ chwitz. With such destruction, such sublime terror, with the capacity to destroy the planet, can there be joy after World War II, after Auschwitz, after Hiroshima, after Nagasaki? Can solemnity still be put to the test by raillery, as Shaftesbury would suggest, or is raillery a disrespectful trifle that cannot be condoned in the face of such overwhelming weight? These questions received an extensive hearing in the debates surrounding Roberto Benigni’s film Life Is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella), released in 1997. In my reading, Benigni’s film serves as an excellent example of how Shaftesbury’s “liberty of raillery” can still help distinguish between noble enthusiasm and the false enthusiasm of taking ourselves too seriously and it further shows how solemnity has become the hegemonic response to human rights issues in the past few decades. By taking ourselves too seriously about human rights, we are creating and per­ petuating our own fanaticism. My analysis will also show how Life Is Beautiful serves as a fruitful reply to Theodor Adorno’s ­oft-​­quoted claim that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (2003, 162). First, we must clarify that Adorno was not calling for

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censoring all poetry and banning all poets. Instead, he was saying that poetry like all parts of culture needs to be radically transformed, that poetry as it had been previously conceived was a central part of the culture implicated in, and partially culpable for, the creation and justification of Auschwitz. It appears that Adorno with his claim that poetry after Auschwitz “is barbaric” may well be playing with the original Greek meaning of barbaros meaning one who comes from the outside, who is a foreigner (cf. Hejinian 2000). He seems to be calling for a new type of poetry, one that comes from outside the tradition that spawned Auschwitz. This is a type of poetry that is not reified, that does not take itself too seriously, that does not “confine itself to ­self-​­satisfied con­ templation” (Adorno 2003, 162). Adorno implicitly claims that it was not the passions of the Nazis that led to Auschwitz, but their rationality, technocratic nature, and their claims of superiority and certainty. From this interpretation, following Shaftesbury and Nietzsche, it might remain to comedy and humor to help upend the overbearing gravity of the Nazis and the tragedies they wrought. As the actor and director Mel Brooks, who lampooned the Nazis and their logics in several films, said “anything I could do to deflate the Germans, I did” (Pearlstein 2016). Comedy and humor as antidotes to Nazism though flies in the face of the rules of Holocaust representation that have developed in the past few decades. Many writers have held that any representation of the Holocaust or Auschwitz cannot be justified as they would never do them justice. Elie Wiesel (1978) famously wrote that “Auschwitz negates all literature as it negates all theories and doctrines. To lock it into philosophy is to restrict it. To substitute words, any words for it is to distort it. A Holocaust literature? The very term is a contradiction” (197). Many commentators even criticized Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List for not adequately representing the horrors of Auschwitz and it now seems that nothing short of an extensive and finely crafted and solemn documentary could ever approach doing justice to Auschwitz (see Flanzbaum 2001). Not surprisingly then, a ­comedy—​­even a tragicomedy like Life Is ­Beautiful—​­was quickly dismissed as sacrilegious by many. Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful

To refresh readers’ memories, Life Is Beautiful begins with a male ­voice-​­over announcing “this is a simple story but not an easy one to tell. Like a fable, there is sorrow, and like a fable, it is full of wonder and happiness.” The film is then split into two parts, with the first more Chaplinesque part set in Italy in 1939 with Guido (played by Benigni), an Italian Jew courting his principessa

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Dora, a n ­ on-​­Jew (played by Benigni’s ­real-​­life wife Nicoletta Braschi). Several scenes in the first part revolve around the e­ ver-​­present Fascism in Italy, but Fascism is portrayed as generally harmless serving more as an obstacle to be overcome by Guido’s clowning in his courtship of Dora. The film then jumps forward to 1944 and takes on a more somber tone. Guido and Dora now have a young son, Giosue, and they run a bookstore in the same city. The second half of the film opens with Guido riding Giosue on his bicycle to the book­ store. They stop in front of the bakery where someone has scrawled “No Jews or dogs allowed.” Guido jokes about it to ease Giosue’s worries, but at the end of the day when Guido pulls down the shutter of his store someone has writ­ ten “Jewish Store.” Guido must decide whether to tell the truth and acknowl­ edge to his son and himself the ominous times or sugarcoat the atrocities and threats facing his family. He chooses to spare his son by making light of the peril, a deception that he maintains even when the family is subsequently transported to a concentration camp, with Dora separated into women’s bar­ racks. Guido explains all the harshness away to his son by claiming that it is an elaborate game where each prisoner can collect points by enduring and hiding from the Nazis. If they collect one thousand points in this fictional game, Giosue will be rewarded with a real tank to replace his lost toy tank. To keep up the pretenses, Guido must continue his clowning as he makes light of various realities of the camp. As the war winds down and the Nazis are or­ dered to get rid of everything and everyone in the camp, Guido hides his son and searches for Dora. He is captured by a Nazi guard and Guido is led around a corner into an alley and the audience hears shots ringing out with the guard returning alone. It is clear that Guido has been killed. Giosue who was hiding nearby comes out the next day as the US military liberates the camp. He sees a US tank and shouts, “it’s true!” Riding in the tank he spots his mother Dora with the refugees from the camp, runs to her and says that they have won, Dora responds “Yes, we won.” The ­voice-​­over returns and the audience real­ izes that it is a ­grown-​­up Giosue who is telling this extraordinary story about the sacrifices that his father made for him. The film was extremely well received by audiences (a 97 percent positive ranking on www.rottentomatoes.com), was a surprise international box office success, and received glowing reviews from film critics. One called it “such a sweet miracle of moviemaking” and noted that Benigni “defies remarkable odds in asserting the power of imagination in the face of incomprehensible horror”; he “locates that line in the heart where tears of laughter and sorrow merge” (Johnson 1998). The film and Benigni received a number of prestigious awards

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including the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival and three Academy Awards. When accepting the Academy Award for best foreign film from fellow Italian Sophia Loren, Benigni stood on the seatbacks in front of him, pranced around in a sheer outburst of joy and ran to the stage, hopping up the steps. He blurted out in part: “He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity sunrise, said the poet [a reference to William ­Blake—​­see the Dedication to this volume]. And this is wonderful to be here. Wonderful! I feel like, now ­really, to dive in this ocean of generosity, this is too much. . . . ​I would like to dedicate this prize to those, because the subject the movie, those who are not here. They gave their life in order [that] we can say, ‘Life is beautiful” (Benigni 1999). The Detractors

Not all were as appreciative of Benigni’s work or of his outburst at the Oscars. A number of critics, especially from highbrow publications (see Viano 1999) were livid, excoriating the film, and resorting to ad hominem attacks on Be­ nigni and his wife and any audience member or critic who dared to enjoy the film. John Simon (1999) writing in the National Review perhaps set a new standard (even for him) for ­closed-​­mindedness and pompousness by a film critic by berating the film, dismissing any film of its type, and lambasting anyone who enjoyed it; all within the first paragraph of his review. “A comic movie about the Holocaust strikes me as unthinkable. Yet Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, hailed on all sides, awarded or nominated for numerous prizes, and a sure candidate for one or more Oscars, is just that, or almost. Two ­middle-​­aged women who recognized me and queried me about it on the bus simply could not get it through their heads that I was calling the film not excellent but execrable” (54). Simon is just warming up: “The first, prewar part is a silly farce, not nearly so funny as forced. The second part, in a death camp, is sentimental ­comedy-​­drama, totally unbelievable and downright stupid. It intends to be sweet, wistful, and touching, and to excuse itself with not wish­ ing to be taken literally. I say it cannot be taken, period, unless you enjoy grossing out on imbecile lies. . . . ​Hard to tell who is the bigger idiot: the smart, precocious kid who falls for this running lie, or the audience that falls for this movie” (54–55). Simon then tosses in some ­name-​­calling at Benigni and his wife. “Comics do not have to be g­ ood-​­looking, but must they be as unappealing as the ­inverted-​­eggplantheaded, chinless wonder Benigni, with his ­passive-​­aggressive charmlessness and fisheyed simpletonism? And then there is the angular ploddingness of his r­ eal-​­life spouse Nicoletta Braschi, and ­ y-​­­the-​­numbers expressions” (55). her b

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Other reviewers’ attacks may not have been as personal but were just as severe. The film, we are told in, of all places, the medical journal Lancet “raises issues of sincerity, and could amount to a form of abuse” (Davies 1999, 1021). It is called “fundamentally mendacious . . . ​and it only proves that cinema, even at its most benevolent, can be mighty ugly” (Romney 1999, 6). Gerald Peary of the Boston Phoenix proclaimed “the Holocaust misrepresentations of Life Is Beautiful unforgivably obscene” and claims the film “offers a f­eel-​­good Final Solution, a ­smiley-​­face Holocaust” (1998). Like Simon, he then takes the audi­ ence and critics to task: “there are further horrors beyond the movie: ahistoric film critics who slaver over it, f­ uzzy-​­thinking crowds who embrace it” (1998). And a number of scholars weighed in. The noted Holocaust historian Lawrence Langer (2006b) offered a lengthy critical assessment of the film. He claims that Benigni “allows Guido’s antics to profane the solemn impact of the surroundings” (31). Mostly, however, Langer disagrees with what he sees as the moral of the story, that the will of one person can overcome the overpow­ ering brutality of a concentration camp, that one can choose to survive, to will one’s world to be beautiful, which of course, is at odds with the reality of the concentration camp experience. Benigni, Guido, Dora, Giosue, and the audi­ ence all are branded by Langer as “refugees from truth” (35). Solemn Caretakers of the Holocaust

Other scholars though have stepped back to analyze the film and the reaction it wrought as a whole. What about Life Is Beautiful elicited such venom? After all, other comedies have been made with the Holocaust as a backdrop. In the same year, 1998, Train de vie, a French farce by the Rumanian filmmaker Radu Mihăileanu was well received by critics and audiences and the next year the plodding Jakob the Liar starring Robin Williams was deservedly panned but did not lead to such vociferous opposition. Something more is afoot, as even the more serious versions of the Holocaust such as Schindler’s List have re­ ceived much harsher examinations by critics than earlier dramas (see Flanz­ baum 2001). Indeed, some critics have gone back and slammed previous representations of the Holocaust that heretofore had been near universally praised to the point of being sacred. Cynthia Ozick (1997) even wrote of the Diary of Anne Frank, The diary has been bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, reduced; it has been infantilized, Americanized, sentimentalized, falsified, kitschified, and, in fact, blatantly denied. Among the falsifiers have been dramatists

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and directors, Anne’s own father, Otto Frank, and the public, both read­ ers and theatregoers, all over the world. The diary is not a song to ­life—​ ­rather it reveals the easy destructibility of the human spirit; it is the vehicle that has accomplished mankind’s almost universal obtuseness about the dark lessons of Auschwitz . . . ​perhaps, the writer speculates, it would have been better for the diary to have been burned rather than become distorted to such a degree. (76)17 Interestingly, such characterizations of the Diary of Anne Frank as well as Life Is Beautiful fly in the face of the opinions of many Holocaust survivors. Flanz­ baum (2001) rightly asks, “How can we account for the fact that survivors appreciate both the great preponderance and the wide variety of representa­ tions of the Holocaust, while professional critics grow increasingly intolerant and rigid, believing it to be their ethical duty to protect the image of the Ho­ locaust?” (274). It seems that many critics, who Imre Kertész (2001) belittles as “a choir of Holocaust puritans, Holocaust dogmatists and Holocaust usurp­ ers” (270), have taken on the role of caretakers of the Holocaust. These critics have reified and strengthened what Des Pres (1988) had ear­ lier enumerated as the three commandments of Holocaust etiquette. First, the Holocaust must be treated as a unique event that lies outside the flow of the world history.18 Second, any representation of the Holocaust, including artistic representations, must be as accurate as possible, even painstakingly so. Third, the Holocaust must be treated with solemnity otherwise it risks dishonoring the victims. These commandments have been reified into absolute truths about the Holocaust genre; “they are fundamental and widely shared, we are convinced of their authority and accept them without question” (Des Pres 1988, 217). However, there is much evidence that these purported timeless truths are relatively recent developments and that many early excellent repre­ sentations of the Holocaust paid little heed to these commandments. But as currently accepted without question, they are certainly reflected in the ven­ omous critiques of Life Is Beautiful, which as a comedy by its very nature rebels against these commandments. For starters, since comedy must build a rapport between characters and audience it will be near impossible to portray an event as unique and completely removed from history. Comedies, espe­ cially of a Chaplinesque variety, rarely stick to verisimilitude and they are anathema to solemnity. Since the comedy genre fundamentally opposes Holo­ caust etiquette, Simon and other critics can dismiss Life Is Beautiful as well as its entire genus; comedies set in the Holocaust.

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Turning to specifics, there seem to be two main thrusts to the critiques of Life Is Beautiful. The first is that Benigni was inaccurate in his portrayal of the Holocaust, that he did not adequately show the horrors of a concentration camp. Of course, this is readily apparent from anyone watching the film who has even a cursory understanding of the historical events. The Nazis as por­ trayed could have been extras from Hogan’s Heroes or Raiders of the Lost Ark. The conditions in the camp more resemble a minimum security prison than a death camp (e.g., “there’s barely a shaven head to be seen” [Romney 1999, 6]), with atrocities only alluded to in a few brief scenes. The critics correctly note that the film is unrealistic, but this should not be too surprising from a film that announces at the beginning that it is “like a fable” and whose main character is a town fool who sometimes seems to have a tenuous hold on re­ ality. “Everything in this fairy tale is unrealistic or, better, has no verisimili­ tude. If we go to see Life Is Beautiful expecting reality, then we are in the wrong theater” (Viano 1999, 30). Only a professional historian like Langer (2006b) could rhetorically ask, “Did Benigni know or care that American troops never liberated a deathcamp?” (37).19 It is hard to imagine any other type of film, especially a tragicomedy, where such artistic license would not be granted. Benigni was not ignorant of camp realities but he ­self-​­consciously avoided the realism of the camps because he could not do it justice. “According to what I read, saw and felt in the victims’ accounts, I realized that nothing in a film could even come close to the reality of what happened. You can’t show un­ imaginable ­horror—​­you can only ever show less than what it was. So I did not want audiences to look for realism in my movie” (Viano 1999, 30). Benigni was well aware of the perils of verisimilitude with a Holocaust film so he crafted a fable that told a story about the Holocaust. Far from re­ ducing the Holocaust, Benigni chose to honor the n ­ on-​­representational as­ pects of the Holocaust. Of course, this breaks one of the commandments of Holocaust etiquette, and the critics pounced. But, to follow the command­ ment, the filmmaker would need to create an infinite number of documenta­ ries to fully represent the infinite experiences or decide not to portray the Holocaust at all. After all, how can a filmmaker accurately represent the ­non-​­representable?20 The second major critique is that the moral of Benigni’s film is pernicious and trivializes the suffering and dignity of the victims. One critic wrote, “Life Is Beautiful isn’t just the film title, it’s Benigni’s reprehensible moral. He dares to assign a transcendent meaning to the Holocaust, which to most Jews resonates with ­non-​­meaning, a hollow waste of many millions of lives” (Peary 1998).21 He

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then pushes this empirical claim even further by posing this easily refutable pair of queries: “ ‘Life is beautiful.’ Can you imagine anyone who actually sur­ vived the death camps saying that? Were any left who weren’t totally numbed and scarred, shaken in their souls by a seemingly absent God, hateful of hu­ manity for allowing the Germans to do their will?” Of course, the empirical evidence shows that a number of Holocaust survivors did come out of the camps believing that life is beautiful. For many, that is the central meaning of the Holocaust. Gerda Weissmann Klein, who lost most of her family and friends in the Holocaust and who survived a Nazi ghetto, concentration camps, and a forced death march, published numerous works that document her love of life. The love letters written between her and her future husband Kurt Klein, who was among the soldiers who liberated her in 1945, were later collected in a moving volume: The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in the War’s Aftermath. She even wrote a children’s book called Promise of a New Spring: The Holocaust and Renewal.22 More directly, the classical pianist, and ­ erz-​­Sommer, featured at the time the oldest living Holocaust survivor, Alice H in the Academy Award–winning short documentary The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, says in conversation with her friends a cellist and actress who also survived the camps: “Every day in life is beautiful. Every day that we are here, we can speak about everything. No? It is beautiful. . . . ​Even the bad is beautiful I would say. Even the bad is beautiful when you know where to look for. It has to be” (Clarke 2014). When survivor Adolek Kohn returned to Poland in 2009 with his daugh­ ter the artist Jane Korman and his grandchildren, they created a documentary based upon his experiences with the family dancing in the first part to Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit “I Will Survive” while at Auschwitz, Dachau, the Łódź Ghetto, and other Holocaust spots. Kohn wears a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “survivor.” Some claimed that the video and the dancing were blas­ phemous and Korman admits some concerns but “when I have felt challenged by its appropriateness, they [her mother and father] have reminded me that ‘they came from the ashes, now they dance’ ” (Korman 2010). Dance during and after the Holocaust is an integral part of the remarkable story of Yehudit Arnon, who discovered her love of dance and how much joy it could bring while suffering atrocious conditions in Birkenau: “I remember sort of climb­ ing on the slabs we slept on and stretching my legs into the splits. I thought that those who saw me in that moment knew I enjoyed it and I did something good. There was no pathos in it; I just loved moving” (in N. Jackson and ­Shapiro-​­Phim 2008, 343). Arnon miraculously survived several camps and

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the forced marches of women in the waning days of the war, and became a ­world-​­renowned dancer and choreographer, founder of the Kibbutz Contem­ porary Dance Company, which has performed several dances based upon the Holocaust. Perhaps most telling as to the extent that critics o ­ ver-​­embraced solemnity is in the first paragraph of Philip French’s (1999) review: “There are some subjects that are intrinsically unfunny and some that governments, the Church, popular opinion and other arbiters of taste decide are taboo or, as we now say, politically incorrect. The subject of the Holocaust (the Shoah that is, not the nuclear one) has traditionally been considered as belonging to both categories.” This is an extraordinary statement from a film critic. He is imply­ ing that filmmakers toe the line to the opinions of the governments, the church, and the public when films portray the Holocaust or other taboo sub­ jects. Ironically, popular opinion and the c­ hurch—​­the Pope tacitly supported the film by holding a private ­screening—​­were very much against the critic here. More strangely, finding morality in the government or other authorities on taste, is a lynchpin of Fascist thought and exactly the type of filmmaking and poetry that Adorno warned against. Read through the lens of Shaftesbury’s work on enthusiasm discussed above, the film critics have taken on the role of enthusiasts who take them­ selves too seriously. They are resistant to anyone or anything that might call into question their solemnity; after all, the issue at stake, the Holocaust, is too grave for ridicule. However, the Holocaust is not minimized by being exposed to this comedy. In fact, it is the strident writings of the critics that risk mini­ mizing the Holocaust. Despite the writings of the aggrieved critics, the enor­ mity of the Holocaust does not need to be defended against a relatively ephemeral and fabulous film. The critics seem to be saying Damn it! The Holocaust ­really was horrible, which is just about as banal as George W. Bush admitting in a presidential debate that he opposed genocide. Benigni’s film did not seek to ridicule the Holocaust itself, but in my reading it ultimately ridiculed entrenched Holocaust etiquette. Further, some critics’ fear that the film would spawn a new multitude of Holocaust deniers does not meet the laugh test. Flanzbaum (2001) nicely lays out the attenuated logic required to substantiate such a claim: How could Life Is Beautiful give ammunition to deniers? The scenario would go like this: A viewer sees Life Is Beautiful, and remains un­ moved by any of the psychological pain he witnesses. Instead he

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focuses on some ­less-​­­than-​­horrible moment, perhaps the roundly de­ cried depiction of the concentration camp. The viewer then thinks, “you see, those concentration camps don’t look so bad. . . . ​I thought that I had heard that conditions were r­ eally horrible but I can see by this movie that I was wrong. I guess the camps and the Holocaust weren’t so bad after all. That makes me feel a lot better. I guess they were just making all that stuff up. I bet they made up a lot of that other stuff too. I bet the Holocaust didn’t even happen.” Who is this person? Does he or she actually exist? Not only would this viewer have to be ignorant and malevolent, he would have to be ­anti-​­Semitic. And even were we to agree that this a­ nti-​­Semitic viewer exists and in significant enough numbers to make us worry about movies like Life Is Beautiful (which in itself is highly questionable), it would still be difficult to know how to proceed. Should we wish Benigni’s film out of existence because we are worried about deniers? (282) We can safely assume that most members of the audience were well versed in the horrors of the Holocaust and would not turn to this tragicomedy for his­ tory lessons. Some Lessons from Life Is Beautiful

What then can be learned then from a ­tragi-​­comedy about the Holocaust? Benigni, in my reading, points to a new type of poetics after Auschwitz, just as Adorno had wished. In Life Is Beautiful tragedy and comedy are entwined, horror and joy are pieces of a whole. As Viano (1999) writes, “Life Is Beautiful is not just ­tragi-​­comic but it is first comic and then tragic. There is quite a difference between thinking of a film as a mixture of comedy and tragedy, the ­tragi-​­comic, or as a juxtaposition of two symmetrical and mutually negating spaces. . . . ​The latter is uncanny and unsettling, potentially sickening and al­ ways disorienting, insofar as spectators are forced into a schizoid experience” (31). Juxtaposing the comic and the tragic takes the viewer (and the critic) outside their comfort zone. It calls into question our expectations and disturbs what Adorno (2003) called our “­self-​­satisfied contemplation” (34). Life Is Beautiful not only rails against the Holocaust etiquette, it exposes the lies of totalitarianism by providing the fool or clown as seer of truth and constructor of alternative possibilities, a plot device also employed to great effect in Mi­ hăileanu’s Train de vie. The fool successfully mocks the logic of the camps (and the critics). The completely unrealistic scene where Guido translates for

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the camp guards about the rules of the camp can be interpreted as revealing the absurdity of the Nazis’ language that ruled the camps as well as the absurd­ ist language of other totalitarian regimes. “What this scene contains cannot be described in rational language, and says everything there is to say about the absurdity of that atrocious world, and about those who stood in opposition to the madness, unbroken in their spiritual strength” (Kertész 2001, 271). In my reading, Benigni is making a statement about the necessary place of the fool in such times. He is pointing to the absolute absurdity of the Holocaust, and the absolute absurdity of someone trying to craft an alternative reality under such overwhelming conditions. To ask whether this humor makes sense is to give too much power to reason; it muzzles the comedian, and takes away a major tool in deconstructing the deadly logics of totalitarianism. It is a simplistic and boring parlor game to criticize every Holocaust film for not being solemn or true enough, though it would fill the game player with a good conscience. It is much more difficult to admit that humor is part of the human condition and can be found in even the most extreme circumstances (McGraw and Warner 2014). How do we make sense of the numerous reports of laughter and comedy during the Holocaust? Even the solemn survivor/wit­ nesses in the epic film Shoah expressed “a kind of mocking irony that on occa­ sion comes close to laughter” (Viano 1999, 27); and Lipman (1991) collected and collated Jewish jokes from before, during, and after the Holocaust. The new documentary The Last Laugh by Ferne Pearlstein (2016) provides excel­ lent examples of how comedians have employed humor to gain perspective on the Holocaust and to ridicule the Nazis and plant a seed of resistance. Humor and joy are two essential tools for addressing trauma and tragedy. But to see Life Is Beautiful as purely a comedy would also be reductionist and miss the main point; after all, the hero ultimately suffers a banal death without meaning. Pace the critics, of course one person could not have willed them­ selves out of the camps and yet there is something valid about the fabulous tale of the fool. Perhaps only a fool can tell the story of hope in the Holocaust. Perhaps, the hopefulness of the fool in the midst of hopelessness is a vital el­ ement of the human condition. As Nobel Laureate and Auschwitz survivor Imre Kertész (2001) wrote, “But does not this device of the ‘game’ correspond in an essential way to the lived reality of Auschwitz? One could smell the stench of burning human flesh, but still did not want to believe that all of this could be true. One would rather find some notion that might tempt one to survive, and a ‘real tank’ is, for a boy child, precisely this kind of seductive promise” (271).23 Comedy can encourage the creation of an alternative reality,

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even if it is a fantasy. And it simultaneously exposes the imaginary realm of totalitarianism for what it is. Comedy, as Shaftesbury argued, serves as a check on our enthusiasm. It abstracts the situation, it allows us to step back slightly, to provide a critical space to reflect on reality and provides a space for hope­ fulness to begin to address tragedies. Tragedy needs comedy. Humor is a revolt against the harshness of the world as is its fellow trav­ eler, joy. To remain ever solemn, or for a critic to close off the possibility of life being beautiful for the survivors, is to collude with and empower the perpe­ trators and to diminish the possibilities of the survivors. Benigni appears to be asking can there be joy after Auschwitz with knowledge of Auschwitz? He was not asking can there be joy in Auschwitz. Pace Adorno, can joy survive even in the worst of situations? It must. For a Holocaust survivor to live a life full of joy was a rebuttal to Hitler who wished “to make sure that when he was through with the Jews, no Jew would ever laugh again” (Ellis 1994, 38–39). In the documentary The Last Laugh survivor Renee Firestone said, “I enjoy life. I’m so happy that I have three g­ reat-​­grandchildren. Could Hitler imagine that I will survive and have three ­great-​­grandchildren? That’s my revenge” (Pearl­ stein 2016).24 Similarly, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, as an act of defiance, insisted that his ninetieth birthday party be held in the Imperial Hotel in Vi­ enna, which had been Hitler’s favorite. Rabbi Hier recalls: I will never forget that night at the Imperial when Simon spoke just after the band played, “Mein Shtetala Belz” (My Little Town Belz), a lullaby that evoked the innocent happiness of childhood. With tears in his eyes, Simon gazed up at the elaborate crystal chandeliers that lit the room like six million stars in the night sky, leaned to me and whis­ pered, “You see? Even the chandeliers are shaking because this is the first time they have heard such music in this hotel. But the important thing to remember is that Hitler and his pipe dream of a thousand year Reich is gone, but even here in the Imperial, his favorite hotel, Jews are still alive and still singing.” (Hier 2015) Noted Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem made the same point decades before Hitler came to power: “This is an ugly and mean world, and only to spite it we mustn’t weep. If you want to know, this is the constant source of my good spirit, of my ‘humour.’ Not to cry, out of spite. Only to laugh out of spite, only to laugh!” (Ziv 1998, 54). In Benigni’s film, comedy takes on this defiant and spiteful quality.

Whither Joy?  93

Joy Abides The history of human rights from its murky beginnings in the Enlightenment to its current apex in the aftermath of the twentieth century has been tied to dread, atrocities, and solemnity. Enthusiasm and the passions were pushed aside during liberalism’s founding period in favor of the seemingly less dreadful rationality. While many thinkers such as Shaftesbury, Rousseau, and Nietzsche pushed back against this overemphasis on reason, the world became too serious in the twentieth century to seriously philosophize about joy. A century of mass graves became a grave century. Human rights and human rights abuses walk together as close companions. No wonder “joy and human rights” appears so rarely in Google searches or that joy is almost never mentioned in human rights textbooks, syllabi, or classes. Embracing solemnity and avoiding joy in human rights has become its own fanaticism (cf. Meister 2011). Just as Shaftesbury feared, taking something seriously adds to its apparent gravity. Nevertheless, joy is part of the lived experiences of many human rights folks. It may be irrational, inherently so, but joy remains. And many human rights experiences are joyful. Joy or enthusiasm are not only fundamental parts of human existence, they sustain liberty, they sustain humans, and they build connections with (and within) communities. Joy remains. It abides. De­ spite all evidence to the contrary and against all odds, there is joy. Nelson Mandela, Emma Goldman, Adolek Kohn, Audre Lorde, and others, all of whom were intimately familiar with the gravity of human existence and the fragility of human rights still danced during the twentieth century. ­Anti-​­Apartheid activist and freedom fighter Albie Sachs, who lost his right arm and the vision in his left eye in an assassination attempt by car bombing in 1988, directly relates humor and joy in the context of his severe bodily trauma. As he flits in and out of consciousness in a Mozambican hospital Sachs is reminded of an old Jewish joke, about Hymie Cohen, who like me is a Jew, and he falls off a bus . . . ​he does what appears to be making the sign of the cross, and the friend says “Hymie I didn’t know you were Catholic,” and he said, “What do you mean, Catholic? Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch.” And I started with testicles, all in order, wallet, my heart is OK, I feel my head, there are no craters there, then my left arm slides down my right arm and I discover I’ve lost the bottom part of my arm. But I felt

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Figure 1. Nelson Mandela dancing in Harare. Source: https://www.pri.org /stories/2013-12-06/slideshow-mandela-loved-dance. Courtesy of Reuters.

fantastic because when you’re in the freedom struggle you’re waiting every day, every night, “Will they come for me? If they come for me, will I be brave, will I get through?” and they’d come for me and they’d tried to kill me and I’d survived, and I’d only lost an arm. (Sachs and Carrick 2011; see also Sachs 2000) Sachs continues, explicitly tying together trauma, humor, and joy: “And when I wrote about it afterwards in a book called The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, I said ‘I joke, therefore I am.’ So I think humour in that sense came to me at a moment of great trauma, but it turned the trauma around into literally a joyous moment” (Sachs and Carrick 2011; emphasis added). Years later, when Sachs was sworn in as one of the first judges on the new South African Constitutional Court, he faced a dilemma whether to verbally affirm the oath of office or raise his hand and “swear to God.” Having been raised in a non­ sectarian home infused with values of conscience and social justice, and hav­ ing lived his life with a sense of transcendence but without a belief in a specific deity, the choice seemed clear. Nonetheless, he also wanted to embrace the

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decades of struggle and properly give meaning to the tragedies and triumphs as well as his fallen comrades. I knew intuitively the way to make my most truthful commitment, to the Constitution, to the values it enshrined, to the memory of my friends, Looksmart, Loza, Babla, Ruth, Jeanette, Joe, Dulcie and all those who had been martyred so that we could live in a democratic state based on respect for human rights. I pushed upward the heavy, dark green sleeve of my new gown, with its red and black cuffs. Under the eyes of the President of the country [Nelson Mandela], the Deputy Pres­ ident, the Speaker of the National Assembly, the Chairperson of the Senate, the Chairperson of the Constitutional Assembly, judges from all over the country, my family, and the millions watching on television, I raised my stump: “So help me God.” (Sachs 2000, 219–220) That joyful and spiteful moment of raising what was left of his right arm, done with an appropriate solemnity, is surely part of the human rights story.

Figure 2. Albie Sachs being sworn in for the South African Constitutional Court, February 1995. Anti-Apartheid activist Albie Sachs lost most of his right arm in a bombing orchestrated by the South African government. While being sworn in as one of the first justices on the post-Apartheid Constitutional Court, Sachs raised the remainder of his right arm in a spiteful and joyous remembrance of his colleagues who died in the struggle. Source: http://www.achievement .org/achiever/albie-sachs/. Courtesy of Philip Littleton/ Getty Images.

CHAPTER 4

Joyful Activists

Preface: Martin Luther King’s Pillow Fights The balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, was etched into the world’s collective consciousness in the early evening of April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Little known is that Dr. King had en­ gaged in an intense and raucous pillow fight with his renowned colleagues, Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Reverend Andrew Young, only minutes be­ fore being assassinated. According to Young, “Pillow fights were something we did all the time . . . ​they relieved the tension” (Jerome 1998). Young had returned to the hotel after a long day in federal district court fighting to get an injunction lifted against the sanitation workers’ marches that had drawn King and his colleagues to Memphis. King, resting from giving his famous “Mountaintop” speech the night before and convalescing from a minor illness, had waited anxiously for word from Young, who was indis­ posed in court all day. In his autobiography, Young provides a b ­ low-​­­by-​­blow account of the ensuing pillow fight: When I came in, Martin just grabbed me and threw me down on the bed, and started beating me with a pillow. I mean, he was, he was like a big kid. He was fussing because I hadn’t reported to him, and I tried to tell him, “I was on the witness stand, I’m here in the Federal Court.” And he was just standing on the bed swinging the pillow at me. I’m trying to duck with him saying, “You have to let me know what’s going on.” You know, and finally I snatched the pillow and started swinging back and it, you know, and everybody, it was sort of like the, the, you

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know, touchdown, and everybody piles on everybody. It w ­ a—​­it was just, I mean, people just started throwing pillows and piling on top of everybody, and laughing and, and going on and then, he stopped and, and said, “Let’s go.” (Hampton and Fayer 1990, 466–467) Young then went down to the parking lot where a limousine was waiting, and he and Pastor James Orange, who Young labeled the “gentle giant,” con­ tinued the playfulness by shadowboxing, “the rest of us were in the parking lot standing around clowning and everybody was feeling good.” Meanwhile King went back to the hotel room to get his coat and tie to join them for din­ ner. A “shot rings out in the Memphis sky” (U2); a shot that sounded like a car backfiring or a firecracker. When he turned to look at the balcony and Dr. King couldn’t be seen, “Young’s first thought was that King was ‘still clowning.’ ‘I thought that he’d been, you know, was faking a shot’ ” (Young 1996, 464). “Then I ran up the steps and saw that he was laying in a pool of blood. And it was obvious that he was gone. And the bullet entered the tip of his chin and tore half of his neck off. And it was almost like, you know, he was entitled to his rest and reward. And the picture was after the shot rang out, all of the police were running away from where the shot came from to us and we were trying to point to say the shot came from over t­ here—​­go see who’s over there” (Young n.d.). King’s assassination, not surprisingly, elicited a flurry of emotions and actions among his closest associates. Some tried to cling to Dr. King by gath­ ering up his blood or placing their hands in his blood. For his part, Young envied King and wondered how the movement would continue: “It seemed unfair that he was ‘free’ from innumerable problems, while we, the living, were left to try to cope without him. We had been just getting by with him, how could we get along without him?” (Young 1996, 466). King’s associates soon met together in the same hotel room to begin the process of moving forward without their leader. The joy and playfulness of the pillow fight fol­ lowed by bewilderment and overwhelming grief, and then the intense desire to push forward at all costs, all in such a short span of time under such trying circumstances, point to the critical role played by emotions and affect, includ­ ing joy in social movements. It leaves many questions unanswered, including would the movement have been as successful without the pillow fights and the clowning.

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Emotions and Social Movements The first decades of social movement literature in the discipline of sociology shockingly neglected emotions in favor of rational, structural, and institu­ tional models, to the point of positing “rational protestors as devoid of emo­ tions” (Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001, 5). Lofland’s groundbreaking 1982 study argued that most research in the field had focused on hostile and fearful crowds in lieu of joyful crowds. Referencing studies all the way back to 1908, Lofland asked, “Who now seriously speaks of ecstatic crowds, social epidem­ ics, manias, fevers, religious hysterias, passionate enthusiasms, frantic and disheveled dances, or even of expressive crowds?” (1982, 355). Michael Wal­ zer even inexplicably claimed that revolutions are for “the kind of ascetic, ­single-​­minded, ­self-​­denying personality that Calvinism sought to inculcate” (Ehrenreich 2006, 175). Granted, there is significant evidence of attempts to suppress crowd joys in social movements. For instance, Barbara Ehrenreich (2006) in Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy argues for a rebirth of collective joy to counter its suppression by the institutionalization of the medieval Christian church, Protestantism, colonialism, and capitalist c­ o-​­optation. Others have blamed the “odd commitment to the dismal that Marxism imposed upon rad­ icals” (Chaloupka 2003, 147) or noted the hesitancy to countenance positive emotions in ­US-​­based queer theory, where “the tie between homosexuality and unhappiness is so deep and persistent that it is hard to imagine how it will ever be undone” (Love 2007, 62). Other theorists have expressed deep concern that “looking on the bright side” means “to avoid what might threaten the world as it is” (Ahmed 2010, 83). And yet, emotions, including positive emotions, are ubiquitous in social movements as well as in all social interactions, serving many functions. They “can be means, they can be ends, and sometimes they can fuse the two. They can help or hinder mobilization efforts, ongoing strategies, and the success of social movements” (Jasper 2011, 286). Building on the pioneering work of Arlie Hochschild (1983) and other sociologists of emotions, the past two de­ cades have witnessed a surge of studies on emotions and affect theory in social movements (e.g., Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001; Effler 2010; Gould 2009; G. Yang 2000; Pearlman 2013). A few exceptions of finding joy in human rights contexts stand out and presage many themes of this work, but even in those works, joy often takes a

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backseat to other emotions. In Abrams’s recent law review article (2011) on the importance of emotions in human rights mobilization, she extols the im­ portant role of positive and intense emotions in a near poetic passage: “There are the buoyant emotions of public rights mobilization: the excitement and elevation of being part of a cause bigger than oneself; the ardent hope for an envisioned future; the joy or pleasure in public theater; the anger or outrage at being thwarted; the sense of warmth or connection to one’s fellow activists” (552). Similarly, Pearlman (2013) in her analysis of emotions in the Arab up­ risings of 2011, sees joy, along with anger and pride, instilling personal effi­ cacy and willingness to run the risk of participating in protests in oppressive contexts. Echoing the writings of Audre Lorde, Pearlman argues that joy, anger, and pride are particularly potent because they “expand one’s sense of identity, and heighten attention to slights to that identity” (392). Fear, sadness, and shame on the other hand are “dispiriting emotions” that promote quiet­ ism. She quotes a Syrian activist who nicely expresses the effects of joyful ­rights-​­claiming: “You visualize all the walls of fear and the markers of humil­ iation falling,” and find a will to “continu[e] your hysterical chanting, because for the first time you can hear your voice” (390). As the Tunisians and Egyp­ tians were emboldened by these emotions, the uprisings gained momentum, and the joy of being part of an unforeseen new movement spread among the protestors.1 Nonetheless, even today, studies of negative emotions such as shame, anger, hate, indignation, and fear predominate. Joy remains undertheorized in the social movement literature with many pivotal issues largely unexam­ ined. It is rarely differentiated from other similar concepts such as enthusiasm and play. Joy is often considered merely a reflex emotion with little ­long-​­term impact and so scant work has been done on the mechanisms through which joy can be subversive in transgressing social norms, especially over time. Most glaringly joyful social movements, indeed social movements in general, are usually only examined when they agree with the researchers’ perspective. Studies of sinister but joyful social movements, what have recently been called ­anti-​­movements, such as global Jihadi terrorism or ­neo-​­Nazism, rarely even give lip service to the joy binding the participants together. In the previous chapter I argued that the establishment of human rights can be interpreted as part of a concerted attack on enthusiasm and joy, especially of martyrs and their followers. Human rights have been enshrined in rational documents and fought over in impartial courts ever since. In such a legalistic account of human rights adjudicated in an adversarial forum, winning the case

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becomes paramount. While there is an important performative aspect in tes­ tifying and telling one’s story, more emphasis is placed on attorneys who translate and water down the plaintiff ’s feelings of being wronged into the existing legal structures and rules and the judges who make objective rulings from on high. The result is that the plaintiffs often do not recognize their personal tragedies in the idiom of the court (Conklin 1998). However, many activists around the globe, in what have been labeled “ ‘new new’ social move­ ments” (e.g., Feixa, Pereira, and Juris 2009) are claiming their rights in a new way, one that is festive and upsets order. There’s something s­ elf-​­expressive and ­self-​­fulfilling about ­rights-​­claiming in a joyful (or playful) way. The chapter begins with more traditional formations of joy in social move­ ments through a brief analysis of carnival in the seminal work of Mikhail Bakhtin, recent research on playful social movements, and Victor and Edith Turner’s concept of communitas. The next section shows how erotics, in this case mostly as developed in Georges Bataille’s work on erotism, can be expe­ rienced in resistance movements and in human rights concerts, as well as in more individual moments of resistance such as by detainees who are unable to protest communally. I then explore how erotics infuse the varied works of queer resistance performance artist Jesusa Rodríguez in her mass cabarets and other performances and protests. The following section looks at clowning as a form of social protest and argues that clowns have refined their resistance techniques from the early modern jesters to contemporary hospital clowns and the remarkable NGO Clowns Without Borders that has made its mark on traumatized communities around the globe. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Archbishop Oscar Romero who found great joy and renewed faith the last three years of his life when he opened his heart to fight alongside the poor in El Salvador.

Carnivals, Communitas, and Play The scholarship on jouissance and social movements almost invariably har­ kens back to Bakhtin’s work (e.g., Shepard 2011; Grindon 2004), in particular his analysis of Rabelais’s description of medieval folk festivals in his master­ piece Gargantua and Pantagruel. The medieval festivals such as the Festival of Fools mocked social and religious norms in an upheaval of traditional hierarchies. These moments of dance, song, drink, games, and debauchery subverted social relationships and

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expectations. Previously unaccepted behavior became accepted. Any form of certainty or putting on airs, be it secular or sacred, was ridiculed. Rabelais’s novel emphasized “the king’s uncrowning” where “the king is the clown . . . ​ and is mocked by all the people” (Bakhtin 1984, 197). Church officials were treated with disrespect, even whipped like donkeys, during the “feast of the ass” exposing “the natural lout beneath the cassock.” Noted professors from the Sorbonne too faced deserved scorn and were ridiculed for their highbrow vacuous speech. Rabelais did not idealize the peasants either: “His folk are blasphemous rather than adoring, cunning rather than intelligent; they are coarse, dirty, and rampantly physical, reveling in oceans of strong drinks, poods of sausage, and endless coupling of bodies” (1984, xix). Carnival was not only popular schadenfreude, but a time where all mocked and all were mocked. Bodies and bodily functions usually kept under wraps rose in prom­ inence. The private became public. “The folk not only picked their noses and farted, but enjoyed doing so” (1984, xix). This, of course, is opposed to the privatized and sanitized body of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and mo­ dernity. Carnival championed freakery where unusual bodies, the “grotesque” were paraded and venerated. Rabelais and Bakhtin embraced “grotesque real­ ism” with its “degradation, that is, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract” (1984, 19). In Lacan’s terminology, during a folk festival a new symbolic realm was created: a second reality with a second set of meanings and subjectivities. Carnival was not a time of negation, but a time of renewal where “life is sub­ ject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom” (Bakhtin 1984, 7). Or, in the terms of French social theorist Roger Caillois, a festival is a paroxysm to the social body that forsakes the useful for the excess or abject. Festivals “constitute a break in the obligation to work, a deliverance from the limita­ tions and constraints of the human condition: it is the moment in which myth and dream are lived. One exists in a time and in a condition in which one’s obligation is to use things up and spend oneself. Motives of acquisition are no longer acceptable; one must waste and everyone outdoes the other in his squandering of gold, his provisions, his sexual or muscular energy” (Caillois 2001, 301; emphasis added). During carnival, according to Bakhtin presaging contemporary affect the­ ory, the body, especially its “grotesque form” can realize new possibilities. It can transgress its subjugated position in the mundane first reality. He writes, “The grotesque body . . . ​is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits” (1984, 26). This transgression occurs through exposure to the world,

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from the parts of the body that open to the world: “The body discloses its essence as a principle of growth which exceeds its own limits only in copula­ tion, pregnancy, childbirth, the throes of death, eating, drinking, or defeca­ tion. This is the ever unfinished, ever creating body, the link in the chain of genetic development, or more correctly speaking, two links shown at the point where they enter into each other. This especially strikes the eye in ar­ chaic grotesque” (1984, 26). This is a second reality where the body and its affects are taken seriously, where it is ever evolving in contact with the exterior world. It is a time of creation and transgression. Such a model resonates with contemporary social movement advocates who envision a new reality, with new discourses, and new social structures. Praise for Bakhtin’s carnival and medieval folk festivals is usually tem­ ­ ent-​ pered with the caveat that they were routinized moments for releasing p u ­ p emotions, what Lacan called inherent transgressions. As an escape valve for dissent, it is argued, carnival is counterproductive for real sustained social change. Literary theorist Terry Eagleton bemoans that such a festival is “a li­ censed affair in every sense, a permissible rupture of hegemony, a contained popular ­blow-​­off as disturbing and relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work of art. As Shakespeare’s Olivia remarks, there is no slander in an allowed fool” (1981, 148). Yet, for Bakhtin there is something revolutionary in the carnival because it points to a potential future where hierarchies may perma­ nently be questioned or even dissolve. “This is the victory of all the peoples’ material abundance, freedom, equality, brotherhood” (Bakhtin 1984, 256). Playful Social Movements

Acutely aware of inevitable ­co-​­optation, recent relatively spontaneous move­ ments such as Reclaim the Streets, Code Pink, Occupy Wall Street, Claremont Road, and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, have taken on a carnivalesque guise knowing full well that hegemonic discourses will seep back in. These movements combine art and politics, humor and seriousness to produce a spontaneous, joyful, fluid protest, creating something akin to what anarchist Hakim Bey called a Temporary Autonomous Zone, a space that is reclaimed from hegemonic discourse at least for a limited time (see Grindon 2004). Emphasizing the temporary status of the space recognizes and often gallantly resists the inevitable capture by hegemonic forces. These move­ ­ icro-​­anarchistic or “nomadic micropolitics,” that ments can be labeled as m focus on “horizontality” and wide participation (Shepard 2011). Shepard, for instance, describes the Summer Streets protest in New York City where “the

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city was transformed into a space for play and imagination, a celebration of nonpolluting transportation and possibility” (256) at least for a brief time. These protests are hopeful, light, and welcoming and are much more appeal­ ing than traditional marches that often emphasized stoicism.2 Bogad (2010) labels the various occupy movements “tactical carnivals.” They aim to be a disruption, the occupation or creation of a space where the hegemonic reality is suspended and a second reality is crafted that subverts previous hierarchies. If carnival is not sanctioned by the state, the protestors will disrupt the state with unsanctioned carnivals. This is not to say that more routine protests with marchers and placards as well as more confrontational protests are not com­ mon and do not have critical functions. Many tactical carnivals feature protest clowns such as the Carnival of Full Enjoyment in Edinburg organized by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (Bogad 2010), which proclaimed “the carnival is a celebration of how good life can be, and at the same time a statement against those who spoil it for the majority” (540). Even carnivals not principally organized by rebel clowns often include a mix of jugglers, musicians, street theater, and even tango (Fitch 2015). These protests fail to accept state authority over the occu­ pied space, often involving riot police in their antics, as a foil to their improvisations. Joy or erotics takes on a central role in such movements. For instance, Shepard’s (2009, 2011) participatory ethnographies of early a­ nti-​­HIV/AIDS protests and other more recent street protests in New York, holds that playful protests build “social eros by bringing people together, creating means for people to connect build communities engage power, resist social controls, and feel pleasure” (2011, 260). Though carnival may be short lived, it has sustain­ ing power through the cultivation of eros in the participants and the trans­ mission of its affect to a broader audience. An emphasis on play leads to change in people, even if there are not policy changes, what Shepard labels “discursive victories” (261). Joyful ­rights-​­claiming can be every bit as impor­ tant as being granted rights, and through social erotics play and clowning can transmit affect to thousands of people. Bogad (2010) provides five main goals of these protests, all of which focus on joy and hearken back to Bakhtin’s carnivalesque. These include cre­ ating a space for “joyful participation,” “to put a friendly face on the move­ ment” as a form of interruption to subvert mainstream images of activists, and to show that corporate globalization is not inevitable “by demonstrating that better alternatives are possible” (542), the use of play to diffuse shows of

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force, and “to create a celebratory culture of active defiance” (543). Similar emphasis on intense erotic energy can be seen more recently in the protests of culture jammers against the corporatization and homogenization of cul­ tural art forms. They “speak of ‘ecstatic feelings of oneness with the world,’ a sense of ‘real living,’ and a will ‘to take daily leaps of faith, or of courage’ ” (Wettergren 2009, 10). Shepard (2011) though is far from hopeful about the potentialities of play­ ful protests. First, he notes that play requires as much organizing, trust, and negotiation as normal protests. “Without a connection to a full organizing schema, play is little more than a way to blow off steam” (260) or as Grindon (2004) writes “without popular support, unlicensed carnivals are not revolu­ tions so much as provocations to outrage the official order” (152). By the end of his most recent book on play and social movements, Shepard holds that convergent actions (spontaneous ­get-​­togethers or tactical carnivals) had run their course. “Convergence actions feel decreasingly like spaces for social transformation” (258). These can still be productive happenings as “a festive spirit often sustains and nourishes movement activity. Not to mention, it feels good” (259). Tactical carnival can be justly labeled a privileged form of protest as it is permitted in mostly developed countries but would be forcefully and brutally broken up in dozens of other countries. Nevertheless, tactical carnival is adapt­ able to a wide range of circumstances and has been employed in some surpris­ ing contexts over time. Black freedom festivals dating back to 1808 in the United States have been days to define what it means to be Black by occupying public spaces in the face of hegemonic discourses (Kachun 2003, 3). The Swing Kids rebelled against Nazism in Germany by holding mass dances in clandes­ tine music halls. Though they started as an apolitical group, they became more politicized as the regime cracked down on their activities, with Himmler stat­ ing “only if we move with brutality, shall we be able to prevent the dangerous spread of such Anglophilic tendencies” and one interrogator reportedly saying: “anything that starts with [Duke] Ellington, ends with an assassination attempt of the Führer” (SS officer Hans Reinhardt, 1944). Carnivalesque protest move­ ments also made their mark in Eastern Europe during Communism (Ken­ ney 2003), in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and countless places since. The Turners’ Communitas

Carnival recalls Victor and Edith Turner’s term communitas which is a com­ munal oceanic feeling, a feeling of oneness with a group as they engage in a

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liminal experience together. Communitas is more intense and more commu­ nal than play. It is the pleasure a group feels when they share joy with each other. As described by Edith Turner, communitas, like joy, is aleatory, ineffa­ ble, and involves kenosis. Like joy, it cannot be conveyed in words, but is best conveyed in stories (E. Turner 2012, 9–10). Communitas is similar to Bakhtin’s carnival in that it is a period of anti­ structure, where the symbolic realm and its “psychological and sociological constructs” are suspended and traditional hierarchies are upended (E. Turner 2012, 3). It is a leveling out of power by tapping into the power of the abject. Communitas “resides in the poor and those considered inferior in their culture,” like Lorde’s erotic it is “a gift coming up from below” (2012, 3). Turner in her ethnographies finds communitas in manual labor, in Solz­ henitsyn’s account of the gulags, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in Native American ceremonies, in music, sports, and dozens of other commu­ nal experiences. Unlike carnival though there is a strong overtly ethical component as the oneness of the community does not make fun of each other or use others for their own gain. Communitas mirrors Lorde’s erotics, in that it uplifts each individual. “It does not merge identities; the gifts of each and every person are alive to the fullest. It remains a spring of pure possibility, and it founds one­ ness, in surprise” (E. Turner 2012, 93). Thus, according to Edith Turner, it is akin to Buber’s I­ -​­We relationship with a “loss of ego. One’s pride in oneself becomes irrelevant” (3). Communitas mirrors Marcuse’s development of eros with its liberatory and creative potential that can serve as a major force in fighting against re­ pression. Social movements, at heart for Marcuse, are motivated by eros, per­ formed by eros, and have as their end result eros.

Erotics, Social Erotics, and Social Movements While Bakhtin’s carnivals and Turner’s communitas emphasize communal experiences, the erotic need not be communal. It can be experienced indi­ vidually even in a moment of deep reflection. This is a form of micropolitics that is critical for repressed social movements and for sustaining the self in extreme situations. Vaneigem, for instance, follows Bakhtin in extolling car­ nival with its communitas, but he also carves out a significant role for indi­ vidual erotics where “any isolated, individual moment of joy” can be “at least

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potentially a revolution” (Grindon 2004, 157). Patricia Hill Collins (2002) similarly writes that for Black women “unofficial, private, and seemingly in­ visible spheres of social life and organization may be equally important” (202) as social activism. Similarly, Barbara A. Holmes (2004) holds that con­ templative practices as praxis in Black churches can range from the familiar song, dance, and shouting to the quieter, more spiritual unions, which she traces back to West African spirituality that she calls “the deep solace of coming together” (185). Clinging to ­anti-​­hegemonic identity even in con­ templation can be a form of social resistance because “if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by o ­ thers—​­for their use and to our detriment” (Lorde 1984d, 45). Georges Bataille’s notion of erotism, like the Turners’ communitas, refers to a liminal experience where the symbolic realm is suspended. Erotism can occur in group orgiastic frenzies or it can arise from the depths of the indi­ vidual. Either way, erotism is focused on what Bataille calls “inner experi­ ence,” it is tapping into the irrational power within each individual, and resisting the resurgence of the symbolic realm. It is “to remain open to the disruption of the moment or to the trauma experience induces. That is, it ­ appened—​­to remain in the un­ forces them to embrace that which has h known or ­irrational—​­and not to shy away from it and return to the world of explanation and reason” (Zevnik 2014). Like Bakhtin’s carnival and nomadic micropolitics Bataille’s “inner experience” is carving out a place for a second reality to resist the symbolic realm. It is an oasis. Erotism resembles jouis­ sance as the subject previously constructed by the symbolic realm is silenced and a second self emerges. Zevnik’s (2014) fascinating explorations of the detainees’ experiences at Guantánamo show how Bataille’s erotism can serve as a force that resists the “sovereign violence” applied by the US military apparatus. The detainees’ myr­ iad forms of resistance are “a testimony of life that escaped the limits of sov­ ereign power; a testimony of the body that defied sovereign laws, and a testimony of life’s excess” (Zevnik 2014). This excess cannot be expressed in traditional forms of protest by the detainees but is “manifested in ­micro-​ ­practices such as writing, memory or testimony or as a bodily resistance to torture.” Such micropractices are often tied to the body, whereby, as with Bakhtin, the body then becomes the site of potentiality and transgression. The future is written by the body. Zevnik includes two instructive quotes from Guantánamo detainees testifying to this very individual and powerful ero­ tism. Mohammed el Gorani says: “Since I was little, I was always laughing,

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smiling, joking and I kept going in Guantánamo. They were telling me: ‘Why are you laughing?’—​­‘I’m happy!’—​­‘How can you be happy? You’re in jail.’ ” And this haunting poem by Abdul Rahim: Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body, So I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am flying on the wings of thought, And so, even in this cage, I know a greater freedom. Examples of Erotics and Social Erotics in Human Rights

Erotics, both individual and social (and the two intertwined) have been cru­ cial for human rights movements. It can be manifest in myriad ways: spon­ taneous and improvised and intentional. Erotics can be the result of court decisions or political victories or joyful reunions or silently reflecting on great accomplishments. It can be triggered by great events, films, or song. It can be felt by great leaders, artists, “common people,” and even detainees in Guantánamo. Consider James Weldon Johnson’s affect when he composed the great Af­ rican American anthem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Written with his brother Rosamond on the occasion of the celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1899, the lyrics flowed out of James Weldon Johnson and he was overcome. “I could not keep back the tears, and made no effort to do so. I was experienc­ ing the transport of the poet’s ecstasy. Feverish ecstasy was followed by the ­contentment—​­that sense of serene j­oy—​­which makes artistic creation the most complete of all human experiences” (Redmond 2014, 69–70). A similar type of serene joy, also coincidentally tied to a commemoration of President Lincoln, is expressed by Reverend Ralph Abernathy after the hugely successful March on Washington in 1963 that featured Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The march for many represented the apex of a lifetime of social activism, a day that many organizers including Reverend Abernathy could scarcely have imagined in their wildest dreams. Later that evening after the crowd dispersed he poignantly recounts his feel­ ings in a halting voice: “Where 250,000 people had sat that day there was nothing but the wind blowing the leftover programs and scattered litter across the way and across the reflection pool the wind was blowing and keeping music. And we were so proud of the fact that no violence had taken place that day and we were so pleased. But this beautiful scene of the wind dancing in

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the sands of the Lincoln Memorial I will never forget. This was the greatest day of my life” (Abernathy n.d.). Anthems, Erotics, and Human Rights

Of course music with its ­near-​­infinite potential to stir affect has been closely tied to human rights and the erotic. Anthems uplift and empower. For in­ stance, Nina Simone’s classic “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” written with her bandleader, Weldon Irvine Jr., connects joy, pride, and subjectification. To be young, gifted and black, Oh what a lovely precious dream To be young, gifted and black, Open your heart to what I mean Written in 1969, the song became an anthem of the Black Power movement with its hopeful and joyful vision of the future, especially of its call to the “billion boys and girls” around the globe “who are young, gifted and black” (see Redmond 2014, 199–219): Oh but my joy of today Is that we can all be proud to say To be young, gifted and black Is where it’s at! Moving ­large-​­scale concerts or concert series have been organized for human rights causes such as the Amnesty International concerts of the 1980s and 1990s featuring performers like Sting, Peter Gabriel, U2, Senegalese star Yousou N’Dour, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Santana, and others. Gabriel’s song “Biko” deserves special mention as it honors Stephen Biko, activist, in­ tellectual, and a leader of the Black consciousness movement in South Africa. Biko was tortured and killed in South Africa’s prisons at the age of thirty. While performing “Biko” Gabriel would be accompanied by N’Dour, the Ugandan singer Geoffrey Oryema, and South African musicians. “Biko” re­ peats the Xhosa lyrics, “Yihla Moja”—​­which translates as “Come Spirit,” and the song was bookended on his albums with moving ­anti-​­Apartheid anthems such as “Senzeni Na?” Gabriel often would close his sets with “Biko,” leaving the audience chanting in Biko’s honor.

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Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja The man is dead The man is dead And the eyes of the world are watching now, watching now Sting, for his part, had learned of Chilean women under the Pinochet re­ gime who danced alone with pictures of their disappeared loved ones, the only form of protest allowed. They had found a space to express resistance and imagine a new reality. Sting wrote his haunting song “They Dance Alone” (“Ellas Danzan Solas”) in their honor and regularly performed it at the Am­ nesty International shows (see Carr 2017). It’s the only form of protest they’re allowed I’ve seen their silent faces scream so loud If they were to speak these words they’d go missing too Another woman on a torture table what else can they do At a 1988 show, he invited on stage several members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who had lost their children in Argentina’s dirty wars and had staged similar protests. Sting danced with each of the women. The ground­ breaking 1990 Amnesty show in the Estadio Nacional in Santiago de Chile concluded with Sting joined by Peter Gabriel and twenty of the Chilean women with pictures of their loved ones. Sting and Gabriel danced with each woman in turn: “They no longer danced alone. Now they were dancing with Sting . . . ​with Peter Gabriel . . . ​with 100,000 people in the stadium . . . ​and with millions of people around the world who were grieving for their loss and heartened by their courage” (Amnesty International n.d.). Such moving concerts have a long history dating back at least to the eigh­ teenth century. George Frideric Handel’s Messiah, which famously taps into the sublime and erotics especially as it culminates with the powerful “Halle­ lujah Chorus,” premiered in Dublin in 1742 as a benefit for three charities. Starting in 1750 Handel would annually perform Messiah as a charity event at the Foundling Hospital in London. The hospital was the first of its kind that took care of orphan children and has played a major role in advancing chil­ dren’s rights for centuries.

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Erotics and Human Rights Victories

Witnessing human rights victories can also bring great communal joy. When the court handed down verdicts against sixteen of the perpetrators of the “dirty war” in Argentina: “With each conviction, the crowd let out cheers of triumph, tears of joy, and intimidating chants promising that justice would follow the torturers wherever they tried to run” (Davis 2013, 5). When Aung Suu Kyi, the ­long-​­detained Burmese political activist was released and trav­ eled to nearby Thailand to greet Burmese refugees, she was met with an ec­ static crowd of supporters. When she spoke on a balcony to a throng of supporters, “the effect was electric as her words hit home. Many smiles turned to tears of ­joy—​­such is the hope these Burmese migrants have of returning to their homeland and a job” (Stevens 2012). Paola Telesca, an Italian who lived in Berlin in 1989, recalls the fall of the Berlin Wall, a potent symbol of human rights abuses, in terms similar to those of Reverend Abernathy after the March on Washington, with heightened bodily sensations, connections with other people, surprise that there was no violence, and inexpressible emotions. Her account though is more connected to the body and more overtly references transgression: The people could now do things they were shot for only a few days earlier, without having to face any penalties. I remember it being ex­ tremely pleasant to actually hit the structure of the ­Wall—​­the Wall that had caused so much grief among German families. Up to this day I marvel at the fact, that no person was killed or even injured. It is im­ possible to describe the atmosphere to anyone who wasn’t there. Imag­ ine all people being friendly and cheerful, sharing their exuberance with any stranger. ­West-​­Berliners used to gather at the i­ nner-​­city bor­ der checkpoints in the night, greeting East Berliners with Sekt [spar­ kling wine] and applause. It was unlike anything I had experienced before or since. (Lazar 2008, 55) Many other accounts of those days echo this inability to find words adequate to the emotions just as theorists have difficulty defining joy, communitas, and erotics. “I mean it was just . . . ​it was like . . . ​you can’t even put it into words or it would lose its meaning. I mean, it was just so emotional. It was very, very intense” (Lazar 2008, 58).

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Jesusa Rodríguez’s Erotic ­Rights-​­Claiming When I was a child they told me I was autistic And I understood artistic, that’s why I dedicated myself to this. —​­Jesusa Rodríguez Queer feminist theorist Jasmine Rault (2011) recently bemoaned that while queer theory, especially in the United States, has embraced recent advances in ­ ooh-​­pooh positive affect, instead focusing on affect theory, it continues to p the drawbacks of “hegemonic optimism,” “cruel optimism,” and “compulsory happiness.” Here, I follow Rault’s lead when she suggests we look to Latin America for innovative erotic queer artists and activists such as Jesusa Rodrí­ guez and her wife Liliana Felipe where we will find that “illicitly utopic feel­ ings like thrill and euphoria have been and continue to be important affective media of communication for feminist queer political and cultural work” (Rault 2011, 2; see also Rault 2017). ­Well-​­known Mexican queer performance artist, director, activist, and rebel, Jesusa Rodríguez has for decades been challenging and transgressing social norms and political violence by staging plays and cabarets, organizing creative performance art, protesting against the Mexican government and neoliberalism, and supporting other artists and marginalized groups. She “has been called the most important woman of Mexico” (Taylor and Constantino 2003, 209). Erotics and transgression, along with finding appropriate spaces to tap into social erotics, have been central to her work. As with Audre Lorde, a ­not-​­insignificant part of her transgressive power has been breaking down categories that define identities and genre. She famously stages “espectáculos” that are innovative tapestries weaving traditional opera, cabaret, sketches, vaudeville, and more traditional theater. Her work queers Mexican art and Mexican society by tapping into the roots of the Mexican people and ­pre-​ ­Hispanic culture, and she does so in a joyful, mocking, often risqué manner. Her work serves as a wakeup call to the quotidian, a clarion call for trans­ gression: “We are constantly threatened by the vengeful thunderbolt of a world that prefers the sordid tranquility of boredom to the harrowing splen­ dor of rebellion, of a society that prefers to be immobile rather than trans­ gress” (Taylor and Morales 1994, 163). This is a second reality in Bakhtin’s terms with a similar emphasis on the body, especially in its grotesque forms.

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Rodríguez plays the clown or fool in many of her works, taking on numerous characters: as she says, “I like being a buffoon because I can ridicule in all possible ways” (Rodríguez 2000). Her works have challenged patriarchy, con­ sumerism, US immigration policies, globalization, neoliberalism, censorship, genetically modified seeds, n ­ arco-​­terrorism, and government corruption. Continuous deconstruction of our identities and our ideas, including those of the playwright and performers, are at the heart of her theater. Theater, with its repeated performances, is especially good at rethinking and r­ e-​­creating, espe­ cially when it escapes mass culture and is free to transform itself on a nightly basis. “If there is anything interesting about theatre it is that every single day one starts anew. It is not easy to repeat something or to put the tape back on the machine. So if you no longer adhere to something, it is difficult to go on representing it onstage. Every day you are obliged to rethink it” (Taylor and Morales 1994, 172). Much of the work Rodríguez has done with her Argentine wife Liliana Felipe has been to experiment with and provide places for such performative transgressions. Early on, Rodríguez performed plays in nearby caves, and later they bought their own theater space, paying the rent with revenue from an attached bar. She concludes bluntly: “The only way I can do what I want to do without making any compromises is to have a theatre of my own, and keep it going any way I can because anything else is just a lie; it means eating shit” (Taylor and Morales 1994, 168). Throughout they have been inspired by the tradition of Teatros de Carpa (tent theaters); traveling theater companies that performed in poor communities throughout Mexico in the early twentieth century. Teatros de Carpa featured experimental, improvisational, comic, and often bawdy plays with close interactions with the audience. These travelling theaters often served a transgressive political purpose, informing the masses of the news of the day, and mocking and criticizing the ruling elites.3 In La Coatlicue (1990), a “­pre-​­Hispanic cabaret,” Rodríguez taps into a primordial maternity similar to Audre Lorde in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (see Ball 2001) calling on a primordial mother god, who she says is “the true unconscious of the race.” Coatlicue, an Aztec mother god who wears a skirt of snakes, is represented by a puppet fashioned after a statue in the rather staid national anthropology museum in Mexico City. During the perfor­ mance, Rodríguez inhabits this puppet, bringing it and the snakes to life. The ­well-​­known Aztec mother goddess coming to life has a profound effect, awak­ ening the erotic within the Mexican audience: “They almost saw her as a Mother; they wanted to touch her and throw powder on her. That means there

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is a clear but repressed consciousness in those people. It is something that is in our roots and which we know but which we then leave in books and muse­ ums” (Taylor and Morales 1994, 169). Coatlicue though feels abandoned and pines for her children, the Mexican people, who have left her for the modern gods: “Listen ungrateful offspring! Unlike these other idols I still love you. Even though you rub the Buddha’s bellybutton, even though you spend your money on medals and rosaries and even though you’d search for Mecca from here to eternity, you’ll always be my children. That’s what makes me different. Because there’s only one mother here or in China and that mother is me. . . . ​ Up with difference down with pluralism, Coatlicue, Coatlicue, stands up for the Freaky” (Taylor and Morales 1994, 175). The last lines remind us that this is a playful, queered version of the ancient goddesses just as Rodríguez has queered other Mexican female icons with characters such as “Freaka Kahlo” and in plays entitled “Sor Juana in Prison” and “The Striptease of Sor Juana” about the iconic Mexican ­seventeenth-​­century nun and writer Juana Inés de la Cruz. In each case, Rodríguez returns to and queers the original sources “by revisiting and emphasizing the dissident sexualities of these women” (Marín 2008). This, like Lorde’s erotics, is transgressive, tapping into something that is within all women, perhaps all of us. Hers is not a “didactic” performance about the sacredness of the ancient gods, but a “­pre-​­Hispanic cabaret” that maintains the playfulness of the gods. The performance of La Coatlicue seems to have disrupted the assumptive worlds of the audience. Rodríguez recalls: “What struck me right from the start was that the public watched it seriously but only gradually began to warm up, and at the end they were shouting. I have very seldom seen such a reaction from the public, who generally prefer to remain silent at this kind of performance. But on the contrary, the audi­ ence’s enthusiasm was overwhelming” (Taylor and Morales 1994, 169). In addition, Rodíguez and Felipe have been ardent and brave activists for numerous progressive causes in Mexico. They bring their creative artistry to “mass cabarets,” flash mobs, and street theater involving community members for a range of causes from the Zapatistas to LGBTQ issues to protesting against the placement of a Walmart near the famous Mayan temples at Teotihuacán. In 2006, Rodríguez with numerous other artists founded Resistencia Creativa, a political movement that continues to this day. It evolved from Rodrí­ guez’s playing a leading role in the massive protests of up to two million people against the results of the 2006 Mexican presidential election. The group led study sessions, public performances, empowerment sessions, and some

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l­arge-​­scale protest actions including occupying more than a dozen buildings in Mexico City and wrapping another building with kraft paper so that no one could enter. In 2008, she coordinated a successful and massive public action that included occupying the Mexican senate against a proposed bill that would have privatized Mexico’s oil industry.

Clowning for Human Rights A fascinating trend in recent social protests has been the resurrection of the clown as social activist. The clown, usually in the guise of a jester or fool, in addition to providing entertainment for nobility previously played a signifi­ cant role in politics, often being the lone dissenting voice to despotic rulers. Many of them became quite famous, such as Stańczyk of Poland memorial­ ized in a noted painting by Jan Matejko and the various court jesters to British royalty memorialized in Shakespearean plays. Jesters, when no other dissent was tolerated, were encouraged to speak truth to power, at least within a closely confined circle. Many of the jesters, such as the holy fools (yurodivie) in Russia, were allowed to speak up because they were thought to have divine wisdom or divine protection which came about by suffering from a mental illness and thus were a gift from God, or because they emulated Jesus Christ and Diogenes the Cynic by eschewing material possessions often including clothing. Consider St. Basil, the most venerated holy fool for whom the landmark St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow is named. Basil, Fool for Christ, who walked around barefoot, and perhaps naked, summer and winter, did works for the poor and foresaw the future. He would drag heavy chains around to take on the sins of others and throw stones at the windows of the elite to rattle them. Legend has it that he would berate Ivan the Terrible as he walked to church for his sins, including his violent public policies. According to one tale: during Lent one year while everyone was required to be fasting, Basil presented the czar with a slab of raw beef, asking him “Why abstain from meat when you murder men?” (Orthodox Peace Fellowship 2012). Not only was this taunting accepted, when Basil died, Ivan supposedly served as one of his pallbearers. Basil has since been pro­ claimed an Orthodox saint. Such annoying jesters though gradually died out in most countries, only reappearing in the twentieth century perhaps due to the rise of vaudevillian performances and the invention of film. In the late 1960s, clowning for human

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rights became fashionable again with absurdist ­anti-​­war protests, such as when activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin created a media event in 1967 by claiming that they and their fellow protestors were going to exorcise and levitate the Pentagon. After speeches and a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, a large crowd marched to the Pentagon with the purpose of conducting the ­much-​­needed exorcism. As they explained to the flocks of gathered media: “By chanting ancient Aramaic exorcism rites while standing in a circle around the building, they could get it to rise into the air, turn orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled. The war would end forthwith” (A. Hoffman 2009, 3). Alas, the war in Vietnam continued for another eight years and the Penta­ gon remains. Since then, clown protests have ballooned. Groups have sprung up around the globe including Clown Bloq which targeted G8 protests seeking “to pro­ vide hilarity in the face of a humorless police state and to provide a fool’s critique of organized and militarized repression of the people, their voices and their best interests” (Guardian 2012). The Amsterdam Rebel Clowns per­ formed at Tahrir Square in Cairo. Circus Amok in New York works on numer­ ous social justice causes “bringing its funny, queer, caustic and sexy, political ­one-​­ring spectacles to diverse neighborhoods throughout the city . . . ​, invit­ ing the audience to join them in envisioning a more empowered life of com­ munity interaction while enjoying a queer celebratory spectacle” (Circus Amok, n.d). A particularly memorable example of clowns holding leaders accountable for their actions can be found in the Magic Lantern theater (Laterna Magika) in Prague during the Czech “velvet revolution.” During lengthy debates and strategizing about next steps for the movement, a group of stu­ dents appeared on the stage calling themselves the “Committee for a More Joyful Present” dressed in clownish outfits. During the performance, they handed mirrors to each of the s­ oon-​­­to-​­be leaders of their country, including then playwright Vaclav Havel, asking them to reflect on themselves and “to make sure that you don’t turn into another politburo” (Ash 1990, 112). Less successfully, a group of Spanish clowns recently traveled to Israel to protest the Palestinian occupation and unintentionally succeeded in uniting extrem­ ists on both sides of the conflict by posing naked by the security fence. Jestering or the use of raillery by fools serves a useful function in reducing elites’ pomposity. As activist Saul Alinsky wrote, “Ridiculousness is the most potent weapon we have. There is no defense against it” (Shepard 2011, 264). Recent protests by clowns as outlined above also have the potential to help upset the symbolic realm and create a second reality; to create an oasis in an

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otherwise impossible situation, what Linge (2013) calls a “magical safe area” (2013, 4). They are able to challenge assumptive worlds and established iden­ tities. Are they joyful and if so, to whom? Hospital Clowns

Swedish scholar Lotta Linge has published several very helpful phenomenol­ ogies using qualitative interviews and observation of hospital clowns in chil­ dren’s wards at university hospitals in Sweden. Her analyses are indebted to affect theory and resonate with many themes of this volume. First, hospital clowns are able to disrupt the assumptive worlds of the children, parents, and caregivers where a depressive atmosphere prevailed. Caregivers described the clowns “as an ‘unexpected possibility’ as a ‘rush of joy’ that swept over the wards when the hospital clowns arrived” (Linge 2011, 4). The appearance of the clowns startled the children, shook their assumptive world. Following Tomkins (1962), Linge argues that “the function of the affect surprise/startle is to reset the nervous system so that it can take in new information” and open up new possibilities (2011, 5). This is the creation of a “place of refuge,” an erotic space where the children can tap into something within them that is not defined by their disease or condition. She ends up labeling this a “magical safe area” which is “a way station of creative possibilities where inner needs and desires could be made visible and where the focus was on the healthy rather than ill sides of the child” (2013, 5). The performance focused on the children not as diseased individuals. For the clowns “you are seen and accepted just the way you are, your entire body too” (2011, 6). The performances showed positive capabilities for the children as it fo­ cused on their competence at the expense of the clowns’ vulnerabilities who would look “weak and silly” (Linge 2011, 7; cf. Gryski 2003). The grotesque, exaggerated qualities of the clowns’ appearance and acting also had the effect of showing that bodies are potentially anything, that “everything is possible.” The “hospital clowns’ strategy is to reinforce the child’s life force.” The child’s ­self-​­esteem grows as a result of “just being able to exist” in this center. The clowns not only brought joy to the children, they also affected their parents. In fact, Linge (2008) describes the impact of the clowns as an infection that spread to the children as well as to parents and to the caregivers. In a similar way, the international organization Clowns Without Borders has used clown­ ing to bring joy to thousands and to shake assumptive worlds about what is possible.

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Clowns Without Borders: Joyful Clowning for Human Rights

Clowns Without Borders (Payasos sin Fronteras; cf. the similar organizations Patchwork for Peace, and Serious Road Trip; and see Wilding 2006) is a relief organization run by clowns that has performed in hundreds of locations around the globe under the banner “no child without a smile.” CWB was formed in 1993 in Spain by the professional clown Tortell Peltrona, real name Jaume Mateu, who started his career clowning during the Franco regime and so not surprisingly he would claim “being a clown is a revolutionary act” (UNHCR 2011). He was invited to perform in Croatia during the Balkan Wars with the encouragement of Spanish children who had just completed an exchange program. The refugees in Croatia told the Spanish children, “You know what we miss most? We miss laughter, to have fun, to enjoy our­ selves” (UNHCR 2011). Soon, CWB partnered with UNHCR and organized multiple trips to perform for refugees in the Balkans. “When we started, it might have seemed like a joke to some people. An NGO with clowns in the middle of a war! It was surreal. At first we wondered what we were doing, but after the first experience it was such a powerful and emotional feeling. There was a very warm welcome and the visit was very helpful for the children” (UNHCR 2011). CWB now has branches in several countries including in the United States, throughout Europe, and South Africa with several new ones being formed and thoughts about an international federation, “but they are all clowns, so it’s difficult to organize anything” (UNHCR 2011). Their volunteer clowns have performed in dozens of countries including notorious “hotspots” such as Ethiopia, Colombia, South Sudan, Kenya, Israel, Palestine, Zimbabwe, and the Philippines. They have performed after major disasters such as Hur­ ricane Katrina and Typhoon Haiyan and during the current immigrant crisis in Greece and Lebanon. CWB is still very much a grassroots effort, operating on an almost all volunteer basis with the clowns raising monies for their own trips. The clowns perform in small groups of three to four, which seems to encourage closer connections with local populations and organizations. The clowns only go where they’ve been invited by local groups. CWB has learned a great deal over time, in no small part I conjecture due to their empathy and humility as clowns. Early on they realized that many clown costumes and clown acts would not translate into a variety of contexts so they now rely on minimal costuming, minimal speaking during their performances, and rather simple

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clown acts. Alex the Jester, a member of ­CWB-​­USA calls it primal ­talk—​ ­communication that can be done across borders. CWB was originally founded “to offer humor as a means of psychological support to communities that have suffered trauma” (Peacock 2009, 2016), but this mission has expanded greatly. They soon began training individuals in clown techniques to perform for others, and then they merged their clowning with workshops on related topics including issues about health, education, conflict resolution, women’s empowerment, children’s rights, and human rights. Each clown when they return to their home country is also required to publicize the causes that they witnessed. With an expanded mission, their goals and tactics have become more re­ fined, with a more nuanced view of trauma and recovery. They seek to create “resilience through laughter” but also make heavy use of more c­ utting-​­edge therapeutic techniques including group play, “restorative narrative” and col­ laborative communication (Clowns Without Borders – USA 2018). The South African branch which understandably has focused heavily on the HIV/AIDS epidemic has incorporated an impressive range of tactics such as “drama, story­ telling, song, circus arts, and m ­ indfulness-​­based stress reduction (MBSR)” (McClaren 2010, 67). From numerous testimonies and videos of their expeditions, the following is something of a general description of a visit from CWB. The clowns often walk to the afflicted area or parade through the area and begin clowning. Some of the children might have heard that there will be a performance of some type, but even being forewarned, they are not sure what to make of the ­ arm-​­up routines of these strangers. The initial juggling and ­mini-​ random w s­ ketches are something of a curiosity. But once the performance starts, they become captivated. Part of this might be the simple fact that someone has arrived who is actually there to attend to their emotional needs as well as what one clown called the “bodily need to laugh” (Clowns Without Borders 2015) beyond their basic physical survival. As a director of Médecins sans frontières said after a clown performance in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004: “People have brought mattresses, blankets and medicine, but until now nobody gives us life. You let us laugh and smile and you give us life” (UNHCR 2011). The performances include music, dance, acrobatics, magic, juggling, and a healthy dose of slapstick and pratfalls, with much audience participa­ tion, and “general silliness.” Like the hospital clowns described above, CWB provides a space for refuge and trying to open up alternative realities for the children audience members. They experience a “sense of possibility and

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Figure 3. Clowns Without Borders - USA performing in 2017 with Haitian children affected by Hurricane Harvey. Clowns from left to right: Naomi Shafer, Kaitlin Kaufman, and Geoff Marsh. Courtesy of Clowns Without Borders - USA.

hope . . . ​there’s something other in this world besides the situation they cur­ rently find themselves in” (Clowns Without Borders 2015). It is the clowns who are made to look foolish, while the children are often “in the know” about how the performance will proceed. After the initial performance the clowns stay for a number of days, with additional performances for new audiences, but they also work with local NGOs and local performers on capacity building exercises and hold work­ shops with community members. The clowns train others to practice a range of therapeutic techniques including clowning to minimize the feeling that they have just parachuted in and left the community. The clowns also spend a great deal of time visiting with children o ­ ne-​­­on-​­one, making each child feel special as do the hospital clowns discussed above. In some cases, as in schools for Sudanese refugee children in Cairo, a troupe returns for an eagerly antic­ ipated visit each year. The crowds of children are affected! As are the clowns, the adults, the fellow performers, and the diverse caregivers. One of the workshops, codirected by local dancers and artists in a very

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poor community wrecked by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, involved a group form of expressive arts therapy involving kinesthetic, reflective, and emotional work: We asked them to outline the form of a human body on a large piece of paper and then write phrases or words on the parts of the body that remind them of their experience during and after Typhoon Yolanda (the Filipino name for Typhoon Haiyan). Through tears, the team members shared their words with me. I asked frequently if this was OK with them to talk about and they all said, “Yes.” They then shared the above poem with me. It speaks of their pride to be Waray, that their community (Waray) have no homes, no money, nothing, but they have their lives. The whole group laughed after reading the poem to me. Their friends all have come to this work laughing, wanting to laugh, crying at other times but showing bold resilience as they return to laughter and smiles. (­CWB-​­USA 2014) A clown named Tim thoughtfully reflected on the experience the next day: “Our team has been moved by the joy that our students have shared with us, their ideas for their future and their desire to share play with other children in their community. We as a clown team feel humbled by the palpable resil­ iency we experience each day and we are honored to have been invited to assist in the recovery” (­CWB-​­USA 2014). CWB’s successes among individuals in seemingly hopeless situations is beyond impressive. In addition to the pro­ found impact on the children including facilitating children’s “right to play and to laugh” (Peacock 2009, 147), they have major impacts on the adult care­ givers, and on the clowns themselves. The performers too are shocked by what their body is able to do. They have the capacity to change the potentiality of others in ways they never imag­ ined possible, what one clown calls “the power of the nose”: “I ­really make my mark with this red nose. From behind the nose I see many things. I look, when I’m performing, at the people; I look at the fragility and also the good things and the sad things of humanity. In this situation, you see the best and the worst in humans. One of the things that I remember from the early expe­ ditions was that after we did a performance, people from different ethnic groups would eat together. This made me start to think about the power of the nose” (UNHCR 2011). Tortell Peltrona said, “I think there is one reality before we arrive and one reality after” (UNHCR 2011) and this is echoed in an inter­

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view with a teenage boy incarcerated in the new country of South Sudan: “These clowns have changed my life. Before I was in a very bad mood, but when I saw them perform, I laughed a lot and felt very happy” (United Na­ tions 2009). Testimonies abound. I will end with one that speaks to the changes in both children and their caregivers. A caregiver from South Africa who underwent training with CWB that included mindfulness testified to dramatic changes in her perceptions of her work and the children. Being part of this group changed the way I think about the orphans in my care. I used to think of just packing my stuff and leaving these children alone. I realized that when doing the awareness activities and body relaxations, I feel better. I now want to be with my children, to share stories and be close to them and care for them. Before I came to this group I always felt alone in caring for these children. Being here made me realize that I am not alone. There are others who are in the same situation and we can support each other. Even my children have changed. I can see an easy connection between them and me. Before­ hand, they would not come to me when I came home. But now they come freely to me. They share things that they did at school and in the programme. I want to be there for my children. We love each other. (McClaren 2010)

Archbishop Romero’s Joyful Laughter This chapter began with a discussion of Martin Luther King’s last day includ­ ing a raucous pillow fight with his comrades and left unanswered the question whether the civil rights movement would have been as successful without the pillow fights and the clowning. To further address this question, I end the chapter with a discussion of the role of joy and clowning in the last three years of another great martyr of the twentieth century. Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917–1980) of El Salvador was one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century and will most likely soon be canonized by the Catholic Church. Numerous biographies on Romero have been written, and the voluminous diaries from his last three years are avail­ able in Spanish and English. And yet, there are precious few sources that give us a sense of who he was as a person, as a b ­ eing-​­­in-​­­the-​­world. The outlines of

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his life are amazing enough and have served as the foundation of many books, films, and songs. And yet, they do not say enough about the man himself and how he spent his final years. A couple of biographies begin to provide some flesh to this martyr, but the most interesting documents are the personal rec­ ollections of the man himself by those who knew him best (see López Vigil 2000; Sobrino 1990; Carrigan and Weber 2011). They give us a sense of how much he sacrificed for the poor and for peace in his country; how he found a profound joy that sustained him in that mission during his last three years; how his life was reshaped by his patient learning from the poor; and how his life profoundly affected those around him. Archbishop Romero: The Saint

The incredible facts of his life are well known. After a humble upbringing in ­ ook-​­wise Romero began studying for the priest­ remote El Salvador, the shy, b hood at the age of thirteen, and at the age of t­ wenty-​­five he finished his studies and was ordained in Rome in the first years of World War II. He returned to El Salvador during the last year of the war and served in several parishes and became the secretary of the nation’s bishops’ conference. He gained a reputa­ tion as a quiet, conservative priest who kept to himself among his peers, but often sided with the wealthy, and he seemed to enjoy hobnobbing with his affluent parishioners. The fact that El Salvador was an extreme plutocracy governed by a handful of landowning families in cooperation with the mili­ tary and the church seemed to have eluded his consciousness. “What did we know about Monseñor Romero back then? That he was an ally of the rich la­ dies and that he went around blessing their parties and their mansions. He was always appearing in the social pages of the newspapers, today with one family of the bourgeoisie, tomorrow with another. In the photos, he always looked so happy alongside those hoity toity women. It was ridiculous the number of gatherings he went ­to—​­constantly!” (Guillermina Diaz, in López Vigil 2000, 41). In the terms of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Romero was liv­ ing the life of enjoyment ( ­jouissance—​­not to be confused with Lacan’s sense of jouissance as transgression), ­self-​­content in his subjectivity and not called to respond to the Other. This way of life continued despite increasingly brutal military tactics against any type of organizing efforts by the landless campes­ inos. By the ­mid-​­1970s, El Salvador was descending into chaos with a looming civil war pitting an oppressive government backed by ­right-​­wing death squads against the landless campesinos who were aided by Marxist and progressive

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elements including many Catholic priests. Most rural priests enthusiastically adopted the principles of liberation theology drawn from the Medellín Con­ ference of 1968 and increasingly sided with the peasants, often taking leader­ ship roles in their organizing efforts. Romero for his part was uneasy with liberation theology, with one church activist recalling that “any time that I or anyone else mentioned Medellín to him, the man would get so nervous, he’d develop a tic” (López Vigil 2000, 71). The priests and the peasants faced increasingly severe persecution. Yet, ­ ro-​­government and ­pro-​­­upper-​ Romero did not publicly move away from his p ­class stances. When he was selected to serve as the archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, progressive priests and church activists were horribly dismayed. One later recalled, “ ‘Damn! Now we’re ruined,’ we seminarians said. . . . ​What would happen now with Romero? What could we do? It was hard for us, be­ cause if we didn’t support our new bishop, we didn’t stand much of a chance of becoming priests!” (Juan Bosco Palacios in López Vigil 2000, 83). Only three weeks later, Romero was called out of his enjoyment and con­ tentment by the assassination of his dear friend Father Rutilio Grande along with a ­seventy-​­­two-​­­year-​­old local man and a ­sixteen-​­­year-​­old boy. Grande had been pushing for rights for the poor for years and teaching the campesi­ nos to organize and urging them to vote. An elderly woman poignantly re­ called Father Grande: “What I remember about him most of all is that one day he asked me what I thought. . . . ​No one had ever asked me that in all of my 70 years” (López Vigil 2000, 91). For his actions on behalf of the poor, Father Grande was gunned down by a ­pro-​­government death squad. Upon reaching the church where the bodies were laid, Archbishop Romero experienced an epiphany, in Levinasian terms, he was called out of himself and his enjoyment by the mortality of the Other. Romero remained in the rural church for hours listening to the campesinos and praying over the victims’ bodies. It appeared to one witness that “the words of Father Rutilio had been passed to Monseñor. Right there. Truly” (López Vigil 2000, 103). Romero was shaken by exposure to the mortality of the Other and called to respond infinitely. Sobrino (1990) even speculates that “I believe he must have felt that those campesinos (the ones with Father Grande) had made an option for ­him—​­that they were asking him to defend them” (7). Romero asked himself, “Whose pastor am I?” and responded echoing the biblical re­ sponse: “My mission is not to defend the powerful, but the oppressed, and here I am” (Carrigan and Weber 2011). Romero’s renewed mission began with calling for an official investigation

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of the murders. But none was forthcoming. Despite strong opposition from other bishops and especially from the Vatican’s nuncio, and with a great deal of soul searching, Romero canceled all masses in San Salvador for that Sunday except for one at the main cathedral where he and 150 priests memorialized the victims and called for an end to the violence in the country. After much further debate and ambivalence, Romero canceled all classes in Catholic schools for three days so that the students could study Salvadoran realities. Indeed, he himself underwent something of an extended education in Salva­ doran realities in his last few years. The archbishop soon took to the radio to broadcast his weekly homilies. Initially avoiding political questions, he increasingly berated the government, the death squads, and the US role in the atrocities. He made a preferential option for the poor. And, for the next three years, he was the focal point of anti-​­ ­ government ferment, seemingly present everywhere in the small ­country—​­saying masses at rural churches, comforting families throughout the country, visiting sites of massacres, and receiving visitors. His office in San Salvador became a refuge for the oppressed, and thousands flocked to see him so they could tell him their stories or seek his advice. His office compiled and disseminated numerous human rights reports and he even conducted a sur­ vey of 106 Salvadorans, the results of which he presented at the Puebla Con­ ference in 1979. Romero became a voice for the voiceless as he related these stories and reported on the number of killed and disappeared in his weekly radio homilies. The whole country seemed to stop on Sundays at 8:00 a.m. to hear his broadcast. His homilies spoke lucidly of Salvadoran realities to those experiencing them. Ironically, Romero, who had earlier been so uncomfort­ able with the doctrines of the Medellín conference, was now the staunchest supporter of them when the Latin American bishops reconvened in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979 (Keogh 1987, 84–87). Throughout El Salvador, massacres became almost commonplace. The per­ secution of the priesthood and peasants escalated. Disappearances and torture increased. A number of priests were assassinated. Romero’s life was threatened again and again. On March 23, in what would be his last radio homily, Romero made a special desperate direct plea to the Salvadoran soldiers: Brothers: you are part of our own people. You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters. Before an order to kill that a man may give, God’s law must prevail: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God. No one has to fulfill an immoral law. It

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is time to take back your consciences and to obey your consciences rather than the orders of sin. The Church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot re­ main silent before such abominations. We want the government to understand seriously that reforms are worth nothing if they are stained with so much blood. In the name of God, and in the name of this suf­ fering people, whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultu­ ous, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression! (Romero 1985) Many around him correctly feared that with this direct appeal to the mil­ itary he had signed his death warrant. The next day, on March 24, 1980, he was assassinated while saying a memorial mass in the small church of the hospital for indigent cancer patients. “He is gone. The only one who under­ stands us. He is gone, the only one who believes in us” (Carrigan and Weber 2011). A week later, his funeral service turned into a stampede when it was interrupted by explosions and sniper fire from government soldiers, leaving dozens of Romero’s supporters dead. Soon, a f­ ull-​­scale civil war engulfed the country. It lasted twelve years and left approximately 80,000 killed and thou­ sands disappeared. Monseñor Romero: The Joyful Martyr

Romero had previously been known as a bookworm, as someone who was indecisive and very awkward in social situations. His early diaries and reflec­ tions reveal a deep uneasiness with life and with others. He needed to take several extended sabbaticals for psychological and physical recuperation, and he sought psychological counseling several times. However, he seems to have found himself through service for others in his last three years. As much as anyone he responded in a Levinasian way infinitely to the radically Other; he underwent the persecution of the Other. And most interestingly, for the sake of this book, is the role humor, laugh­ ter, and joy played in his final years. In his last few days, he reflected to a friend about the threats and the possibilities of a violent death: “I’ll tell you the truth, Doctor: I don’t want to die. At least not now. I’ve never had so much love for life!” (López Vigil 2000, 397). Similarly, Jon Sobrino, a noted theologian and close friend wrote, “Conversion placed a terrible burden on Archbishop Romero’s shoulders, but lo and behold, the burden became light, and gave him courage, energy, freedom, and joy” (1990, 25).

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After his epiphany over Father Grande’s death, Romero increasingly lived the life of an ascetic priest. He lived in a humble ­two-​­room house at the hos­ pital for indigent cancer patients and even considered that too luxurious. He often gave up his bed to visitors, preferring to sleep on a hammock. He who had been in frail health most of his life now seemed tireless, claiming he was in the best health of his life. Formerly shy, he found sustenance in casual con­ versations with the nuns and his inner circle, often talking late into the night despite his grueling days and the pleas from the nuns that he get more rest. Formerly known for his impatience, he went to great measures to patiently listen and learn from the poor. He had a snack bar installed in the main offices of the archdiocese so that visitors would be able to eat, and he would often join them for long casual conversations. Romero even started scheduling times to merely chat with the peasants. “They just talk to me about the things that are going on in their lives, and that alone seems to help them” (López Vigil 2000, 149). While visiting a village, Romero sat down on the grass and listened to a discussion of the Bible; after a while he teared up and said, “I thought I knew the Gospel, but I’m learning to read it in another way” (López Vigil 2000, 272). In his last months, he refused any type of protection despite numerous death threats, explaining that the people of El Salvador did not have body­ guards so why should he. He preferred to drive himself in his little car with no passengers, so that if he were shot no one else would be killed. “When what I’m expecting to happen happens, I want to be alone, so it’s only me they get. I don’t want anyone else to suffer,” he explained (López Vigil 2000, 380). He placed his life on the line entering besieged areas to negotiate the release of hostages. When, despite protestations from his inner circle, he traveled to a risky area to say mass, he returned saying that he was frightened. “You know what bothered me the most? That I would be dead and you guys would be making fun of me, saying ‘that old guy deserved it for being so stubborn!’ ” (López Vigil 2000, 384). His sense of humor blossomed. While relaxing on a beach with his close friend Salvador Barraza, he discussed his fear of death. Barraza chided him, “You’re just afraid because you won’t be able to preach up there in heaven. You won’t be able to find anyone who needs to hear your sermons!” Romero re­ sponded, “Be serious man! Do you know what I’m going to miss most up in heaven? Beans and avocados. Going without them will be awful” (López Vigil 2000, 226).

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Two vignettes give us particularly candid glimpses of his newfound joyful abandon. In the first, Barraza relates the joy that Romero experienced in going to the circus, especially with clowns: But his greatest pleasure was the circus. That was something he’d brought with him from childhood. There was never a circus in or out­ side of El Salvador that he knew about that he didn’t go see. “But ­aren’t you too busy?” I’d say. “Are you going to be able to take the time?” “You get the tickets, and let’s go!” So we’d go to the circus. When the tightrope walker or the trapeze artist would do their jumps and turns way up in the air, he would get so nervous his hands would sweat. But it was nervousness he enjoyed. He loved it. And the Clowns! The ones with names like “Firuliche” and “Chocolate.” One of them would do a few silly tricks, and he would just roar with laughter. I never saw him laugh so hard as he did with the clowns. (López Vigil 2000, 275) A second vignette reflecting his joyful abandon is found in the recent docu­ mentary Monseñor: The Last Journey of Óscar Romero. In the film, Irma Orel­ lana, a church activist and former guerilla fighter, remembers a time that a group was with Romero dancing and singing. “When it came to his turn, he did not know what to do, so the group urged him to dance to La Cucaracha. As they sang, he lifted his cassock and danced, ‘laughing and laughing,’ and he said ‘how easy it is to be a pastor with people like you. This would never have occurred to me, but now here I am with you’ ” (Carrigan and Weber 2011). Dancing and laughing with the activist group deepened his presence with them. The affect was profound: Orellana ends in tears saying, “Oh my God, to be with someone like that, what more could you ask of life?” (Carri­ gan and Weber 2011). Joy and Faith

Patiently listening to the oppressed in El Salvador also changed Romero’s faith. He especially became more cognizant of the crucial role of the poor in the biblical church, with Jesus taking on the suffering of the poor, and of the modern church’s need to rediscover its roots in responding to the downtrod­ den. This was not a burden to bear but a privilege to rejoice in. In the last letter

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he wrote before his assassination, Romero addressed the ­well-​­known libera­ tion theologian Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga of Brazil, explaining their mission as “expressing the hopes and anguish of the poor, in a spirit of joy at being accorded the privilege of running the same risks as they, as Jesus did by iden­ tifying with the causes of the dispossessed” (Sobrino 1990, 39–40). His exposure to countless unique suffering Others significantly recast his faith. In his address in Louvain, Belgium, seven weeks before his death, Romero seemingly could not speak of faith or Christ without evoking the powerful role the poor had on him, nor could he avoid talking about his joy. He explains the mission of the Salvadoran church “with immense joy” (180). He begins by claiming that the “world of the poor” “is the key to understand­ ing the Christian faith.” He asserts, “Letting ourselves be affected by them, far from separating us from our faith has sent us back to the world of the poor as to our true home” (179). But because of his radical openness it was not just one epiphany but a series of epiphanies, each calling for a more radical responsibility. Joyful laughter played a major role in maintaining this openness. Joy and laughter sustained Romero and energized him for his ethical work. Instead of sabbaticals for his health, the more involved he became in his new mission, the more he was refreshed and renewed. Without the joy and laughter in the company of the campesinos, Romero could have closed in upon himself. If he had chosen to revert to his previous ­self-​­contented jouissance, he would have learned so little. Instead, as he learned more from the campesinos his ego was further suspended and he achieved a lightness of being which he labeled “joy.” The more Romero responded to the oppressed, the more he lost himself, and, somewhat paradoxically, the more he lost himself, the more he could be pres­ ent for Others. By losing oneself, a process that is greatly assisted by laughter and joy, the ego can be more present with the Other and can attain a deeper faith in the transcendent. He found joy in his faith as well as through his works, and his faith gave him contentment with life and death: “I place my entire life under the loving providence of God, and I accept death, no matter how difficult, with faith in Him. . . . ​It’s enough for me to be happy and confident, knowing for sure that my life and my death are in His hands” (López Vigil 2000, 380). Romero’s words resonate with the stirring last words of Dr. King’s mountaintop speech the night before he was assassinated and his raucous pillow fight. Though he knew, on some level, that he was slated for an early death, Dr. King remained happy.

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Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it r­ eally doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

CHAPTER 5

Joyful Perpetrators

The joy of killing! The joy of seeing killing ­done—​­these are traits of the human race at large. —​­Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell. —​­Bertrand Russell, Skeptical Essays Last week, I became bothered as I watched senators laughing at a woman apprehended by Border Patrol. As someone who has made that same journey, I wasn’t laughing. I was wondering what her name was and to where she had hoped to arrive. I didn’t see a joke, I saw something else happening. I saw the distance between the people in Washington deciding the fate of immigration reform and the reality of those of us living it. When immigration gets to Washington, it gets reduced to an issue and for some senators, we’re not even an issue, we’re a joke, an object of ridicule. . . . ​Instead of our senators laughing at the plight of the woman caught by border patrol, they should be asking her name, her story, and the story of the family she likely had to leave behind. When that happens, that is when the immigration debate truly moves forward. —​­2014 email from the National Day Labor Organizing Network

When this project began, distinguishing types of joy appeared rather straight­ forward especially when it came to the extremes of positive joy and sinister joy.

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What could be easier to distinguish than perhaps the greatest of all human emotions and the most horrible of all crimes? Surely, there must be a c­ lear-​­cut distinction between the joy experienced in evil social movements such as Na­ zism and the joy in human rights movements fighting against such evil re­ gimes. How naïve! I have even been tempted to embrace the opposite conclusion and fail to reject the null hypothesis: that joy and sinister joy are not significantly different. Joy is crucial for sustaining social movements pushing for human rights, but it can also sustain social movements perpetrating human rights abuses. Just as joy can be a crucial resource for human rights victims to find succor, it can sustain human rights abusers when facing a long day of torturing and killing or later when forced to recant, plead guilty, or serve time in prison. The Holocaust serves as an obvious example of sinister joy with its joyful zealots, sadistic guards, and ­all-​­­too-​­willing executioners; however, many other tormentors and torturers through history have been driven by sinister joy and its more extreme variants, sadistic and orgiastic joys. Recent works document in distressing detail the sadistic and orgiastic joys, inter alia, of Japanese soldiers during the rape of Nanjing (Chang 1997) and the second S­ ino-​­Japanese War in general (Dawes 2013) and against Allied POWs and other slave laborers (Urquhart 2011), the brutality of the Indone­ sian killings of 1965–1966 (Oppenheimer 2012, 2014b), the Rwandan geno­ cide (Hatzfeld 2005), the lynchings in the US early in the twentieth century (Wood 2009), at My Lai by US soldiers (Kendrick 2006), the massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador (Danner 1982, 1994), in the Soviet takeover of eastern Germany in the spring of 1945 (MacDonogh 2007), among the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian genocide in the ­mid-​­1970s (Hinton 2005), in Pino­ chet’s Chile (Guzmán 2000, Payne 2008), in the concentration camps set up by the British in late colonial Kenya (Elkins 2005), or among the ­self-​ ­proclaimed “Kill Team,” a group of twelve US soldiers who killed Afghan ci­ vilians for sport, collecting body parts as trophies and taking photos “they could revisit and experience as, in short, a descent into a sordid pornographic hell” (Giroux 2012, 271). Of course, these extreme forms of sinister joy are not a recent phenome­ non as can be seen by countless historical examples. Consider Bartolomé de Las Casas’s (1542) account of Christopher Columbus’s journey to the Carib­ bean. He describes “massacres and strange cruelties” by Columbus’s charges ­toward men, women, and children. Eerily reminiscent of the rape of Nanjing, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, or the massacres at My Lai and El Mozote or many other orgiastic atrocities, the men took special pleasure in the killing of

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infants and placed bets on “who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike” (Las Casas 1542). Columbus, of course, was not blameless in all this as he perpetuated the belief that the natives were cannibals and deserving of subjugation, providing n ­ ine-​­and t­ en-​­­year-​­olds as sex slaves for his men, and oversaw the massacre of huge numbers of indigenous peoples. Sadistic joy has also been recently documented by the International Crim­ inal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY). In a much discussed case, the ICTY sen­ tenced the Bosniak commandant of the Čelebići prison camp to twenty years in prison for torture, murder, and rape. The trial chamber describe his sadistic joy: Hazim Delić is also guilty of inhuman and cruel treatment through his use of an electrical shock device on detainees. The shocks emitted by this device caused pain, burns, convulsions and scaring and frightened the victims and other prisoners. The most disturbing, serious and thus, an aggravating aspect of these acts, is that Mr. Delić apparently en­ joyed using this device upon his helpless victims. He treated the device like a toy. He found its use funny and laughed when his victims begged him to stop. There is little this Trial Chamber can add by way of com­ ment to this attitude, as its depravity speaks for itself. (Delalić Judg­ ment 1998, para. 1294) In another case, the Tribunal used the perpetrator’s enjoyment as an aggravat­ ing factor noting a witness’s testimony that Dragan Nikolić “enjoyed himself while he was beating people. I know firsthand that he enjoyed beating Arnaut Fikret. He used to beat him five times a day” (Nikolić Case 2005, para. 25). Nor is sadistic killing a m ­ ale-​­only avocation (see Sjoberg and Gentry 2007; 1 Gentry and Sjoberg 2015). Irma Grese, the “hyena of Auschwitz,” was known for enjoying torturing and killing prisoners. She routinely took additional steps to humiliate and inflict pain on the female prisoners, as detailed in frightening detail in Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz. Particularly sadistic crimes, including the torture and de­ basement of male prisoners, by US female soldiers at Abu Ghraib were more recently documented in a famous macabre set of photographs. Pauline Nyira­ masuhuko, the minster of family affairs and women’s development in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, played a particularly active role in brutal killings of thousands, ultimately being convicted of numerous crimes by the Interna­

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tional Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), including rape as a crime against humanity, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. As the highest ranking government official in Butare, a historically significant city in the southern part of the country, she organized the Interahamwe militia, handed out weapons, and organized massacres. She ordered the militia to rape the women before killing them and even ordered the burning alive of rape vic­ tims. Or finally consider, also in Butare, the Catholic sisters Gertrude and Kisito, who were found by a Belgian court to have willingly participated, with­ out any substantial remorse, in the burning alive of hundreds of Tutsis at their convent in 1994. Despite such extensive documentation of sinister, sadistic, and orgiastic joys by numerous perpetrators of all stripes around the globe, joy has only recently been used as an analytic lens to understand such actions. This chapter addresses several issues that arise when we take sinister joy seriously. First, I argue that sinister joy has been neglected because the predominant theorizing about such perpetrators has been too heavily influenced by the classic works of Hannah Arendt and Stanley Milgram. Deconstructing their conclusions leads me to develop a continuum of taking pleasure in the suffering of another that starts with everyday examples of schadenfreude and bullying to the joy of killing in warfare to the sadistic and orgiastic joys mentioned above. This continuum is based upon increasing transgressions, and will hint at how such sinister joys occur and share many of the same gory details around the globe and across time. I then analyze two explicitly prideful sadistic killers who evinced only a modicum of remorse, one from Pinochet’s Chile and one a leader of a death squad in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966. In the chapter’s con­ clusion, I further address the question of why such perpetrators have been relatively ignored by most scholars and in some cases not even countenanced. I argue that it is the structure of sinister joy that it shares with other types of ­joy—​­especially in the more extreme manifestations of sadism and orgiastic ­joy—​­that makes it such a taboo topic. Importantly, I am not directly addressing the enormous question of why people commit atrocities, but rather I am broaching the questions of what role joy plays in the commission of evil acts, and how does this enjoyment differ, if at all, from the enjoyment of human rights workers and those who resisted the willing executioners.

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Sadism Versus the Banality of Evil Psychological accounts of evil from just a few decades ago (e.g., Dicks 1972; Lifton 1986) mostly minimized the sadistic pleasure, or any joy, of perpetra­ tors of genocides and massacres, and claimed that the perpetrators were mostly normal individuals following orders. Influenced by the Milgram obe­ dience experiments and Hannah Arendt’s famous insights into the banality of evil, these accounts claimed that sadistic acts were quite rare, and were ini­ tially repulsive or at least uncomfortable to almost every participant. Arendt, in her Eichmann book, downplayed sadistic impulses in the Nazi atrocities where she famously claimed that Eichmann was not a “monster” but perhaps more of a “clown.” She explicitly concludes: “The murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did. The troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the armed SS, a military unit with hardly any more crimes in its record than any ordinary unit of the German army, and their commanders had been chosen by Heydrich from the SS elite with academic degrees” (Arendt 1963, 105). Milgram (1974) saw similarities between the results of his famous obedi­ ence experiments and Arendt’s ­well-​­known theorizations on evil: After witnessing hundreds of ordinary persons submit to the authority in our own experiments, I must conclude that Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine. The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation, a conception of his duties as a subject and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies. This is, perhaps, the most funda­ mental lesson of our study: that ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. (1974, 6; emphasis added) These conclusions were reinforced by the extant examinations of “every­ day” perpetrators such as Browning’s (1998) ­well-​­known account that explic­ itly drew on Milgram’s work, of “average, ­middle-​­aged Germans” in the ­clean-​­up operations in Poland in 1942 and 1943 who reported being appalled and suffered “physical disgust” by the killings. These early psychological ac­ counts of perpetrators, now labeled as “situationist” emphasized social pres­

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sures on the killers and the bureaucratization of a system of evil and rarely ever made mention of any type of sinister joy. Baumeister and Campbell (1999) even bemoaned the lack of examples on which to draw conclusions about sadistic evil during atrocities calling it “an elusive, puzzling phenome­ non” and that “accounts and memoirs by perpetrators do not commonly claim that inflicting harm was a source of pleasure or joy” (212). They noted that a feeling of unease is common in retrospective accounts of atrocities, with per­ petrators, once they return to a fairly normal life, reflecting upon their mis­ deeds panged by remorse and guilt.2 Recent commentators, on the other hand, place greater emphasis on the sadistic joy of the perpetrators and tend to emphasize a combination of social and individual factors (cf. Staub 1989). Indeed, some scholars, while giving due credit to the role of obedience, have deconstructed the seminal ­non-​ s­ adistic interpretations of evil, the Milgram experiments and Arendt’s obser­ vations on Adolph Eichmann (e.g., Berkowitz 1999, 249; Blass 1993). Such scholars are more likely to reference Arendt’s lesser known comments about the Auschwitz murder trial in Frankfurt from 1963 to 1965, where the ­twenty-​ t­ wo SS men in the dock were not the seemingly rational and stoic Eichmann, but thugs and buffoons who were quite proud of their atrocities and taunted witnesses. Arendt (1966) wrote of the sadistic killings at Auschwitz: “No one had issued orders that infants should be thrown into the air as shooting tar­ gets, or hurled into the fire alive, or have their heads smashed against walls. . . . ​ Innumerable individual crimes, one more horrible than the next, surrounded and created the atmosphere of the gigantic crime of extermination” (xxiv). Auschwitz for Arendt in 1966 stands for sadism and the “chaos of viciousness and evil” (xxix). She admits that the accounts from the Frankfurt trial “in many respects reads like a ­much-​­needed supplement to the Jerusalem trial” (1966, xx), even going so far as to say that after this trial, “One thing is sure, ­ ore—​­namely, ‘that everyone could and this one had not dared to believe any m decide for himself to be either good or evil in Auschwitz’ ” (1966, xxvii). For my account of joy and human rights that relies heavily on contempo­ rary affect theory it is helpful to discuss how Baumeister and Campbell (1999) explain the occasional sadism they find in Holocaust accounts. For them, any theory of evildoing must account for the fact that the joy emerges after initial repulsion, and that “the majority of perpetrators do not seem to develop sa­ distic pleasure or a feeling of addiction” (213). From these presuppositions ­ pponent-​­process theory which and the fact pattern before them, they turn to o is grounded in an organism desiring homeostasis. For each affect that moves

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a person away from homeostasis there will be a tendency to create an opposite process that will return the person to a baseline. Observing or participating in a repulsive act will initially be met by disgust, but over time the visceral repul­ sion is not strong enough to counter the sadistic act. To oppose this action, to make sense of it, the individual finds that “euphoria” is “the most effective an­ tidote to the severe disgust and distress” thus, “the overall quality of violent acts would take on a positive, pleasant nature” (1999, 214). For Baumeister and Campbell, the reason so few turn to sadism is because guilt successfully serves as a moderating variable keeping many from even countenancing euphoria. For them, “This would fit the empirical evidence that only a small minority of perpetrators evolve into sadists” (1999, 214). But what if more than a small minority of perpetrators become sadists, that sadistic joy is more the norm than Baumeister and Campbell conclude? Of course, some individuals may be seeking homeostasis, but what if many of the perpetrators desire to exceed homeostasis, to break past the pleasure prin­ ciple that has reined in evil behavior, even the perverse pleasure principles ­ pponent-​­process theory then would be inapt. established by evil regimes? O Instead, a mixture of affect theory and Lacanian theory, with their emphases on affects changing capacities, and the desire to transgress existing norms would better fit the evidence. This is not to claim that all perpetrators are sa­ dists, or that the main motive for most perpetrators is joy, but that we cannot ignore sadism and sadistic joy as there is too much evidence that this has occurred in numerous places over time with too many willing and joyful per­ petrators. It is also not to fully discount the role of obedience or even the ba­ nality of evil. However, we need to question whether such explanations are adequate by themselves and whether they even fit the subjects in Milgram’s studies or explain Eichmann’s behavior. Rethinking the Banality of Evil

To begin this analysis, it is helpful to reconsider the case of Adolph Eichmann. He is often categorized as an ambivalent perpetrator, one who was following orders and caught up in a vast bureaucratic machine. Arendt describes Eich­ mann as a thoughtless “desk murderer” who had little conception of the big­ ger picture of ­anti-​­Semitic totalitarianism (1966, xi). Shockingly, she even claims that he was never particularly a­ nti-​­Semitic or even particularly ideo­ logical going so far as to write that “he ‘personally’ had never had anything against Jews” (1963, 26). She even holds that he “never realized what he was doing” (1963, 287). However, a closer look at Eichmann and his deeds shows

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that he was not a mere thoughtless cog in the machine, nor, to be fair, would it be accurate to go to the opposite extreme, and label him a demonic killer as the prosecutor Gideon Hausner tried to portray him, later referring to Eich­ mann as “the personification of satanic principles” (Lozowick 2002, 2). Recent analyses argue that Eichmann was a joyful, passionate zealot who was a will­ ing cog in a vast bureaucratic killing machine. He was not thoughtless, but very well understood the results of his actions and how they opposed tradi­ tional morality. Yes, his behavior was sanctioned and rewarded by the regime and such actions were commonplace, but his evil was much more than banal. To fit that description, one has to downplay too many of his utterances and actions. In one particularly telling instance, Arendt claims that Eichmann suf­ fered from the “common vice” of bragging to explain some of his more outra­ geous comments. She writes: “Bragging was the vice that was Eichmann’s undoing. It was sheer rodomontade when he told men working under him during the last days of the war, ‘I will jump into my grave laughing, because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or “enemies of the Reich,” as he always claimed to have said] on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction’ ” (1963, 46). To which literary critic Lionel Abel sharply and cor­ rectly responded: “How many people in the history of the world have ever boasted of having killed five million people?” (Ezra 2007, 149). Robinson’s (1965) early and extensive (it could fairly be labeled pedantic) deconstruction of Arendt’s claims shows that Eichmann was certainly aware of the extent and brutality of the Final Solution, having personally witnessed a number of the killing operations. He gave orders. He was involved in the planning of the Holocaust at the Wannsee conference in 1942. He personally witnessed at least one action of the Einsatzgruppen and the mobile gas vans and was on the ground supervising the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Hungarians to Auschwitz. During the latter actions, Eichmann had wide latitude in how to deal with the Hungarian Jewish question even pushing back against SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler when the latter argued that the extermination was obstructing the war effort. And, Eichmann evinced little remorse about his role, though he famously worried that the methods for annihilation used early on along the Eastern Front were too horrifying and would turn German soldiers into monsters. “We cannot go on conducting executions as they were done in Minsk and, I believe, other places. Of neces­ sity our men will be educated to become sadists. We cannot solve the Jewish problem by putting a bullet through the brain of a defenseless woman who is holding her child up to us” (Eichmann 1960). Here, Eichmann is calling for a

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new policy to rein in the potential sadism of his men so that the killing can be accomplished in a more efficient manner. He is not criticizing the killings or even the sadism it breeds, per se. Despite reporting that his knees weakened at the site of the atrocities, Eichmann’s own words portray him as a zealot who approached his work with enthusiasm. “I was an idealist. When I reached the conclusion that it was necessary to do to the Jews what we did, I worked with the fanaticism a man can expect from himself. . . . ​I always acted 100 per cent, and in the giving of orders I certainly was not lukewarm” (Robinson 1965, 34). Such quotes, as well as the key role he played at Wannsee and in Hungary, belie Arendt’s con­ tentions that “his was obviously . . . ​no case of insane hatred of Jews, of fanat­ ical a­nti-​­Semitism or indoctrination of any kind” or that “he had never harbored any ill feelings against his victims” (Robinson 1965, 38). These conclusions about Eichmann are reinforced by recent historiogra­ phy. Cesarani (2004) convincingly shows that Arendt’s reading of Eichmann as thoughtless and a mere cog in the totalitarian regime, was influenced by the small part of the trial that she actually witnessed and by the theoretical bag­ gage she brought from her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt painted a portrait of Eichmann that was almost identical to the portrait he painted as his defense (Stangneth 2014, xxiii). Lozowick (2002) sees the ultimate mean­ ing of the trial and Eichmann in particular as a battle between Arendt’s read­ ing and the comments of the prosecutor Gideon Hausner. “Was he a human monster” as Hausner insisted or was he “a petty bureaucrat” as Arendt inti­ mated? (Lozowick 2002, 1).3 For decades, in good part because of Arendt’s fame and theoretical brilliance, her account of Eichmann won out. In his care­ ful analysis of Eichmann and the bureaucrats that he worked with, Lozowick shows that Arendt’s description was just not historically accurate. He goes so far as to conclude that it “lacked all historical foundation” (Lozowick 2002, 275). “There was nothing banal about the evil of Eichmann and his comrades” (Lozowick 2002, 9). They were not mere thoughtless cogs in the totalitarian machine. This was a group of people completely aware of what they were doing, people with high ideological motivation, people of initiative and dex­ terity who contributed far beyond what was necessary. And there could be no doubt about it: they clearly understood that their deeds were not positive except in the value system of the Third Reich. . . . ​ While most of them sat behind desks rather than behind machine

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guns, from time to time some were called on to face flesh and blood Jews and decide their fate, and this they did, without batting an eyelid. (Lozowick 2002, 8–9) Was Eichmann on the same level as the sadistic torturers mentioned above and below? Lozowick’s research suggests that if circumstances had presented themselves, he too could have been released to become a sadist, and might even have felt ecstasy at the orgiastic killing of women and children. At min­ imum, Eichmann was someone who enjoyed his job, who believed strongly in the cause, and whose accomplishments gave him great satisfaction. Perhaps he was a bureaucrat, but not one who saw his work as drudgery nor was he simply caught up in a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. He was a happy and enthusi­ astic bureaucrat willfully participating in the murder of millions. Others might be accurately described through the concept of the banality of evil, but not Eichmann. Rethinking Obedience

In a similar vein, several scholars have called into question the generally ac­ cepted conclusions drawn from Milgram’s obedience experiments, which showed that normal individuals can easily be led to obey authority even when acting in ways they normally would deem to be abhorrent. It was well docu­ mented in the ­oft-​­shown film about the experiments that Milgram’s subjects may have expressed unease, some resistance, and nervous laughter but when requested by an authority figure to continue, they willingly shocked the ­learner-​­subjects, to the point of giving a potentially fatal electrical shock. For Milgram and many others this willing obedience to an authority figure was a “central dynamic” (Blass 1993) for the involvement of millions in the Nazi killing machine. The recent critiques of this linkage between the experiments and the Holocaust proceed on two fronts: first that the Milgram experiments did not capture the reality of the perpetrators of the Holocaust especially that ­ ate-​­driven cru­ “it falls short when it comes to explaining the more zealous h elties that also defined the Holocaust” (Blass 2002, 104), and, second, that Milgram may have been misreading the motivations of his own subjects. First, many commentators such as Goldhagen (1997) in his account of the Einsatzgruppen show that Holocaust perpetrators were not directly bowing to authority figures when perpetrating atrocities. If they found the tasks problem­ atic, they could request transfers to less gruesome details. The operations were also “remarkably decentralized” with individual units having great latitude in

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how they handled civilian populations (Goldhagen 1997; Blass 2002; Hilberg 1992). The historical evidence on the spontaneity, inventiveness, and enthu­ siasm with which the Nazis degraded, hurt, tortured, and killed their victims argues against explaining their behavior as simply responses to an authority figure’s commands. The enthusiasm must have come from within (Blass 1993). Further, despite Eichmann’s warnings and a desire to proceed efficiently with the killing, a number of gruesomely sadistic actions, discussed below, are well documented that exceeded what was called for by the authority’s orders. Other writers have addressed Milgram’s experiments more directly. For instance, the level of obedience reported in Milgram’s series of experiments may have been “exaggerated” (see Berkowitz 1999; A. Miller 1986). More rad­ ically, Milgram had placed great emphasis on the participants’ nervous laugh­ ter that “seemed entirely out of place, even bizarre” as evidence that they were experiencing a type of cognitive or moral dissonance with their own behavior. Political theorist Fred Alford, in his astute explorations of evil, asks the almost unthinkable question, perhaps ventured by undergraduate students when first watching the Milgram documentary, but likely dismissed by most instructors: “What if these men are giggling in embarrassed pleasure at being given per­ mission to inflict great pain and suffering on an innocent and vulnerable man?” (Alford 1997, 26). Such an interpretation is quickly dismissed by Mil­ gram, but, Alford presses on: “What if this is what the teachers r­ eally want, what they long for, what satisfies . . . ​permission to hurt someone?” (26). They are not being forced to do something evil but being provided with carte blanche to do something that is forbidden but enjoyable, without suffering the opprobrium of society because their behavior is encouraged by the authority figure. They are reluctantly being asked to do something they’ve always wanted to do. The experimental conditions protect them “from knowledge of their own sadism, while allowing them to express it.” They are free to express “embarrassed pleasure, guilty pleasure, but it is still pleasure” (Alford 1997, 26). The teachers experiencing pleasure, need not be sadists, but might resem­ ble the happy bureaucrats like Eichmann. So, Eichmann and the Milgram experiment reinforce each other, but not in the way that Milgram envisioned. “In this light, we should consider whether much of what passes as the orders of leaders is actually leaders granting permission to their followers to do what they want to do anyway, but are too guilty and embarrassed to know. Could it be the psychological function of leaders to provide plausible psychological deniability to their followers, as well as shelter them from the consequences of their desires?” (Alford 1997, 27). Historian Dan Stone (2004) similarly

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concludes from his analyses of the Nazi and Rwandan genocidaires: “People kill one another when they have been granted leave to do so or otherwise feel that they are safe to do so, for the main reason that they can, and because they enjoy doing so” (48). Writing this chapter in the midst of the 2016 election season in the US, it is hard not to see a similar dynamic between Donald Trump and his support­ ers who now feel free to express, often violently, all manner of xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and misogyny. These similarities with the German sit­ uation are more pronounced when a survey of Trump supporters found they scored highly on the authoritarianism scale originally devised by Adorno and his colleagues to understand the perpetrators’ behavior during the Holocaust (MacWilliams 2016). Authoritarian personalities and even sadists are looking for justification, but also freedom, and when they get freedom, they can change from “ordinary men” to “willing executioners.” As I argue below, when some individuals are given permission to be willing executioners they might go beyond what is sanctioned to become joyful sadists. Such a theory helps to understand the difference between happy bureaucrats like Eichmann and the sadistic killers. Steiner and SS Sleepers

Such is also the conclusion that can be drawn from a highly unusual and rarely discussed early ethnography investigating the social psychology of former SS officers done by John M. Steiner, who had survived five concentration camps and two death marches. After the war, Steiner earned his PhD in sociology from Freiburg University and undertook a remarkable ­twenty-​­­year-​­long eth­ nography from 1958 to 1978, hanging out with former Nazi officials at their reunions, and other festivities, as well as engaging in 300 interviews, soliciting fifty life histories and conducting hundreds of surveys. Steiner was able to build unprecedented rapport and trust with the participants to the point that he was even invited to give a short address at an annual meeting of the SS. Not surprisingly, Steiner (1980) found a complex interaction between in­ dividual and social factors that were common to members of the SS. They exhibited authoritarian personalities, adopting the Prussian militaristic ideol­ ogy preached by Hitler with its “rigidly structured thought processes and be­ havioral expectations” (411). Many of the SS members came from humble beginnings and felt downtrodden by German experiences during World War I and its aftermath. Those that were suffering “extreme deprivation” were es­ pecially attracted to the SS because it “would facilitate a legitimate and socially

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acceptable shedding of their unwanted identity as well as the acquisition of a more satisfying self ” (416). This assuming of a new identity “will produce a feeling of belonging and euphoria, resulting in strong emotional ties” (419) ­toward Hitler, indeed it produced an ­over-​­identification with Hitler. Steiner reports that “most of the interviewed junior and senior officers in the SS ad­ mitted to a feeling of elation in the company of the ‘great’ and powerful” (429). This feeling of euphoria especially affected “vocal young dissidents with a tendency to go to the extreme” (422) creating a movement that lacked “sensi­ tivity or ­self-​­effacing charm” (423). When these young men with a tendency to go to the extreme were caught up in euphoria and then placed in a “total institution” like the SS (here Steiner compares the SS to Zimbardo’s famous prison simulation), they could be especially cruel. Steiner calls these the sleep­ ers. In so doing, he is explicitly following a key insight of Milgram’s study, that given the proper circumstance there is a “latent Eichmann residing in most of us” (431) or as he says in a later interview: “All of us under certain situations may find ourselves in a position where we will behave inhumanely” (Wein­ stein 1997). And, as the SS gained in power it would produce in the individual members “elation or ecstatic joy” (Steiner 1980, 431). The SS members interviewed by Steiner, for the most part, after the war were “­law-​­abiding citizens, socioeconomically more successful” and with a shockingly low crime rate (441). But when given the opportunity, there was “a ­self-​­selection process for brutality.” Those who enjoyed military roles and sought tangible benefits most likely identified with Nazi ideology. Coerced by expectations to completely assume their military and ideological role, that is, they could not transcend their role in a certain way (435), they could tran­ scend ­toward cruelty. Steiner quotes Erich Fromm that “people with a sadistic character wait for the opportunity to behave sadistically” (431). In such in­ stances, some, especially those with authoritarian personalities, will be con­ tent to be the happy bureaucrat giving and following orders (as described by Milgram) taking on more or less zealotry (as in Eichmann’s case), while others will go ­full-​­scale sadistic if given the chance.

A Continuum of Sinister Joy: Schadenfreude to the Joy of Killing in Combat Given recent theories of affect discussed in Chapter 2, we should not be sur­ prised that joy is experienced in response to a range of stimuli, including

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those that are clearly harmful to others. The spectrum of documented sinister joys is actually quite extraordinary ranging from the mostly benign schaden­ freude to the joys of combat and the sadistic and demonic joys. Journeying through this spectrum reveals that sinister joy varies in intensity, but it is rooted in group dynamics, transcendence of accepted hierarchies, and con­ trol. Further, as we move from the lowest levels ­toward sadistic joy, the expe­ rience more and more resembles that of the phenomenology of joy outlined earlier. Especially sadistic perpetrators commonly describe their joy as ec­ static, being one with a much greater cause, a loss of the self, and being one of the greatest feelings of their lives. The further we move up sinister joy, the more it resembles joy, at least until we get the extremes of sadism that trans­ gresses all bounds! Schadenfreude and Bullying

At the lowest level is feeling joy or pleasure when misfortune or suffering befalls another, what is often called by the German term schadenfreude. While many examples are rather trivial, the joy of a practical joke or a stumble by a world leader departing an airplane or a celebrity experiencing a wardrobe malfunction, the concept can also be applied to rather extreme and brutal cases leading Schopenhauer to famously write, “To feel envy is human, to savor schadenfreude is devilish.” A range of studies have documented a high prevalence of schadenfreude in various samples and populations and found several related factors, most notably group threat; when an individual feels themselves or their group are under attack or oppressed, they will take pleasure in seeing other “superior” groups suffer, what has been called “an imaginary revenge” (Leach et al. 2003, 933). This might explain the pleasure that others feel when seeing political figures or other elites get what is coming, even vicariously as in most Charlie Chaplin films. The prevalence of schadenfreude seems quite widespread, as recent innovative studies show that even when participants did not verbally express schadenfreude, biometric sensors were able to detect joy at misfor­ tune, especially ­toward those that are envied (Cikara and Fiske 2013). There is also ample evidence that direct acts of violence are joyful to large numbers of people. For instance, Kerbs and Jolley (2007) found that “70% of all sampled [middle school] students reported enjoyable experiences with ­school-​­based violence” (12) either as perpetrators or as onlookers. Similarly, the vast literature on bullying documents that both bullies and bystanders (up to 85 percent) experience pleasure from the experience.4 Indeed, one of the

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leading scholars incorporates pleasure into the very definition of bullying. It is “to inflict emotional and/or physical pain, expects the action to hurt, and takes pleasure in witnessing the hurt” (Coloroso 2003, 13). This finding of explicit joy suggests that ­school-​­based violence prevention programs have an uphill climb. Though it is some comfort as a father of two teenage daughters that in the middle school study, many of those who experienced joy also ex­ perienced guilt for that joy, especially as they realized that students were being hurt. In more extreme cases, a similar dynamic seems to be at work in many of the brutal lynchings of African Americans in the US in the early to m ­ id-​­part of the twentieth century. The photos and postcards of lynching often show a smiling, ­self-​­satisfied crowd of White onlookers pointing to the mutilated victim, what James Allen (2005), in an especially poignant display, refers to as “the ­canine-​­thin faces of the pack, lingering in the woods, circling after the kill.” As Wood (2009) argues, lynchings were grounded in a traditional dis­ course of White supremacy and a way of life that was threatened by urbaniza­ tion, progressivism, and growing movements for equality. A lynching not only punished the perceived transgressor of White supremacy but indicated to all who would see the photos that the spectators were willing to stand their ground to fight against any new master discourse. The spectators both in per­ son and vicariously through news accounts, photos, and postcards, were an essential part of the lynchings as was the photographer. James Allen, a collec­ tor of such postcards, says, “I believe the photographer was more than a per­ ceptive spectator at lynchings. The photographic art played as significant a role in the ritual as torture or souvenir ­grabbing—​­a sort of ­two-​­dimensional biblical swine, a receptacle for a collective sinful self. Lust propelled their commercial reproduction and distribution, facilitating the endless replay of anguish. Even dead, the victims were without sanctuary” (2005).5 There are even more extreme examples of schadenfreude that follow the same general structure, such as the especially horrific and almost incompre­ hensible one described in the recent book Escape from Camp 14 (Harden 2012) which details Shin ­Dong-​­hyuk’s life in, and escape from, a maximum security labor camp in North Korea. Camp 14 had ten rules and command­ ments which proclaim that “anyone who disobeys an order will be shot im­ mediately” as will anyone who tries to escape, gathers together, fraternizes with the opposite sex, doesn’t do their work, and doesn’t express guilt for their misdeeds. Born in the camp, Shin knew of no other moral code than that stemming from the deprivations of camp life, which made him see his own

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Figure 4. Lynching in Marion, Indiana, August 1930. Famous lynching photo from August 1930 showing young African American men Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith after they had been killed by a large lynch mob. Their acquaintance, sixteen-year-old James Cameron, was next to be lynched. After putting the rope around his neck, beating him, and dragging him to the tree, the crowd grew silent and allowed Cameron, with the rope still around his neck, to return to his cell in the Grant County courthouse. Courtesy of James Cameron. Signed, “To Bill Simmons, Best Wishes, James Cameron, 2/16/97.”

mother as a competitor for food, and taught him that snitching on anyone was the only way to survive. When Shin overheard his mother and brother planning an escape he informed his teacher who informed the camp guards. For the transgressions of his family members Shin himself was subject to brutal torture and confinement. When his mother and brother were publicly executed he was forced to sit in the front row and, though sickened by the killing, appears satisfied that they are executed because they deserved to die for their transgressions. In this example, there is clearly a sense of reining in the transgressors; bringing those who have more agency than others in the

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camp into line. His mother and brother were threatening to upset the camp’s shockingly rigid symbolic order in which he was indoctrinated and thus they deserved to die. The Joys of Military Battle

Experiencing joy in battle has been noted back to antiquity, but it had mostly escaped serious scholarly attention until Joanna Bourke’s (1999) hefty volume An Intimate History of Killing. She opens with a discussion of William Broyles’s influential essay on his experiences in Vietnam. The former US Marine officer claimed that most assume former soldiers are reluctant to talk about their wartime experiences because they are too difficult to relive. In contrast, he argues that it is the joyful nature of killing that was so hard to talk about. I believe that most men who have been to war would have to admit, if they are honest, that somewhere inside themselves they loved it too. How could that be explained to family and friends, he asked? Even ­comrades-​­­in-​­arms were wary among themselves: veterans’ reunions were awkward occasions precisely because the joyous aspects of slaughter were difficult to confess in all circumstances. To describe combat as enjoyable was like admitting to being a bloodthirsty brute: to acknowledge that the decisive c­ ease-​­fire caused as much anguish as losing a great lover could only inspire shame. (Bourke 1999, 2) The pleasures of combat are usually traced to close camaraderie, a sense of belonging, a feeling of power, similarities with sports, and the adrenaline rush of battle. Other accounts of joy in battle explain it through reduction of life to its essence which opens up a clarity that puts our mortal lives in per­ spective. But Broyles’s and Bourke’s larger point is that the act of killing, by itself, is also joyful. This joy is felt even among those who question the pur­ pose of the larger war, and those who are perfectly aware of the human side of the enemy. It is felt by those that most would consider to be moral (read Kantian) human beings, or at least not sadistic monsters. Of course, there are countless accounts of soldiers revulsed by killing and suffering psychological breakdowns because of the experience, but the number who enjoyed the ex­ perience is far from trivial. A few representative quotes from Bourke’s work that closely track, or perhaps haunt is the better word, the phenomenology of joy developed in the previous chapters should suffice. She describes her work in this way: “This book contains innumerable examples of men like the shy

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and sensitive First World War soldier who recounted that the first time he stuck a German with his bayonet was ‘gorgeously satisfying . . . ​exultant satis­ faction.’ Second Lieutenant F. R. Darrow found that bayoneting Prussians was ‘beautiful work.’ ‘Sickening yet exhilarating butchery’ was reported to be ‘joy unspeakable’ by a New Zealand sapper” (30–31). Bourke relates the following from socialist Henry de Man’s account from the First World War which he describes as “one of the happiest moments of my life”: “I had thought myself more or less immune from this intoxication until, as trench mortar officer, I was given command over what is probably the most murderous instrument in modern warfare. . . . ​One day . . . ​I secured a direct hit on an enemy en­ campment, saw bodies or parts of bodies go up in the air, and heard the des­ perate yelling of the wounded or the runaways. I had to confess to myself that it was one of the happiest moments of my life” (Bourke 1999, 19). Bourke continues, referring to de Man: “He admitted that he had yelled aloud ‘with delight’ and ‘could have wept with joy.’ ‘What’ (he asked) were ‘the satisfac­ tions of scientific research, of a successful public activity, of authority, of love, compared with this ecstatic minute?’ ” (Bourke 1999, 19). This overflowing joy in killing often has an element of power similar to the concept of schadenfreude or sadism discussed below, especially for those who rarely had experienced power. “When another soldier in Vietnam went ber­ serk and massacred many of the enemy, he remembered feeling suffused with joy: ‘I felt like a god, this power flowing through me. . . . ​I was untouchable’ ” (Bourke 1999, 20). Clearly, there were also elements of transgression, espe­ cially of a sexual nature, just as in Bernini’s description of St. Teresa. “The experience seemed to resemble spiritual enlightenment or sexual eroticism: indeed, slaughter could be likened to an orgasmic, charismatic experience. However you looked at it, war was a ‘turn on’ ” (Bourke 1999, 3). Bourke’s interpretation of wartime mutilations, which officers often sanc­ tioned through willful blindness, confirms Alford’s conclusions regarding Milgram’s experiments, that the leaders were giving the perpetrators permis­ sion to express their pleasure at something that is supposed to be taboo. “Transgression could be enjoyable because the law was w ­ ell-​­respected. It was (in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin) ‘authorized transgression’ ” (30). In many of Bourke’s accounts, there is also an element of losing the self that she deemphasizes. For Bourke, the following is an example of the modern imaginary of film layering onto the experience of battle. It was like a big movie. Or, as Philip Caputo put it, killing Viet Cong was enjoyable because it was like watching a movie: “ ‘One part of me was doing something while the

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other part watched from a distance.’ Instead of focusing on mangled corpses, soldiers who could imagine themselves as movie heroes felt themselves to be effective warriors. Such forms of disassociation were psychologically useful. By imagining themselves as participating in a fantasy, men could find a lan­ guage which avoided facing the unspeakable horror not only of dying but of meting out death” (Bourke 1999, 16). Interestingly, Caputo’s playing out of cinematic heroes in the early days of l­arge-​­scale US involvement in Vietnam is echoed at almost the exact time in Indonesia by perpetrators of extrajudicial executions such as Anwar Congo featured in the documentary The Act of Killing discussed below. Congo and his colleagues would watch Hollywood films and then dance across the street, “still in the mood of the film,” where they would torture and kill their victims. “It was like we were killing happily” (Oppenheimer 2012). This loss of self though was more than an emulation of matinee idols. It was a way of deepening the meaning of the self, through something larger. It was a way of completing who they were or at least merg­ ing the self with a much larger discourse. For Broyles and many others, “Kill­ ing had a spiritual resonance and an aesthetic poignancy” (Bourke 1999, 2). Bourke’s ample and lengthy quotations do not come from known sadists or those caught up in a totalitarian ideology, they are “ordinary men.” They were not forced to kill, besides the coercion of being drafted and trained to kill, as soldiers have for centuries. They are not lifetime soldiers or especially bloodthirsty individuals (e.g., Overy 1999). They probably resemble Milgram’s subjects more than Nazi soldiers did. And yet, obedience does not account for what Bourke calls “joyful slaughter” (18).

Sadism, Jouissance, and Affect What then leads individuals to take the next step on the continuum and move from joyful killing in the war context or the enthusiastic zealot like Eichmann to the sadistic joy of many human rights perpetrators? What distinguishes a “normal” military operation from the orgiastic massacres by Columbus’s men, or those at Nanjing, My Lai, El Mozote, or Rwanda 1994? Narratives of these massacres are replete with unnervingly similar acts of brutal sexual violence, including sodomy, forcing victims to engage in taboo sexual acts, the inserting of foreign objects into bodily orifices, gang rapes, and disembowelments. To understand actions that involve transgression, taboos, sexuality, abjection, and violence, it is helpful to turn to interpretations indebted to psychoanalytic

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insights, so here I will rely on Lacanian insights supplemented by the works of Georges Bataille. Sanctioned transgressions of the pleasure principle, of what is generally accepted, limited in time and intensity, has been a prominent feature of most societies (cf. Bakhtin 1984; Caillois 2001), with many theorists arguing that they serve as needed release valves that ultimately strengthen the social order. These relatively harmless and contained transgressions would include the me­ dieval carnivals described by Bakhtin and discussed in Chapter 4 as well as the ­near-​­infinite variety of forms of vicarious entertainment in late capitalism (Ehrenreich 2006). A period of more violent transgressions reminiscent of human rights abuses is described by Georges Bataille in his Erotism: Death and Sensuality. He relies on Roger Caillois’s ethnographies to discuss the transgressions that are unleashed by the death of the king in oceanic communities. When the king dies, seemingly “limitless disorder” ensues. “When social and natural life” he says “are summed up in the sacred person of a king, the hour of his death determines the critical instant,” a state of exception is created, and the law is suspended. “No hint of resistance is ever offered to the frenzy of the people. This is considered as necessary as obedience to the dead man was. In the Sandwich Islands the people on learning of the king’s death commit all the acts looked on as criminal in ordinary times: they set buildings on fire, they loot and they murder, while women are expected to prostitute themselves publically” (Bataille 1986, 66; emphasis added). If the king’s body could not resist decom­ position neither could its extension, the polis and its laws. Bataille’s example of unlimited transgression in Oceanic societies though has an end point, the dissolving of all flesh on the king’s corpse. “Once the royal remains had become a skeleton, disorder and excess ceased to prevail and ta­ boos came into force once more” (1986, 112). With such transgressions and their time limit embedded in the culture, it must be in the back of the mind of the revelers that the end of the “fun” will eventually arrive and the old order albeit with a new king will be restored. This knowledge or inkling could either intensify the celebration or perhaps keep it restrained in some way, but that ­ imbardo-​­like prison experiment. question is for another book or another Z The sanctioned periods of frenzy in these ethnographies have several par­ allels in recent human rights tragedies where the symbolic order has been suspended and a ­festival-​­like atmosphere pervades. The death of leaders as in Caillois’s ethnographies, have led to horrendous human rights abuses. The proximate cause of the 1994 Rwandan genocide was the death of President

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Habyarimana in a plane crash, and the death of Salvador Allende sanctioned the excesses of Pinochet’s Chile. During such times transgression is the norm of the day with previous norms ridiculed and discarded. One of the common themes of many geno­ cides seems to be the attempt to destroy any trace of the old laws. The old ways must be eliminated like toxins and its practitioners exterminated like vermin. Religious institutions and holidays cannot be observed or in the Nazi case they must be radically transformed. The Rwandan genocidaires responding to the death of the president also eschewed God during the killing despite being overwhelmingly Catholic. One devoted Catholic and former volunteer dea­ con at the local church said later: “During the killings, I chose not to pray to God. I sensed that it was not appropriate to involve Him in that” (Hatzfeld 2005, 142). Another genocidaire and devoted Catholic said more strongly, “Through killing well, eating well, looting well, we felt so puffed up and im­ portant, we didn’t even care about the presence of God . . . ​we thought that from then on we could manage for ourselves without God. The ­proof—​­we killed even on Sunday without ever noticing it” (Hatzfeld 2005, 147). Heinsohn (2000) somewhat controversially argues that the Jews were sin­ gled out during the Holocaust in part because of what they represented, the founders and carriers of traditional monotheistic law. By destroying the Jews, the Nazis were destroying Jewish law grounded in the principle “Thou shall not kill,” thus paving the way for a new society with new laws and norms founded in honor and ruthlessness in battle. This logic of denouncing previ­ ous norms spirals even further out of control in the Chinese Cultural Revolu­ tion and the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. All bourgeois thoughts are to be eliminated as are family ties. Anyone exhibiting anything tied to the old regime must be purged, even individuals wearing glasses, hav­ ing had dental work, or speaking a foreign language as well as religious leaders be they Buddhist, Catholic, or Muslim. Reeducation camps become the norm. A similar logic can be seen when considering the Tutsis as the traditional lawgivers in Rwanda and the Cambodian royalty as the bastions of societal norms and hierarchy in ­pre-​­Khmer Rouge Cambodia. In each instance the perpetrators were consciously working together to create a new society, with a new set of norms set in a new master discourse. In Lacanian terms, the fa­ ther figure needed to be killed. In this logic, genocide and war reinforce the other because each suspends traditional norms. Each provides justifications for a state of exception. “War suspends the rule of law: it systematizes death,

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normalizes savagery, fosters fear and delusions, reawakens old demons, and unsettles morality and human values” (Hatzfeld 2005, 55). The act of perpe­ trating a genocide is the collective transgressing of current laws and norms and the creation of something new. The enjoyment in killing that parallels Bakhtin’s carnivalesque and Cail­ lois’s oceanic societies is quite common in accounts of human rights abuses. The Rwandan genocidaires enjoyed a f­estival-​­like atmosphere: “In the eve­ ning, families listened to music, folk dances, Rwandan or Burundian music. Thanks to the many stolen audiocassettes, families in every house could enjoy music. They all felt equally richer, without jealousy or backbiting, and they congratulated themselves. The men sang, everyone drank, the women changed dresses three times in an evening. It was noisier than weddings, it was drunken reveling every day. . . . ​They never tired of killing, mocking, drinking, laugh­ ing, celebrating. They displayed constant merriment” (Hatzfeld 2005, 95). The central place of the carnivalesque in the Nazi regime (and sanctioned by the highest echelons) is gruesomely documented in the book The Good Old Days (Klee, Dressen, and Riess 1991; see also Blass 2002) with its tales of pleasure mixed with brutality to those considered inferior. Similar to the Af­ rican American lynchings in the US, mass executions on the Eastern Front were referred to as festivals and involved forms of “execution tourism” that make it seem like an extension of the Nazis’ Strength Through Joy vacations. A few horrific examples will suffice: “In Kovno (Lithuania) l­ocals—​­among them mothers with their ­children—​­applauded as each Jew was beaten to death in front of them. Cheers and laughter rang out” (Klee, Dressen, and Riess 1991, xx). German soldiers and Eastern European citizens traveled long distances in order to obtain the best places, sometimes in makeshift bleachers, at the bloody “shooting festivals” (xx). Several tales bespeak the carnivalesque inversion of traditional moral values: After one man beat to death 45 Jews with a crowbar he retrieved an accordion and played the Lithuanian national anthem, with the crowd joining in (31). One police official reported that “members of the Grenzpolizeikom­ missariate were, with a few exceptions, quite happy to take part in shootings of Jews. They had a ball! Obviously they can’t say that today! Nobody failed to turn up. (76; emphasis added)

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The effect on the individual perpetrator is immense both in the sanc­ tioned festivals and during the rush of a massacre. Caillois describes “ ‘the ­long-​­inhibited joy of destruction,’ of ‘liberating violence,’ and notes that ‘A furore seizes the warrior in which he believes himself possessed by a primary instinct buried deep in his heart by a lying civilization’ ” (Stone 2004, 54, quoting Caillois 2001, 168). Many of the surviving perpetrators of the Holo­ caust described feeling a rush (rausch) stemming from an intoxicating free­ dom: “feelings of exaltation and power of the individual on the one hand, feelings of disintegration of the self and of fusion with a collective body on the other” (Klimo 2004, 4). A perpetrator lives in an “intoxicating world” that “confers a superior value upon his various actions” (Caillois 2001, 173). By superseding old norms and participating in the creation of new laws, perpe­ trators are assisting in the establishment of a founding myth for their society. The sense of purpose must be overwhelming. Consider the sense of purpose when you are part of a movement that is finally cut loose to fight an old sym­ bolic order, convinced that it has kept you oppressed and is destroying your very way of life. While the citizens of the oceanic community might have revered or at least respected their now deceased leader, the genocidaire usually feels that the reputed leaders of the old moral order have kept him down. This exacer­ bates the “us versus them” mentality, and when the roles are reversed, the genocidaire feels justified in inflicting harm, even cruelty on the representa­ tives of the old regime who were responsible for his disempowerment. Such an explanation echoes Fromm’s (1973) famous definition of sadism as “the conversion of impotence into the experience of omnipotence” (323) or Al­ ford’s (1997) take that sadism “is an active attempt to control suffering in others rather than experience it in oneself ” (126) as well as Steiner’s descrip­ tion of the SS officers feeling euphoria when shedding their old dispossessed identities and taking on a new identity tied to that of Hitler.

A New Pleasure Principle and a New Symbolic Order Even more interesting are the effects on the perpetrators when the transgres­ sion is meant to establish a permanent new order. What if the new order will become the norm for one thousand years as a third Reich? Despite the call for a radically new symbolic order it will inevitably be rooted in the old. Even the Nazis who attempted to create a new society for the millennia were cognizant

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of vestiges of the old law when they built the new law on the edifice of old norms. Stone (2004) finds evidence of this in Himmler’s famous speech prais­ ing his men’s work in the Final Solution but reminding them that “this is an unwritten and never ­to-​­­be-​­written page of glory in our history” (58). A more prosaic example would be the Nazi ­co-​­optation, as opposed to the elimina­ tion, of Christmas. The People’s Christmas (Volksweihnachten) became a cel­ ebration of the coming of two saviors, Jesus and Hitler (Perry 2005). And of course, many held on to Christian beliefs during the Holocaust. A similar logic most likely occurs even in moral orders that seek to rein in transgressive festivals like the killing in war. Accommodating Oneself Joyfully to the New Symbolic Order

Many, likely for survival, personal advancement, or continuing comfort, will make sense of these ambiguities and accept the new regime even though it includes parts of the old symbolic realm and it includes new pleasure princi­ ples that prohibit transgressions. The regime is not perfect but it is something they can work with and even enjoy. Such regimes often provide added bene­ fits, additional joys, to “good citizens” that might make them more willing to acquiesce to more evil aspects of the regime. Perhaps no regime (until contemporary Bhutan with its Gross National Happiness) was as intentional about producing joy in its “good citizens” as Nazi Germany. Joy and the passions were a key feature of much of Nazi ide­ ology especially as it hearkened back to German Romanticism or some pre­ historic Aryan culture. Once in power, the Nazis institutionalized joy as an important instrument for maintaining the support of the masses, especially through the Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, KdF) program which sought to uplift the morale of lower and middle class Germans. KdF rewarded German citizens for their countless sacrifices by providing concerts, sporting events, circuses, adult education, the “beauty at work” program, and an am­ bitious mass tourism program with its promise of vacations for the masses. KdF’s thirteen cruise ships were used to show the promise of Nazi democra­ tization and was seen as a precursor to the days when Germany and Germans would enjoy their deserved lebensraum (living space). The cruise program usefully juxtaposed German prosperity with the inferior living conditions of ­non-​­Germanic peoples observed along the journey (Baranowski 2004). These programs not only were well publicized in German but also were covered by international media. Time magazine (1934) wrote in praise of the carniva­ lesque atmosphere on one vacation:

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Bread may be scarce, but there is no lack of circuses for Nazi Germany. As a respite from parades and speeches 980 good German workmen and their wives, all members of the Nazi “Strength Through Joy” So­ ciety, last week piled into excursion trains and went trundling third class across Germany from the Saar and Palatinate to Bremen. There they crowded aboard the 15,­000-​­ton North German Lloyd liner Dres­ den for a cruise up the coast of Norway to the North Cape. Late into the night the S­ trong-​­­Through-​­Joy danced, sang Nazi songs, drank f­ at-​ ­bellied mugs of beer. Most of them had never been to sea before. With the KdF the Nazi leadership was creating inherent transgressions, pro­ viding pleasure, to reduce dissent and to divert the citizens’ attention from the more unpleasant aspects of the regime and its wars. Baranowski (2004) even directly connects the KdF to the Holocaust and other atrocities by arguing that the KdF reinforced a sense of entitlement for consumer goods which “fueled greed and genocidal violence in occupied Europe, as Nazi authorities and ordinary soldiers plundered the continent to satisfy their own desires” (2004, xx). The KdF encouraged a consumer mentality in the German people that bred “a general sense . . . ​that everything belonged to the Nazis and the Germans. All was there for the taking.” This played out most blatantly in the expropriation of all that belonged to the Holocaust victims, where they were systematically stripped of their housing, worldly goods, and anything attached to their bodies and ultimately their bodies. A police official on the Eastern Front later commented: “Don’t let’s kid ourselves, there was always something up for grabs during the Jewish actions” (Klee, Dressen, and Riess 1991, 76). Zealots for the New Order

While some will find joy or at least comfort in the new symbolic order with its material benefits, others will find this to be a confusing time, especially those with authoritarian personalities that crave certainty (Staub 1999, 187). How can transgression be the sanctioned norm one day and then be pro­ scribed the next when the new regime is established? Historical evidence shows that those who fully embrace the new order, the hypnotic discourse, tend to have authoritarian personalities. They “have de­ veloped strong respect for authority [and] usually like to be part of a hierar­ chical system. They enjoy being led as well as having authority over others lower in the hierarchy” (Staub 1999, 187). They will lose themselves in a new ­all-​­encompassing ideology so that there is no question to the zealot that their

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actions are justified. They will make themselves objects of the Nazis’ desires. These are the individuals that Steiner describes as wholly identifying with their roles as a cog in the Nazi machine. When the master discourse is called into question, once it is shown not to encompass the Real, they will seek to find in the imaginary realm a new mas­ ter discourse that will encompass all desires. The uncertainty, fear, suffering, and cognitive dissonance brought by jouissance leads to an intense desire for a new symbolic order, another grand project, another Father Figure to suffuse reality with meaning. The new symbolic order must for authoritarian person­ alities, in response to the chaos, account for all of reality. A common meme in totalitarian regimes is that the regime will answer all questions and take care of all needs such as in Kampuchea where the Organization promised to take care of all the needs of all the people, or in Fascist Italy where pictures of Mussolini were placed in classrooms with the caption “Mussolini is always right,” or in Nazi Germany where “nothing was total except the will of Hitler” (Steiner 1980, 425). Some, such as the SS men, are drawn to magnetic or hypnotic figures (Bracher 1993) who could fill all desires, including the Lacanian surplus. In this way, many Germans shed their previous desires and took on the desires of one man. Those with authoritarian personalities were especially susceptible to what Max Weber called a charismatic leader who “is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities” (Weber 1978, 241). Though film­maker Lani Riefenstahl later downplayed the significance of her personal joy at Hitler’s victories, it is hard not to feel the exuberance of a hypnotic discourse in the famous telegram that she wrote to Hitler in June 1940 upon the occupation of Paris: “With indescribable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning grati­ tude, we share with you, my Führer, your and Germany’s greatest victory, the entry of German troops into Paris. You exceed anything human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving deeds without parallel in the history of mankind. How can we ever thank you?” (Kakutani 2007). Similarly Alfred Rosenberg, the chief ideologue of the Nazi party, describes his finding of the nascent Nazi Party in the 1920s and hearing one of Hitler’s earliest speeches: “Hitler postulated that, just as before Luther everyone had been dissatisfied with the old forms until his words struck fire, so millions today felt that new thinking on all levels was essential. All we needed was courage. He spoke well, and from his heart. I agreed with him completely, filled with joy to discover that a clever, impassioned man of the people, an e­ x-​­soldier, had the courage

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to undertake singlehanded such a battle for the weal of the German nation” (A. Rosenberg n.d.). Of course, such enthusiasm and joy has a profound effect on the speaker too, driving him to even more excesses that Durkheim (1976) calls the “demon of oratorical inspiration” (210). The orator feels endowed with ­super-​­powers from this reciprocal relationship of joy. Unlike the recip­ rocal power that is also critical for Audre Lorde’s erotics, this power is held by ones who view themselves as chosen to possess an a­ ll-​­encompassing power. “His very thought is impatient of all rules, and easily falls into all sorts of ex­ cesses. It is because he feels within him an abnormal oversupply of force which overflows and tries to burst out from him; sometimes he even has the feeling that he is dominated by a moral force which is greater than he and of which only he is the interpreter” (Durkheim 1976, 210). Transgressing Even the New Order: Demonic Joy

Some though will seek to transgress the new norms, even those of an evil re­ gime. Above and beyond obedience and ideology, and even beyond the car­ nivalesque there can be a sadistic pleasure that appears boundless and is rarely adequately explained. If Tutsis are to be killed, the sadistic zealot will take it to the next level and make sport of the killing and add sadistic twists. Ac­ counts of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are replete with Hutu leaders admon­ ishing the local militias not to dally with torture and killing, but to get on with it, so they can kill more. Note, these sadists are clearly not seeking to curry favor from the new father figure as their actions are subverting the goals of the regime and they are transgressing the new norms that are being established. There is something of an authenticity in the sadist/torturer not succumbing to remnants of the pleasure principle and resisting the new pleasure princi­ ples. Like Alford’s interpretation of Milgram’s subjects they have transgressed previous norms and are delighting in their newfound freedom. The sadist in such cases is responding to the transgression, not the desire for a new order. The meaning of the new order is transgression and it is man­ ifest as Fromm tells us through absolute control of another person. “To force someone to endure pain or humiliation without being able to defend himself is one of the manifestations of absolute control. . . . ​[It] creates the illusion of transcending the limitations of human existence, particularly for one whose real life is deprived of productivity and joy” (Fromm 1973, 322–323). At the relatively “minor” level, consider the young guard at Auschwitz while waiting for the gas canister to be dropped into the “showers” who would turn the lights on and off just to feel sadistic pleasure in the shrieks of fright

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by the victims. The guard did this because he could. He had power over these people. Or at a more extreme level, in Machete Season, Jean Hatzfeld quotes Adalbert Munzigura, a purported head of a death squad: “There were some who brutalized a lot because they killed overmuch. Their killings were deli­ cious to them. They needed intoxication, like someone who calls louder and louder for a bottle . . . ​they wanted seething excitement. They felt cheated when a Tutsi died without a word. Which is why they no longer struck at the mortal parts, wishing to save the blows and relish the screams” (2005, 129). Such orgiastic killings with horrendous sadism are documented in numerous other contexts and we should not single out Rwanda. Similar to the joyful ecstasies discussed earlier in the book, the orgiastic killing also involves a loss of the self. It is a loss of the self and at the same time a fulfilment of the self ’s desires (cf. Bataille 1986). These accounts suggest that the taboo is always within us, that there is an instinct to transgress. Bataille usefully juxtaposes such eroticism with the relatively controlled environment of war. War is a human affair, while such massacres are, for Bataille, a form of animality (cf. Wilson 2008, 27, 70). Of course, to call such behavior animalistic is a grave disservice to animals who do not seem to have the imagination or desire to practice such cruelty (cf. Ivan Karamazov’s “Re­ bellion” in Dostoyevsky 1964, bk. 5, chap. 4). Only the human imagination can conjure up some actions or such figures. So, while the actions are inhu­ man, it might be better to describe them in terms of demons and monsters and this is how extreme atrocities are often described. A Japanese officer newly deployed to China was surprised to find that his men who had already seen significant action and had been trained so that brutal killings became banal, said of the trainings and subsequent military action: “Human beings turned into murdering demons. Everyone became a demon within three months” (Chang 1997, 58). In the ensuing Rape of Nan­ jing, Nagatomi Hakudo a Japanese soldier who is now a Tokyo doctor plagued by remorse, explains his actions by his becoming either an animal or a devil: “I beheaded people, starved them to death, burned them, and buried them alive, over two hundred in all. It is terrible that I could turn into an animal and do these things. There are r­ eally no words to explain what I was doing. I was truly a devil” (Chang 1997, 59). Eroticism at such extremes threatens to move beyond all symbolic realms and all taboos. It actively mocks the notion of taboo. It is an ultimate form of shedding the self, an intentional attempt at shedding all traces of humanity. We see such extremes in the works of Marquis de Sade, especially the 120

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Days of Sodom, and in the fictional works of Bataille, such as “The Story of the Eye” (also in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and perhaps in Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing), where the scenes become progressively more horrifying, basi­ cally taxing the author’s imagination to come up with scenes of brutality that surpass as many taboos as possible. They have pushed beyond jouissance as there no longer are any pleasure principles to transcend. If someone is not going to heed any pleasure principles they will not feel the joy of transgressing human created realms. All that remains is intensity: “Intense pleasure must be so violently extreme that it is no longer pleasure but simply pure intensity” (Gallop 1981, 32; cited in MacKendrick 1999, 46). This is the arena of individuals seeking to achieve ­super-​­powers so that no power can rein them in. We see this in soldiers in Eastern Congo who claim they engage in mass rape in order to tap into a magic elixir that will save them from death and from HIV/AIDS (L. Jackson 2007), with similar actions re­ ported in the rape of Nanjing (Chang 1997, 49) and at My Lai (Kendrick 2006). In reality, we rarely encounter such total demonic behavior. Hinton (2005) explores the perpetrators’ motivations during the Cambodian genocides es­ pecially the rare practice of eating the livers of victims. The eating of human flesh is often a serious taboo, and ultimately only transgressed in the most extreme circumstances. In this case, according to Hinton, liver eating is a form of othering the victim and it is a way of absorbing the victim’s courage and power which is said to rest in the liver. It is also a way of burrowing into the Other to find enemies the way that the Khmer Rouge had ordered. Finally, it is a twisted display of power. That the perpetrators insisted on leading their former comrade into the wild forested area before killing him, drawing him, and cooking his liver, suggests that they knew they were aware that their ac­ tions were beyond the pale of humanity. But pointing out that the perpetrators consciously determined the location of the brutality and that they returned to their work afterward suggests that some pleasure principles were still intact. Even the demonic behavior of liver eating was not fully demonic. I choose to read Bataille as issuing a warning that we can fall in love with transgression to the point that it no longer has human meaning. It does not provide joy, or at least human joy. This may be a form of what my colleague Justin Strong called demonic joy. This is when the joy of ecstasy and the joy of horror come together in the most extreme of circumstances (Bataille 1989, 206–207). Fortunately, most examples of sadistic joy are not demonic. None­ theless, it means that many demonic acts have been perpetrated by non­demonic individuals and that is perhaps even more troubling. An interviewee for the

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famous book The Nazi Doctors memorably said “It is demonic that they were not demonic” (Alford 1997, 135).

Especially Proud Sadists Unlike Baumeister and Campbell’s (1999) claims about deep remorse for sa­ distic perpetrators, we have some shockingly honest accounts of the joy and freedom of the perpetrators. The accounts of sadistic joy above are mirrored in two recent “confessions”: those of Osvaldo Romo, an infamous torturer in Chile in the first years of the Pinochet regime, and that of Anwar Congo, captured in sublimely beautiful and horrible fashion by filmmaker Joshua Op­ penheimer in The Act of Killing. Theirs were inherent transgressions sanc­ tioned by the authorities during an oppressive regime. And, as they mostly escaped impunity and were still viewed as heroes by large segments of their populations, especially in Congo’s case, they only expressed limited remorse. Osvaldo Romo: A Proud Torturer

In April 1995, the viewers of the ­Spanish-​­language television station Univision were shocked when the often controversial news program Primer Impacto pre­ sented an interview with Osvaldo Romo Mena, a member of Chile’s secret military police (DINA) during the first years of the brutal Pinochet regime (see Payne 2008; Guzmán 2000).6 Romo, often known by the nickname “Guatón” (Fatso), appears especially repulsive, wearing dirty clothes, with un­ kempt hair, and gesticulating like a monster as he calmly demonstrated his killings and torture t­echniques—​­including applying electrodes to women’s nipples and their vaginas. As Payne (2008) describes: “His face alternated be­ tween bliss and delight over his acts, boastful pride in his acumen, and taunt­ ing indignation at false accusations. He massaged his hands in apparent pleasure and arousal, interrupting the motion only to simulate how he might use a bolt cutter to snap off fingers or cut through internal organs, which were efforts to hide the identity and evidence of detainees’ dead bodies” (109). Romo was convinced that his ­torture-​­filled interrogations served an im­ portant function for the Pinochet government and that he was especially good at his job. He thus took significant credit for defeating the leftist opposition. “What can be said is that I fulfilled a role and I did it well. I have a clear con­ science and clear beliefs. I believe in what I did and would do it again” (quoted in Payne 2008, 117). The only remorse he shows is that his superiors would

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not allow him to kill more of his victims. If presented with another opportu­ nity, “I would do it the same way, and worse” (Romo, interview, n.d.). When asked if it would be appropriate for his epitaph to say “Osvaldo Romo, Tor­ turer” he replies in the affirmative. Romo was eventually tried and found guilty but the Chilean Supreme Court threw out the conviction. He died in 2007 with no one attending his funeral. Romo’s stunning confession is an excellent example of the ­self-​­conscious social construction of a perpetrator and foreshadows the discussion in Chap­ ter 6 of the role that joy plays in the social constructions of martyrdoms. Primer Impacto went to great lengths to make Romo look as nasty as possible for the interview, shooting from below, modifying the lighting, and providing no makeup. Payne summarizes the interview: “The program presented Romo as a psychopath, an unrepentant murderer, torturer, and rapist, who deserved to be incarcerated for life” (118). On the other hand, he is also aware, some­ what in the initial interview, but more so in subsequent media appearances, that he is being judged by Chilean society, politicians, and ultimately the courts. He contradicts his own previous admissions when he claims that he never killed anyone or raped any women. He even argues that he never tor­ tured anyone. “I didn’t torture. Those who say this are upset because they were defeated, defeated in the war. I am innocent. I never did any harm to anyone” (116). It is also the story of a proud and sadistic torturer, someone who nicely fits Fromm’s (1973) conception of sadist as someone with little previous power who has the opportunity for “the conversion of impotence into the experience of omnipotence” (44). As a previous ­low-​­level functionary who seemed to experience very little previous joy Romo was able to raise himself up and find some joy by identifying with the new symbolic order of the Pinochet regime. By forcing “someone to endure pain or humiliation” (Fromm 1973, 288) he “creates the illusion of transcending the limitations of human existence” (Fromm 1973, 322). Romo, like the SS officers in Steiner’s study, was able to shed his old identity and fuse his new identity with the regime. While Arendt was probably wrong to label Eichmann a clown, it is hard not to not see Os­ valdo Romo as a pathetic clownish figure, something of a sadistic buffoon. Anwar Congo: The Dancing Executioner

Exploring the actions and thoughts of joyful perpetrators can make for a sub­ lime experience. How can the mind make sense of the scene early in Joshua Oppenheimer’s powerful documentary The Act of Killing where the lead

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character Anwar Congo breaks into the c­ ha-​­cha on a rooftop where three decades previously he garroted hundreds of people to death? Oppenheimer’s ­award-​­winning film originally started production as a documentary but soon became a series of reenactments led by several Indo­ nesian perpetrators of the killings of almost one million people in 1965–1966. The victims were branded as communists or Chinese or trade ­unionists—​ ­anyone who was ­left-​­leaning or who could be a threat to the new Suharto re­ gime. Oppenheimer intended it to be a documentary about them, but the perpetrators were so intent on accurately representing their deeds and were such movie aficionados that they wanted to direct each scene. Oppenheimer’s genius was to allow, nay encourage, their direction, to the point that he sought funds for the perpetrators to make their own film documenting their own deeds while Oppenheimer was shooting his documentary. The final product shifts from traditional documentary to scenes staged by the perpetrators to scenes of the perpetrators watching themselves reenacting their own deeds. The result is a powerhouse that overwhelms our rational minds, our under­ standings of documentary, and our assumptions about perpetrators. Congo is thrilled with the prospect of such a project. “We can make something even more sadistic than what you’d see in movies about the Nazis. Sure I can! Be­ cause there’s never been a movie where heads get chopped o ­ ff—​­except in fic­ tion, but that’s ­different—​­because I did it in real life” (Oppenheimer 2012). Anwar Congo is a mesmerizing lead character. Originally a petty street criminal who hawked movie tickets on the streets of Medan, the capital and largest city of North Sumatra, he was able to step onto a bigger stage as an executioner for the local party apparatus when the revolution broke out. Like Osvaldo Romo, Congo and his fellow gangsters craved attention and wanted to be involved in something larger than themselves. They proved quite adept at their job of intimidating, torturing, and executing, in part because they did not ask too many questions or express any qualms about their deeds. Indeed, they adopted the personae of their ­big-​­screen heroes, identifying with Holly­ wood stars like John Wayne and Marlon Brando. After watching an Elvis Pres­ ley film Congo reports he almost danced across the street to the party headquarters “still in the mood of the film” and then killed “happily” (Oppen­ heimer 2012). Unlike the situationist view of perpetrators hesitant to even think back to the old days, the members of the Indonesian death squad, even more than Osvaldo Romo, burst with pride about their deeds. Oppenheimer recalls, “Within minutes of meeting me, they would tell me horrible stories, often

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Figure 5. Anwar Congo demonstrating his garroting technique. Anwar Congo proudly demonstrating for documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer how he used a garrote to execute hundreds, if not thousands, of supposed communists during the mass killings in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966. Source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/04/10/films/flamboyant-descent-into -the-heart-of-darkness/#.WXVBCoTyu6I. Courtesy of Drafthouse Films.

boastfully, and would say, ‘How about if we go to the place where I killed people, and I will show you how I did it?’ ” (Rohter 2013). Upon meeting Oppenheimer, Congo leads him to the rooftop to reenact the garroting of victims, even taking the victims’ role at one point to ensure that it was handled as authentically as possible. Congo’s biggest voiced regret is that he was not better prepared for the reenactment, that he wore inappropriate white clothes, did not have the proper weapons, and should have had his comrades with him to complete the scene. As the film progresses, the scenes become even more surreal and elabo­ rate, with Mr. Congo and his colleagues playing one scene as a Hollywood western complete with cowboy hats. At one point they decide that the urban killings only partially represented the killings and so they decide to stage a massacre in a nearby village with the villagers themselves reluctantly playing the victims. During a break in the shooting, one of Congo’s comrades pines for the old days, and wistfully speaks of raping of f­ourteen-​­­year-​­old girls during such massacres. One scene filmed by a waterfall features a victim com­ ing back to life to give a medal to Congo “for executing me and sending me to

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Figure 6. Executioner Anwar Congo dancing the cha-cha. Executioner Anwar Congo dancing the cha-cha on the roof where he killed thousands of supposed communists. From Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing. Source: https://www.theryder.com/2014/03/14/fixing-history. Courtesy of Drafthouse Films.

heaven, I thank you a thousand times” (Oppenheimer 2012). Another scene by a gigantic sculpture of a fish near a waterway with dozens of dancers is so bizarre that it is difficult to describe, let alone interpret. Oppenheimer de­ scribes it as no longer a documentary but a “kind of hallucinatory aria, a kind of fever dream” (Rohter 2013). For Oppenheimer, the finished product recounting prideful sadists is mostly a film about continuing impunity in Indonesia. The perpetrators and their allies, many part of the paramilitary Pemuda Pancasila, are revered by the general public for their heroism, and retain strong control over the Indo­ nesian populace. Oppenheimer explains, “I see such an ­image—​­a man danc­ ing where he’s killed hundreds of p ­ eople—​­as a profound allegory for impunity and for what happens when perpetrators win and are never forced to ac­ knowledge what they’ve done is wrong” (Roosa 2014, 415). During the film­ ing Congo’s gang is even featured on a popular television talk show where they are showered with praise by the interviewer and the audience. Any dissent to this hero worship is viewed as unpatriotic and could be quite dangerous as we see in Oppenheimer’s sequel, The Look of Silence, and by the fact that many crew members including a ­co-​­director are listed anonymously in the film’s

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credits. Oppenheimer’s films have played a significant role in Indonesia’s re­ cent soul searching about its past with some now pushing for i­n-​­depth investigations. The Last Act of Killing

As the film progresses, Congo begins to show cracks in his prideful façade, especially after he insists on taking on the role of the victim in a harrowing scene that involves a rope tightly put around his neck while he is interrogated. The helplessness stuns him. In the closing scene Congo and Oppenheimer return to the rooftop where he killed so many and previously did the ­cha-​­cha. Congo has now had difficulty sleeping and he admits that he ultimately changed the way that he garroted his victims so that he would not see their faces during the strangulation. He has also become concerned about how he and his mates will be perceived by the film’s viewers. Instead of heroes, his gang appear to be the evildoers. They seem to be the bad guys while the com­ munists who were killed in such large numbers do not seem as threatening as the propaganda insisted. On the roof, he is left by himself to describe his previous actions. Disarmed, he rambles, becomes physically unstable, and retches. The previously proud and joyful killer is stunned. With Congo physically and emotionally ill, we now have a stereotypical Hollywood ending that leaves the viewer with a good conscience. The sadistic killer is repentant and somewhat human, at least on some level, and we are now free to express some forgiveness for his deeds. One reporter noted, “See­ ing Anwar’s humanity gave the majority of the audience at the screening hope. The film showed them that Anwar acted on impulses that “made sense” to him in his everyday life. They started to understand the man behind the killer” (Bjerregaard 2014). But the film within a film, as well as Congo’s infatuation with Hollywood, makes one hesitate. What if Congo is playing yet another part in yet another drama? One Indonesian filmgoer said “Since Anwar was young he wanted to feature in a movie. Movies are in his blood, and all of the sudden there is a film crew from abroad giving him a chance for it. Maybe his guilt is ­really true, but I think he is acting” (Bjerregaard 2014). A film critic wrote, “Maybe the remorse isn’t genuine. Perhaps it’s just another perfor­ mance for the camera” (Rohter 2013). Oppenheimer, though, is more gener­ ous, seeing the remorse as part and parcel of Congo’s personality, and that his previous boasting was necessary to reinforce his ­self-​­image as a hero. Like Arendt above, Oppenheimer minimizes the boasting, and frames the behav­ ior in terms reminiscent of ­opponent-​­process theory discussed above:

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I was astonished to see that this grotesque image of a man dancing where he’s killed all these people was somehow connected to his con­ science, to his pain, to a trauma that he said he was trying to forget. And I started to intuit that all this boasting, which seems to be a sign of pride, may in fact not be a sign of pride; it may be the opposite. It’s perfectly plausible that these men are boasting to convince themselves and the rest of the society, with the force of an unspoken threat, that what they’ve done is right, so they don’t have to think of themselves as murderers. That is to say, I started to wonder whether the boasting and remorse were two sides of the same coin. So I showed the footage back to Anwar. Anwar appeared disturbed when he saw it, obviously unpre­ pared for what was coming because he had brought his grandchildren along. As he watched the footage, he looked very disturbed. But he didn’t dare say what was r­ eally bothering him. He said, “Well, it’s my clothes, my acting is wrong. If we want this to ­really resemble what it was like, we should change my clothes, we should change my acting, I should be more violent, we should dress better. I look like I’m dressed for a picnic.” (Roosa 2014, 415) In retrospect then, Congo’s earlier actions reveal a gnawing guilt that is split­ ting him apart. Even in the first scene on the roof, before the c­ ha-​­cha, Anwar lets out a sigh, which for Oppenheimer is the initial crack in his prideful mask that grows in amplitude such that by the end of the film he’s retching. Whether or not the remorse is genuine, most of the film, especially for the other perpetrators, is a celebration of killing. Congo and his mates are joyful and proud sadists. He experiences remorse decades later, and only after his actions and thoughts are placed under extensive and intense scrutiny over a lengthy period of time. He was conned, quite wittingly, into ­re-​­staging his gruesome actions and as a director of the reenactment scenes he viewed them multiple times from various vantage points, including that of his victims. He even watched the reenactments in the company of his young grandchildren. He was allowed to give his dreams and his anxieties free rein, and to reflect on them by repeatedly watching the footage. Most joyful perpetrators never experience such a vulnerable position. Only Congo’s pride and love of films led to this radical vulnerability. Even then, we are presented only with potential remorse. Oppenheimer does not end the film with any final captions that relate actions that Congo took to express his remorse to his victims or to a larger audience. Even if genuine,

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Congo still has thousands of fans/sympathizers who will extol his heroic ac­ tions and assure him that there is no need for such remorse. It is hard to imagine anyone who boasts he can make a film more sadistic than films about Nazis, having his assumptive world shaken enough to lead to permanent change.

Conclusion: Distinguishing the Joys of the Hero and the Perpetrator I conclude with questions spurred by dialogue with a couple of human rights professors from different parts of the globe. Mentioning a potential chapter on joyful perpetrators elicited a sharp visceral reaction from both. They re­ proached me. No! It is not possible that these people enjoyed it! They were forced to. They had a gun to their head. They were caught up in a system of killing. When I countered with a plethora of examples like those discussed above they suggested that perhaps perpetrators were enjoying camaraderie and freedom, but not the killing and torture itself. They could not counte­ nance human beings enjoying such atrocities as sadistic perpetrators and they were clearly deeply troubled by the concept of demonic joy. Part of this reac­ tion was due to a desire to keep joy so pure that it cannot be touched by such atrocities. There is something sublime in even thinking that they might be related. Holding on to a situationist view derived from the works of Arendt and Milgram provides some comfort as they reinforce views of Hitler as the personification of evil as well as indict certain political and bureaucratic sys­ tems. It is safer than imagining thousands of individuals exercising their free­ dom and engaging in sadistic and even demonic joy. If we embrace the potential for monstrosity it is (we are?) always potentially out of control. We are drawn to images and accounts of sadistic p ­ erpetrators—​­they are ubiquitous in our media and popular entertainment and in our human rights books and ­courses—​­in part because they function as a taboo. They reassure us that there is a limit, and we can easily distinguish those who have crossed that threshold. We are drawn to the images, and we teach about them, in order to be repulsed by them. To suggest that many individuals desire to cross such a limit would lead us to conclude that, instead of there being an Eichmann in all of us, there would be a sadist lurking in many of us. As Arendt comes to realize in her coverage of the trial of sadistic killers in Frankfurt, “We begin to wonder about the dream world of many an average citizen who may lack

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not much more than the opportunity” (1966, xxvii). Many of the sadistic per­ petrators are normal individuals or relatively normal people, sleepers with sadistic tendencies. It would be more reassuring for them to be obviously sa­ distic. “It is demonic that they were not demonic” (Alford 1997, 135). Fortunately, even sadists rarely transgress all taboos. Indeed, they seem to reflect the most about taboos and take pride in the ones they crossed and the ones they would not cross. Osvaldo Romo, the Chilean torturer, proudly bragged about his sexual torture, but seemed appalled that anyone would even suggest that he raped women. Some Hutu genocidaires refused to take part in the raping because “it was not proper, to mix together fooling around and killing” (Hatzfeld 2005, 97). Even Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz who admitted to overseeing the deaths of millions of Jews, held to his absurd scruples. The chief interpreter for the US prosecution at the Nuremburg trials, Richard W. Sonnenfeldt (2006), reports that “before he appeared as a witness, I asked him whether he had ever enriched himself with victims’ possessions. Höss was visibly angry. ‘What kind of a man do you think I am?’ he asked in a hurt voice” (68). Bataille points out that even in the midst of the craziest wartime massacres, “The warriors still do not turn on each other in their frenzy” and during the most macabre orgiastic killings, “The taboo on canni­ balism generally persists” (Bataille 1986, 80). Those who do not acknowledge let alone grapple with the sinister joy ­experienced by perpetrators and onlookers will face a difficult task in under­ standing abuses and advancing human rights. And those who crave reconcilia­ tion after human rights crises must address the gleeful feelings that perpetrators and onlookers experienced while abuses were committed. They are strongly affected by this transgression and the experience probably has had unpredict­ able effects on them. Echoing Deleuze and Spinoza, they never knew what their bodies were capable of. Consider that Anwar Congo and Osvaldo Romo only expressed a modicum of remorse several decades after the fact, and only when placed under intense scrutiny. Can someone who experienced such strong feelings for so long genuinely claim that it was not them? Can they claim that the happiest moments of their lives no longer have an effect? When this rausch is discussed, it is usually used to distance the self from the collective actions. Perpetrators often report, especially in legal proceed­ ings, that they were caught up in something bigger than themselves and they were no longer in control of their behavior and thus they could not be held culpable. The loss of the (rational) self was greeted warmly during the actions but then is strategically denied, perhaps to reappear at a later date.

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Postscript

Bataille holds that moments of “divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme hor­ ror” merge, and he conducts a macabre, narcissistic, and m ­ ind-​­numbing ­auto-​ ­experiment to test this hypothesis. Bataille was enamored with the writings and works of the Catholic saint Angela of Foligno (1248 to 1309), especially her intensive meditative practices that involved reflecting intently on the suf­ fering Christ on the cross. Angela’s meditations did not focus on the resurrec­ tion or the life of Christ or the promise of heaven, but on the suffering itself. She focused intently on each part of Christ’s damaged body, imagining each wound in her mind, feeling it in her body. Done for hours at a time, this led to a mystical ecstasy, where Angela became united, in a way, with the suffering of Christ. She welcomed such sufferings and more. Bataille practiced a parallel meditation in the 1930s but with his focus on Chinese torture victims, those who suffered from lingchi, the infamous death by one thousand cuts (Bataille 1989; cf. Hollywood 2002). Bataille was espe­ cially obsessed with one photo that showed a man having been cut open and having his leg cut off, but at the same time with his head thrown back, his eyes rolling back, and sporting a beatific smile. This pose evinces a pleasurable ecstasy, and Bataille interprets it as such. Reflecting, nay meditating on, nay obsessing with (“I have never stopped being obsessed by this image of pain” [1989, 206]) this image unsettles Bataille and he loses himself in ecstasy in a way similar to that of St. Angela. Unlike the medieval saint, Bataille only empathizes in a superficial way with the torture victim, not even bothering to question his identity, his back­ ground, his relations, or his crime. Bataille if anything merely desires the in­ tensity of the pain like the demons discussed above and uses the victim as a tool to achieve that ecstasy. Thus, he colludes in the government’s systematic and carefully executed and slow deletion of the person. In fact, Bataille’s dele­ tion or dissolution of the victim goes further as it “participates in an oriental­ izing gaze that renders further suspect the simultaneous claim of absolute historicity and the elision of the historical” (Hollywood 2002, 90). Going to extreme lengths to show that the greatest pain and greatest plea­ sure share the same structure, Bataille also takes his eyes off the perpetrators. The torturers/executors in the lingchi photos go about their bloody task in ­workman-​­like fashion with nary an emotion shown. The gathered crowd watches with some fascination but they do not appear to be the fanatic spec­ tators of Southern lynchings or Nazi execution parties. The only potential joy

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in the photo is the victim and, if anything, it resembles a martyr’s death with a link between suffering and joy discussed in the next chapter. Bataille may have lost himself in a type of e­ cstasy—​­such extended meditation on the hor­ rific can shake the ego to its ­foundations—​­but it does not appear to have been joyful. It more resembles the trauma, in this case s­ elf-​­inflicted, of secondary victimization that will be discussed in Chapter 7, but it shares nothing of the ­ ther-​­focused meditation techniques that will be discussed as ways for type of o addressing such trauma.

CHAPTER 6

Joyful Martyrs

Cruel “Black Widows” Eager to Die: Female Face of Terror “These Chechen Girls Were So Happy They Were About to Blow Themselves Up” —​­National Post (Canada) headline, October 30, 2002 She was a Kiev student, and her big black eyes shone with the holy joy of terrorism. —​­Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In common parlance, joy and martyrdom initially appear radically dissimilar. Joy usually connotes bodily pleasure, while martyrdom often involves the worst forms of bodily contortion and painful death. Joy is a time of “accepting, trusting, and understanding others” of being free, while martyrdom is to suf­ fer severe persecution at the hands of those who oppose you; it is an extreme form of losing your freedom, to be killed, most often while physically bound. Nonetheless, the more nuanced phenomenology of joy developed in earlier chapters sees joy as transcending bodily pleasure. It is a coming to terms with one’s life, an acceptance, a release. Joy is being in tune with the flow of another reality, that is, beyond the symbolic realm in Lacan’s sense. It is a form of de­ tachment from the body, a transcending of bodily pain often through reach­ ing deeply within ourselves to find empowerment as in Lorde’s erotics. Oddly, joy is transcending the body through the body; it is not abnegation of the body. The body abides (at least until it is destroyed). Thus, joy and martyrdom may not be as diametrically opposed as first thought. Martyrs who accept their fate release themselves from their bodily afflictions. Perhaps, it is even

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joy which sustains the martyrs and allows them to accomplish the seemingly physically impossible, that of being content or even happy while they endure great physical suffering (cf. Seneca, Letter 85). Martyrs may be able to find empowerment through erotics just as the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have found inner strength to transcend their ordeal. Here, I turn to the complex and controversial place of joy in human rights martyrdom. Joy has been ascribed to martyrs for millennia, indeed it is one of the dominant motifs in many traditions and works. Martyrs are rarely por­ trayed as dour persons suffering an agonizing death, and then left in the abyss of the afterlife. A martyrdom must make the argument that there is something wrong with the current conditions and point to a better reality. For such a task few emotions are evocative as joy. Few martyrs are portrayed as gloomy even during their painful last moments. For instance, in John Foxe’s work discussed below joy is ascribed to almost all martyrs. If they lacked joy on the scaffold, they were joyful before then, or they were joyful in the afterlife. The chapter considers several prominent martyrdoms where joy played a pivotal role including 1) Reformation, ­Counter-​­Reformation, and Restoration martyrdoms in England; 2) the ­self-​­immolation in Tunisia of Mohamed Bouazizi and the fatal beating of Khaled Saeed in Egypt that ignited the Arab Spring; and 3) Palestinian suicide bombers/martyrs during the Second Inti­ fada. I reflect on three major theoretical themes: the use of joy in the social construction of martyrs; the potential of joyful martyrs to bring about social and political change; and how martyrs can be branded as affective deviants because they evince inappropriate joys. Together, these reflections show that joy can, and most likely will be, politicized, just as other major aspects of human rights.

The Social Construction of Martyrdom To better understand how joy connects with martyrdom we begin with the fact that martyrdoms are socially constructed often intentionally to have an affect or stir up emotions in an audience. These constructions are likely in­ tended to elicit feelings which overwhelm the rational, to produce outbursts of emotions. Martyrdoms, instrumentally conceived, are intimately connected to social movements; they are a potent tool for religious, social, and political movements. Through a martyrdom the movement desires a transmission of affect to a

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larger audience. If a martyr was to die quietly in the forest with no witnesses, she would not be a martyr. A martyr is a witness to a greater cause and must have an affect on others so that they too will witness for the cause. This second witnessing may not be immediate, nor is it guaranteed. Consider Sophie Scholl’s martyrdom in Nazi Germany in 1943. At the time few were stirred by her sacrifice, but now her story is repeated in many formats, her name is re­ vered, and her small grave in Munich, alongside that of her brother Hans, has become a popular pilgrimage site. A martyr has only a limited knowledge of whether their martyrdom will be witnessed. Indeed, countless atrocities are committed and any one of them could be constructed as a martyrdom that will spur a social movement. Some individuals desire that their death be con­ sidered a martyrdom such as the very intentional martyrdoms of Buddhist monks in Saigon in 1963, of Sophie Scholl, or of Anne Askew in England in 1546. Other deaths unintentionally produce a martyrdom. F ­ ourteen-​­­year-​­old Emmett Till could not have imagined that his gruesome lynching in 1955 in rural Mississippi would be a major catalyst for the US civil rights movement. It was his mother and Jet magazine that put him on the road to martyrdom by allowing and publishing the photograph of his disfigured face in an open cas­ ket. Similarly, Matthew Shepard could not imagine that his brutal death would have such a powerful effect on the LGBTQ movement (see S. Hoffman 2011). Additionally, an individual death could be part of a larger set of suffering where all the victims ultimately become branded as martyrs such as the Jewish victims of the Shoah, or those killed in Afghanistan under the Soviet puppet regime, or those in Occupied Palestine. In contrast, and deserving of further analysis in another work, the African slaves and indigenous groups in the US and elsewhere are rarely constructed as martyrs even though they often suf­ fered brutal deaths for noble causes. Not only do potential martyrs not know whether their death will be branded a martyrdom, they do not know what their death will mean and that meaning can change over time and among different groups. They may believe that significant change will come about, but they do not have control over it. Suffering and death are polysemes that can be branded in numerous ways including ways opposed to those intended. Martyrdom like joy is thus hap­ penstance, but whose death will be the aleatory event that could lead to a rupture in the symbolic realm? Aleatory events cannot be predicted with cer­ tainty. This may be one very valid reason not to welcome martyrdom because by persisting one maintains some agency over the message of one’s life.

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Of course, individuals can and often do take steps to ensure that their death carries a certain message mainly through scaffold speeches, video fare­ wells, and suicide notes. Fatimah Baraghani (known as Táhirih), a martyr of the Bábí faith in Iran, is reported to have said as her final words, “You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women” (Esslemont 1980, 286). Similarly, Hans Scholl shouting “long live freedom” before the blade of the Nazi guillotine fell made clear what his death meant for him and how he wanted it to be remembered. But one can imagine a set of circumstances where the guards and the infamous executioner Johann Reich­ hart would not relate that exclamation to anyone or if they did, it would be with much derision. The martyr’s comportment or general affect leading up to his or her death and in the agonizing moments of suffering can also play a large role in the construction of their death with martyrologies often focusing extensively on the resistance and joy evinced in the last moments. Martyrdoms, even those that appear spontaneous, are often carefully or­ chestrated for maximum effect (cf. Cole and Cole 2009). An analysis of Thích Quảng Đức’s 1963 s­ elf-​­immolation in the former Saigon is instructive, espe­ cially in the careful attention to details to maximize affect and stir a social movement (cf. Allen 2009). This was not the spur of the moment decision as it has often been portrayed. Nor, by itself, was the martyrdom a success; it had to be accompanied by several other planned and unplanned actions. For in­ stance, Quảng Đức left a carefully crafted letter that lays out his political mo­ tives: “Before closing my eyes and moving t­ owards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compas­ sion ­towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, rever­ ends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organize in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism” (Law 2017, 30). The media were en­ couraged to attend the ­self-​­immolation leading to the infamous photo of which John F. Kennedy said, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one” (M. Yang 2011). During the immolation, a monk with a megaphone explained: “A Buddhist priest burns himself to death. A Buddhist priest becomes a martyr’ ” (Spiritual Quest Ad­ ventures, n.d.). His action was followed by a series of other protest events including several other s­ elf-​­immolations. Quảng Đức’s s­ elf-​­immolation had its intended effect as President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown five months later and killed.

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As an orchestrated event designed for rhetorical effect, the leaders of the social movement often take liberties to edit the martyr’s life and words. Some parts of a martyr’s life and death are portrayed repeatedly, while others are conveniently elided. The analysis below shows that joy is one of the major tools employed in the social construction of a martyrdom to cause maximum affect on the audience. Joy also plays a major role in sustaining potential mar­ tyrs and supplying them strength to endure their suffering.

Reformation and ­Counter-​­Reformation Martyrs The social construction and politicization of martyrs is evident very early on from the tales of ­first-​­century Christians to the martyrologies during the Ref­ ormation and C ­ ounter-​­Reformation. Most notably, the English Protestant John Foxe, in his monumental Actes and Monuments better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (published in English in several editions from 1563 to 1583), not only recounted the stories of martyrs, he very much ­co-​­created the mar­ tyrs, including the version of their lives that came to be generally accepted for centuries. If the martyrs had not behaved in a certain way, Foxe would not have had enough authentic material to tell his tales, but if he had not collected the stories and presented them the way he did, they would not be known as martyrs (cf. Freeman 2004). Foxe and his publisher purposefully employed rhetorical devices that resonated for decades among lay people. In addition to the letters of the martyrs and the eyewitness accounts of the deaths, the edi­ tions included striking visual images including ­fold-​­out posters that were often torn out with readers writing phrases such as “courage, courage” or “I suffer for the truth,” and then hung on walls for edification (see Weimer 2011). Foxe’s portrayal of the Catholic executioner Edmund Bonner was so convinc­ ing that he became known colloquially as Bloody Bonner and in popular opinion became synonymous with the evils of Catholicism. Especially poi­ gnant are Foxe’s inclusion of farewell letters and other ­first-​­person testimo­ nies, which work in a similar fashion to Quảng Đức’s last letter to explain their actions and to show a way forward for the survivors. These letters exhort survivors to remain steadfast in their faith, and to remember that martyrdom brings great joy. Robert Smith, a Marian martyr famously interrogated and sentenced to be burned by Edmund Bonner, wrote a series of letters to console his family. The letter to his brother mostly consists of a long poem which ends juxtaposing the “flames of fire” with “eternal joy”:

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Come forth out of all fear, and do as I have done; And God shall be thy guide, and give thee such increase, That in the flames of fire thou shalt have perfect peace, Into eternal joy, and pass out of all pain: Where we shall meet with mirth, and never part again. (7:362) The Actes and Monuments went viral for its day. It was displayed promi­ nently in churches throughout the country and was carried by many refugees resettling in the Americas. Numerous editions were published including sev­ eral abridged versions, and many selections were developed into plays and poems. Foxe’s work was seen as pivotal in defining English Protestantism and ­anti-​­Catholicism for centuries and strongly influenced later generations of British intellectuals. Worldly Joy in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

What is most interesting for this work is the foregrounding of joy in Foxe’s social construction of the martyrs. He writes, in his “Admonition to the Reader” Let us now enter the consideration of the blessed martyrs, who al­ though they suffered in their bodies, yet rejoiced they in their spirits, and albeit they were persecuted of men, yet were they comforted of the Lord with such inward joy and peace of conscience, that some, writing to their friends, professed they were never so merry before in all their lives, some leaped for joy, some for triumph would put on their scarfs, some their wedding garments, going to the fire; others kissed the stake, some embraced the faggots, some clapt their hands, some sang psalms; universally they all forgave and prayed for their enemies; no murmuring, no repining was ever heard amongst them. (8:669) To better understand Foxe’s focus on joy, renowned English scholar John R. Knott Jr. (1993, 1996) is a most helpful guide. He labels Foxe’s project as the “triumph of the victim” (1996, 722) because they endured great suffering joy­ fully and thus reversed the state’s intended rhetorical effect of the torture and execution. Instead of serving as a testament to the torments, the scaffold or fire became a symbol of the steadfastness of the martyrs’ faith and their more rational account of the scriptures which could lead to a saving grace. For Foxe’s account to succeed as rhetoric it must as Knott lays out, depict the

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horrors in some detail, focus on the joy felt by the martyrs, and portray them as ordinary people and not superheroes or saints, who could only withstand the worst torments through unworldly faith and heavenly grace. The fortitude of Foxe’s martyrs did not require the miraculous intervention by angels or the Holy Spirit as was common in earlier Catholic martyrdoms, but it was a faith that anyone present at the execution or any reader of the Actes and Monuments could call upon. Knott summarizes: “Foxe himself celebrates the ‘mild deaths of the [Protestant] saints’ (1:521), as he describes these deaths at one point, yet he presents the violence they suffer in detailed and realistic ways, keeping the reader’s gaze focused upon the actual scene of suffering and the disfiguring effects of the flames. . . . ​His task, as martyrologist, was to per­ suade his readers that his ‘saints’ did indeed die mildly, with spiritual rejoic­ ing, while experiencing horrific torments” (1996, 722). Witnesses of such incongruent “mild deaths” would likely be envious of such a life of faith and such a joyful death and could be persuaded that the martyrs were following the correct faith. This effect on witnesses to the exe­ cution and later readers is made even clearer in another influential martyrol­ ogy of the Reformation, Thieleman J. van Braght’s massive Martyrs Mirror (1660) that vividly documents the persecution of Anabaptists and others, and successfully employs many of the same rhetorical devices as Foxe’s Actes and Monuments. As Braght explains in his preface: “The tyrants found themselves deceived in their design; they thought they could cause these Christians to apostatize . . . ​on the contrary they, they raised up more opponents; for many of the spectators, at the said spectacle of killing people . . . ​who were thereby brought to reflection, and thus to investigation, and ultimately to conversion” (Myers 2009, 8). In an addition to Braght’s Martyrs Mirror, a burgrave (gov­ ernor) laments after witnessing 350 people rejoicing as they were burned, “What shall I do? The more I cause to be executed, the more they increase” (Myers 2009, 13). Thus, joyful martryrdoms serve in Braght’s words as “effec­ tual sermons” (Myers 2009, 15). For Foxe, the joyful martyrs are fully human, palpable. Small details, “de­ scribing details of clothing, gestures, and snatches of conversation with by­ standers” (Knott 1996, 726) humanize the martyrs. Knott provides several examples. Foxe “describes Cecily Ormes, identified as the wife of a weaver and daughter of a tailor, as grasping the stake in a symbolic gesture and declaring ‘Welcome the Cross of Christ,’ then finding her hand sooty and wiping it on her smock (8:427).” In his description of the execution of the impoverished fisherman Rawlins White, Foxe notes that after seeing his wife and children

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and approaching the stake, “he fell down upon his knees, and kissed the ground; and in rising again, a little earth sticking on his face, he said these words. ‘Earth unto earth, and dust unto dust; thou art my mother, and unto thee I shall return.’ ” After this very human act, White proves his resistance when set alight by enduring enormous pain and still shouting out in support of his faith. Foxe juxtaposes the gruesomeness with the proclamation of faith through his act of bathing his hands in the flames and his utterances: In which flame this good man bathed his hands so long, until such time as the sinews shrank, and the fat dropped away, saving that once he did, as it were, wipe his face with one of them. All this while, which was somewhat long, he cried with a loud voice, “O Lord, receive my spirit!” until he could not open his mouth. At last the extremity of the fire was so vehement against his legs that they were consumed almost before the rest of his body was hurt, which made the whole body fall over the chains into the fire sooner than it would have done. Thus died this good old man for his testimony of God’s truth, and is now re­ warded, no doubt, with the crown of eternal life. (Foxe 2011, 11:1502) Often such acts are accompanied by signs of great joy and astonishing feats of endurance. Robert Smith, though blackened by fire and apparently dead, “suddenly rose upright before the people, lifting the stumps of his arms, and clapping the same together, declaring a rejoicing heart” (7:367). Thomas Haukes, who told his friends beforehand to watch for a sign that he could keep his mind “quiet and patient” despite the pain, raised his burning hands over his head and clapped them three times “with great rejoicing, as it seemed” (7:115). Such gestures were taken as signaling the triumph of the spirit, yet this is never a disembodied spirit. For Foxe, the miracle is not the release from the body, but by finding “victory through the medium of the body instead of by some form of communion with the divine” (Knott 1996, 728).

Joy, the Battle for Affect, and Toleration Elaine Scarry famously claimed that torture and pain obliterate the subject and this is chillingly confirmed by Jean Améry (1980) based upon his per­ sonal experiences at the hand of the Nazis: “Frail in the face of violence, yell­ ing out in pain, awaiting no help, capable of no resistance, the tortured person

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is only a body, and nothing else beside that” (33). Knott though emphasizes how Foxe’s martyrs actually undergo subjectification (cf. Rancière 1999, dis­ cussed further in Chapter 7), whereby they gain their identity and voice during their execution. Their influence rises to such a point that they can call on the spectators to claim their identity and exercise their voice. Such mo­ ments of agency created fissures in the hegemonic discourse. The scaffold or the pyre which were intended to be definitive signs of state and religious au­ thority and to quash dissent, became breeding grounds for dissent and key battlefields for affect. Instead of serving to “authenticate in some sense the tortures that he had undergone” (Myers 2009, 13; Foucault 1979, 66), by evincing joy at the pyre, they called the symbolic realm into question. Instead of destroying the self, the burning provided the ultimate stage for evincing agency. This is a type of erotics in Audre Lorde’s sense. By being able to tran­ scend pain and remain bodily they are able to point to new possibilities that transcend the symbolic realm. The miraculous represented in very early Christian martyrologies does not invoke injustice in the same way nor does it point to a plausible way for addressing injustice. Foxe’s martyrs are patterning a perfected life, a life of faith and reason, a life of constancy and simplicity, a life of community. A life and death of joy. Foxe’s female martyrs deserve special mention. In addition to transgressing religious and political realms, they transgressed accepted gender norms. The many female martyrs evince an impressive agency that was not customarily accepted for women. They successfully debate priests and high political fig­ ures, resist all sorts of mental and physical violence, and act autonomously from their husbands. They exercised this agency despite mostly originating from poor uneducated backgrounds. A few were physically disabled such as Joan Waste who was sightless. Waste was martyred in 1566 partly because she had the Bible read to her by friends though it was not permitted to be read out loud. The women, as much of the men, serve as models for the Protestant community (Brietz Monta 2001) that everyone, whatever their background and abilities, can join and fully participate in. The Catholic interrogators on the other hand are those who denigrate and dismiss female martyrs, in some cases assuming they must have had sexual relations with ministers in order to have learned so much about the Bible (Brietz Monta 2001, 8–9). The w ­ ell-​ ­known martyr Anne Askew was arrested, interrogated and tortured and then released before being rearrested and ultimately burned at the stake. In the in­ terregnum she penned her famous account of the interrogations, which Foxe includes in his martyrology supplemented by accounts of her behavior at the

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scaffold. Askew was so firm in her faith that her constancy served as a role model for the three men who were burned next to her. Foxe concludes his account that she died “leaving behind her a singular example of Christian constancy for all men to follow” (8:209). Just as the scaffolds, in spite of the regime’s wishes, provided a forum for those with opposing religious and polit­ ical views, they became places for women to manifest a gendered subjectivity that would normally be denied them (Dolan 1994), though at a frightful price. Foxe’s Martyrs and Human Rights

Foxe’s martyrology by emphasizing the human, corporeal side of this pain, kept pain in the human realm. The battle for affect was a story about humanity and dignity and not about miracles or a detached spirituality. Foxe’s rhetorical affect was not only spiritual, but social and political and we should not see Reformation, ­Counter-​­Reformation, and Restoration battles writ large as only religious and apolitical. That they were eminently political is further evi­ denced by the fact that the martyrs were almost always brought up on charges of treason. The martyrs called into question the prevailing symbolic realm founded on the fusion of the royal sovereign and church and synecdochized, at least during the Marian period in the figure of Blood Bonner, who would attempt to destroy the victim and his or her counternarrative. Foxe famously described him as a demonic presence thus: This cannibal in three years space three hundred martyrs slew They were his food, he loved so blood, he spared none he knew. (Foxe 2011, xiii) Foxe, by presenting images of the victim and the evils of the oppressive regime with great effect is doing the work of a human rights activist, painting the martyrs as human rights victims and the regime as oppressive. He success­ fully painted the Catholic regime as lacking legitimacy and urged his readers to never forget the atrocities that he describes in gory detail. “Behold, here present before your eyes, the heaps of slain bodies, of so many men and women . . . ​whose wounds, yet bleeding before the face of God, cry ven­ geance!” (1:508). Foxe’s work mirrors that of contemporary activists where it has become commonplace that “gruesome images of suffering are mobilized to shock political systems into change, to incite civil intercessions, and to justify plangent demands for cosmopolitan sympathy, diplomatic attention, or military intervention” (L. Allen 2009, 163; Dawes 2007). Representations

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of victims’ bodies are often mobilized to tell the human rights story, and this strategy can be most effective when it is presented in juxtaposition to the joyful images of the living as we shall see below with the Middle Eastern mar­ tyrs. Moreover, the martyrs, like other examples discussed in this book, be­ came, against overwhelming odds, joyful ­rights-​­claimers. The martyrs can be seen as the first human rights victims, in that human rights are birthed at the time of their plight, with their plight prominent in the background. They are our first human rights workers and they are joyful not just in fact, but just as important in lore. This human rights activism eventually had the effect of altering execution procedures. Even “Bloody” Bonner seemed affected by the fear of public scorn that he endured upon executing the teenage boy Richard Mekins. His famous examination of Anne Askew a year later did not lead to her death, but to a reprieve, and in her brutal second examination, Bonner did not participate nor did the executioner who refused “to continue breaking this young, female prisoner’s body.” The task had to be carried out directly by the Privy Council. Braght’s martyrology of Anabaptists is replete with stories of altered execu­ tions. For instance, “a crippled man” requested his execution be held in public but “this request was refused. The sentence was carried out at midnight so no one could see” (Myers 2009, 11). In another instance many Anabaptists were planning to attend the execution of the young deaconess Lijsken, “but the crafty murderers had anticipated [them] . . . ​for they perpetrated their mur­ derous work between three and four o’clock . . . ​so that but few witnessed it” (Myers 2009, 11). Ultimately, these exceptions became the norm with “execu­ tions [relocated] from the public green to censored enclosures” (Conquer­ good 2002, 268). Joyful Martyrs and Toleration

Joyful martyrdoms also led to greatly increased religious toleration when the persecutors realized their efforts to display and reinforce their power were counterproductive. As joyful martyrdoms become the norm, and even desired by the persecuted, regimes found it more and more difficult to defend their practices, especially when the martyrdoms are well publicized. The enthusi­ asm for martyrdom on behalf of the martyrs and their followers in the English case was a major cause of the increased toleration at least for sects closely related to the Anglican church. As Grotius remarked, “it seems unjust to per­ secute with punishments those who received the law of Christ as true, but entertain doubts or errors on some external points” (Grotius 2001, 214).

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Recall that Shaftesbury wrote that when the Romans in the first centuries of Christianity and the English Catholics in the time of Queen Mary sought to silence religious enthusiasm through persecution it only strengthened the enthusiasm. Or as Father Tertullian in the second century famously wrote, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Thus, Shaftesbury held that executing the recent wave of French religious zealots would be doing them a favor to grant them the martyrdom that they were actively seeking. Instead Shaftesbury praised the raillery leveled against the zealots and other morally certain enthusiasts. The force of such ridicule transforms their willingness and joyfulness to die as inappropriate behavior, and the individuals are treated as affective deviants. As one commentator wrote, “The Anabaptists were so will­ ing to suffer that martyrs from other faith traditions began to denounce them as masochistic and suicidal” (Byman 1978, 628). Here too, we see the con­ struction of a pleasure principle that staves off particular types of transgres­ sion. The Protestant martyrs in England suffer in the appropriate way, but others do not. Thoughtful and steadfast martyrs will be respected because they are acting according to their individual conscience while enthusiastic martyrs who experience too much joy or inappropriate joy will be subject to even more marginalization. Foxe’s martyrology with its social construction of Protestant martyrs trav­ eled and its meaning transmuted. It has had effects beyond the immediate political realities as it served as a powerful example for resisting other seem­ ingly oppressive regimes, just as images of later human rights martyrdoms like that of Quảng Đức or the “Tank Man” outside of Tiananmen Square in 1989 served as rallying cries for numerous other activists. Foxe’s and Braght’s work created a rupture, a dehiscence of the symbolic realm. But as such, the marty­ rologists could not control or even predict how they would be used in the future. Foxe had approvingly cited Hugh Latimer’s famous words as he was set alight: “We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out” (Foxe 7:550). But what that candle and its flame will come to mean is very much in play and not in Foxe’s control. The martyr­ dom as a transgression of the social realm is no longer bound by its limits and can be manipulated into social constructions far removed from their original intention. Foxe would most likely welcome the ­centuries-​­long hatred of Ca­ tholicism that resulted in England, in large part, from his work. And, as a surprising critic of the death penalty Foxe would also have welcomed the changes in execution procedures. But Foxe would be surprised to find that his martyrology was wielded by

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all sorts of religious sects including those opposed to his beloved Anglican church. Weimer (2011), for instance, shows how Foxe’s work and other such narratives helped fuel the vengeance in good conscience among the formerly persecuted English settlers in North America during King Philip’s War from 1675 to 1678 in the English Massachusetts Bay Colonies. The heightened sense of being persecuted allowed colonists to avoid responsibility for aggres­ sion against Algonquian tribes in future conflicts. Foxe’s martyrology in fact was used as justification both by the violent White settlers and those settlers who defended the Algonquians. Each group found its identity in the role of martyrs for what they saw as the true church.

Recent Martyrdoms in the Middle East Contemporary martyrdoms are often mistakenly considered a mostly Middle Eastern and religious phenomenon, as several studies have shown that mar­ tyrdoms take place around the globe and for a variety of causes including secular ones. The majority of martyrdom attacks, at least from 1981 to 2003, were orchestrated by secular organizations with the country experiencing the most attacks being Sri Lanka (Gambetta 2005). Nonetheless, the martyrdoms in the Middle East are the most studied and have grown exponentially in the past fifteen years especially in Iraq and now Syria. Indeed, one study showed that suicide attacks increased “from about ten in 1997 to nearly 300 in 2005 and in 2006” (Moskalenko and McCauley 2012, 507). And yet, many of these martyrdoms were wholly secular including those of Bouazizi and Saeed dis­ cussed below. As suicide martyrdom has expanded its scope and reach in the past two decades, so too have the journalistic and academic studies on the topic. So many martyrs to analyze in so many countries, but ultimately so few to interview. Needless to say, labeling someone a martyr or terrorist is a fraught enterprise, and of course, one person’s martyr is often another’s ter­ rorist and yet another’s saint. Here, I’ll focus on the martyrdoms in Egypt and Tunisia that helped spawn the Arab Spring and the suicide bombers from Palestine. Two Happy Young Men Martyred by the State

Mohamed Bouazizi and Khaled Saeed are unlikely martyrs who would never have imagined that their deaths would spur social movements that dramati­ cally altered Middle Eastern politics. Bouazizi was a Tunisian street peddler

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who sold fruits and vegetables in a poor rural town known for its corruption. With his meager earnings he supported several members of his family in spite of frequent police harassment with shakedowns for bribes. On December 17, 2010, he was harassed by an especially troublesome local government official who had her aides confiscate Bouazizi’s scales and upset his cart. It was also alleged that he was spat upon, slapped, and cursed at. Bouazizi hurried to the governor’s office to complain, but when the governor refused to see him, he bought a can of gasoline and ran into the middle of the street shouting “How do you expect me to make a living?” and set himself on fire. Despite suffering burns over 90 percent of his body, he survived in a hospital for eighteen days, though he never regained consciousness. His ­self-​­immolation and death led to ­large-​­scale protests throughout the country with President ­Ben-​­Ali resign­ ing and fleeing the country only ­twenty-​­eight days after the s­ elf-​­immolation. Bouazizi has since been memorialized in a number of ways and copycat ­self-​ i­ mmolations occurred in Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, and Europe. Khaled Saeed was a ­twenty-​­­eight-​­­year-​­old Egyptian who had briefly stud­ ied computer programming in the US and was also a musician. On June 6, 2010, he was yanked out of an internet café in Alexandria by local police offi­ cers, dragged to a nearby doorway, and beaten to death. Though doctors ar­ rived at the scene to treat Saeed, the police continued the beating until he died. The original official investigation exonerated the police officers and claimed that Saeed was involved in several illegal activities. It later was claimed that Saeed had been targeted for posting a video on the internet that showed local police consorting with known drug cartel members. Ultimately, the po­ lice officers were found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. The photos of Saeed’s disfigured face and head were posted on several internet sites and went viral. An Arabic language Facebook page Kuluna Khaled Saeed (“We are all Khaled Saeed”) was created by Google executive Wael Ghonim and Abdel Rahman Mansour, where Egyptians and others gathered virtually to celebrate his life and memorialize his death. The Facebook page became the breeding ground for the first protests in Tahrir Square that ultimately led to regime change in Egypt. Tragically, the behavior of the local authorities in both contexts were not unusual. Both Tunisia and Egypt were ruled for years by corrupt and author­ itarian regimes. While Bouazizi’s ­self-​­immolation was unusual, it was not un­ precedented with a number of ­self-​­immolations occurring in Tunisia in the months leading to his action (Saidani 2012). And both the Egyptian and Tu­ nisian governments responded to the ensuing outbursts of protest through a

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tragically familiar pattern of crackdowns, arrests, and increased repression. A confluence of events, good timing, and the availability and smart use of social media, unexpectedly made these men into martyrs that shone a brighter light on immense poverty, social stagnation, and corruption. The incidents fueled already brewing social unrest and the mythologizing of their lives and deaths played a major role in the Arab Spring. As Buckner and Khatib (2014) write, “The Arab Spring martyr is a needless victim” whose death comes to symbol­ ize the structural violence of the oppressive regimes. The images of the two martyrs deserve more attention. While the initial photos of Saeed were of his badly disfigured corpse in a morgue, eerily similar to the photo of Emmett Till that ran in Jet magazine in 1955, it was quickly supplanted by a passport photo of Saeed as a smiling young man. It has been described as “a portrait of Saeed gazing out at the viewer with a gentle smile” (Halverson, Ruston, and Trethewey 2013, 319). It was this smiling image that was held aloft in protests in Egypt and elsewhere, often with memorial writ­ ings proclaiming his sacred life. If the morgue photo was used it was almost always paired with the earlier photo with the “gentle smile” as if to symbolize the regime’s squashing of an innocent young man’s joy. “This is strikingly sim­ ilar to the case in Tunisia, where an image of a happy Bouazizi was used in­ stead of the images showing him in flames or lying bandaged in his hospital bed” (Halverson, Ruston, and Trethewey 2013, 320). Each of the martyrs’ lives were purified to mesh with the predominant theme of an oppressive regime destroying a generally happy young man. Bouazizi’s mother claimed, “Not a single person hated him . . . ​he did not have a single fault or bad behavior. He had ambitions that he never achieved. He wanted to get married and have some money to take care of his mother and family” (Halverson, Ruston, and Trethewey 2013, 316). Though struggling to make ends meet, Bouazizi was also apparently known for giving fruit and vegetables off his cart to the poor. Saeed was portrayed as an ­anti-​­government activist for intending to post a video documenting police corruption, and yet, there remain serious doubts whether that story is true. More intimate por­ traits of Saeed by those who knew him reveal him to be a disenchanted young man who turned to drug use, partying, and dreams of emigrating to New York City. And it may very well be that he was set up that night in a drug sting (see Ali 2012). Moreover, the hegemonic image of Khaled Saeed (whose names translates as “eternally happy”) with his “gentle smile” belies the fact; though “he often made people happy . . . ​it was questionable whether he himself was ever happy” (Ali 2012).

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As the protests spread, the details of Bouazizi’s and Saeed’s lives took on a secondary importance. Their stories became a part of a narrative created by spectators, mostly those in the West, which culminated in the mostly peaceful protests in Tahrir Square and the regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt (Bady 2012). However, by tying the martyrdoms to this narrative of peaceful regime change, a range of possibilities originally opened up by the martyrdoms were closed off, such as widespread ­anti-​­corruption initiatives, more radical forms of protest, and structural (mostly economic) changes.1 Both narratives could have been read as examples of the disillusionment of young people across a wide swath of the globe unable to make a living and have a better future but this would have called for the privileging of both economic and political reforms. Ali (2012) rightfully asks about the others in Egypt who also suffer police harassment and brutality and endure economic uncertainty: would a Copt have become a martyr, or a woman, or someone from the rural areas? “When you add it all up, there are many ‘Khaled Saeeds’ out there on standby who we may never, and we don’t, hear about” because they do not fit “the template of what a good martyr should be and look like.” Similarly, Bady (2012) writes, “while Tahrir literally means ‘liberation’ in Ar­ abic, the example of Tahrir Square has come to name (and constrain) a very specific and limited form of appropriate liberation” (139). Once again, the social construction helps create an ideal type of martyrdoms and what an appropriate protest should be. However, this social construction remains very much in flux. With so many critical details about their lives and deaths in flux, their meanings were wide open to be used in the revolution and even by the gov­ ernment, albeit clumsily with the Mubarak regime trying to brand Saeed as the “marijuana martyr.” The dreams of the revolutionaries and the meanings of the martyrdoms are very much still in play, even as their original actions are often overwhelmed by the continually evolving tumultuous political events. Boualem Sansal penned his poignant “An Open Letter to Mohamed Bouazizi” that includes the paragraph: “Dear Mohamed, if you can come back, tell them you didn’t set yourself on fire for this, tell them you wanted the dictatorship and its shadows, all its shadows, the straitjackets of clannishness and nepotism, the racism of the State and ­anti-​­Semitism as the only way of looking at the world, Islamism or exile as the only ­hopes—​­that you wanted all these fatal things swept from our path to make way for a life that is clean, peaceful, warm, and friendly” (Sansal 2011).

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Suicide Bombers in Palestine

Perhaps no group of martyrs has ever been studied as extensively as those in Palestine especially since 2000. Martyr (­al-​­shahid) has a very broad meaning in Palestine to embrace anyone who has lost their life as a result of the Israeli occupation, but most attention has been given to the suicide bombers that grew exponentially during the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005. They em­ ployed increasingly brazen attacks on civilians in Israel and were perpetrated by men, women, and children. These included, among many others, the mas­ sacre at a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem that killed fifteen civilians, the bomb­ ing at the Restaurant Maxim in Haifa that killed t­ wenty-​­one, the bombing on a Haifa bus that killed sixteen, a bombing in a dance club frequented by high school students that killed ­twenty-​­one, and a bombing at the Park Hotel during a Passover ceremony that killed thirty. With 9/11, the bloody occupa­ tion of Iraq, and the recent wave of bloody attacks in Israel as a backdrop, scholars, journalists, and policy analysts have sought with understandable urgency to explain the motives and psychological makeup of those carrying out such attacks. What has been found is that martyrs defy easy categorization, with very few demographic or social variables strongly associated with the suicidal at­ tacks.2 The bombers represent a broad swath of Palestinian society from suc­ cessful businessmen to college students to the very poor in refugee camps. Analysts who try to make sense of suicide missions often try to blame indi­ vidual pathologies, but the perpetrators tend to not be psychologically unsta­ ble (Atran 2003). Indeed, it appears that Hamas and other groups filter out those with psychological issues for several reasons. Their motivations are also quite mixed (e.g., Asad 2007). Some suicide bombers are seeking revenge for the deaths of kin and close friends at the hands of the Israelis. Some see sui­ cide bombing as a logical tactic of war to counter the asymmetrical military balance with Israel (Greenberg 2002). For instance, a former supporter of the peace process who turned to planning suicide attacks claimed that “killing more people” would “pressur[e] the Israelis to take to the streets to demand a withdrawal” from Palestinian territories (Greenberg 2002, A24). Some are driven by promises of paradise in the afterlife for martyrs, or for fame, re­ wards that are famously trumpeted by several Palestinian organizations. For instance, Hezbollah takes steps so that the perpetrators “are remembered and revered by the community. Posters are put up and streets are renamed after those have been martyred. ‘Martyrdom’ videos are made and aired on news

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channels and the internet” (Moskalenko and McCauley 2012, 506). Some ap­ pear to be adventure seekers who want to be involved in a cause bigger than themselves while for others the decision to volunteer “is often triggered by mundane reasons, such as proving one’s manhood, retaliation at an uncom­ promising father, search for excitement or ways to relieve boredom” (Berko and Erez 2005, 616).3 Media accounts are more likely to treat female martyrs (shahida) as driven by “emotional baggage” from disgracing their family or their religion, from being divorced or not producing children, or drawn to the act by a love interest. Careful analysis though shows that they are usually just as driven by ideological, political, and strategic reasons as their male counter­ parts (Toles Patkin 2004). If there is one trait shared by many suicide bombers, and not discussed at length in the literature, it is the holding of stereotypical views of Israelis and the lack of understanding of the complex political context. Many bombers believe that their actions will mean more to the seemingly intractable political and military situation than they actually will.4 A study of seven failed Pales­ tinian suicide bombers found they have precious little contact with Israelis before their actions. One woman commented, “I thought that all Israelis are soldiers shouting and yelling at Palestinians in checkpoints. Meeting here other [Israeli] prisoners and staff, I see we have a lot in common; we have the same life problems” (Berko and Erez 2005, 610). This type of certainty is not surprising because of the difficulty in carrying out such acts. Feelings of uncertainty can lead to aborting a mission. One fe­ male suicide bomber had second thoughts when arriving at the target zone: “I saw a woman with a little boy in the carriage, I thought, why do I have to do it to this woman and her boy. The boy was cute and I thought about my nephews. I looked up to heaven and I thought about God. Something from inside told ­me—​­No, you should not do that” (Berko and Erez 2005, 615; cf. the descrip­ tion of Tauriya Hamamra’s aborted mission in Toles Patkin 2004, 84). A common thread in the analyses is a description of joy at some point in the narrative. Deciding upon this course of action was described by a failed bomber as “the happiest day of my life” and a female suicide bomber said, “It was wonderful to say ­good-​­bye to life, I felt I was in the clouds from the mo­ ment I knew I was going to be a shahida” (Berko and Erez 2005, 614). This feeling is reflected in numerous witnesses testifying that many suicide bomb­ ers apparently manifest the bassamat ­al-​­farah, or “smile of joy,” right before they detonate the explosives. However, such ascription of joy is a fraught enterprise.

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The Perils of Ascribing Joy In everyday life, it is essential to correctly ascribe emotions to others because they serve, at root, as forms of communication and to build social connec­ tions. The fact that some emotions have been shown to be close to universal does provide some hope that we can ascribe emotions accurately, even more so among people who share common backgrounds. However, we know that some people are skilled at hiding or masquerading their emotions and we can be deceived, sometimes deliberately, by another’s emotions. And a quick tour of several psychological literatures shows that, while we are constantly judging others’ happiness, we frequently ascribe it incorrectly. In the most researched area of affective forecasting, judging the quality of ­ on-​­disabled life of others especially of people with disabilities, we find that n people consistently offer significantly lower estimates of quality of life for peo­ ple with disabilities (see Gill 1999). Even medical professionals who regularly work with people with disabilities incorrectly ascribe their subjective quality of life, often doing so even worse than the general population. Not surpris­ ingly, these findings have caused a great deal of debate among disability rights advocates and bioethicists as well as criticisms of those who have casually equated having a disability with “abject misery” (see Sen 1973, 16–17, in Amundson 2010, 377). Of course, such ascriptions of quality of life have very real world consequences in policies, attitudes, and behaviors.5 The related field of affective forecasting shows that we even incorrectly gauge our own emotions. Errors in affective forecasting have been found in all sorts of contexts such as in relation to spending time with nature, upcom­ ing holidays, the results of a future presidential election, and the success of a favorite sports team. We usually overestimate the strength of our emotions, especially in predicting future negative events (Norris, Dumville, and Lacey 2011, 235). Third, there is a large sociological literature on strategic affective displays through emotional regulation or management such as Arlie Hochschild’s seminal work on emotional labor. Hochschild (1983) argues that it is usually women who work in occupations where happiness is produced as a commod­ ity and the real emotions of workers are estranged. The purpose of emotional labor is to produce an affect and transmit it to the customers/clients despite how the worker is feeling on a given day. At a deeper level, post Marx and Freud, we find that we are not good

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judges of our own happiness, even before we consider such affective forecast­ ing. We may buy in to various hegemonic projects, the discourse of the father, the symbolic realm, and various other opiates. Taken to a possible logical conclusion, such a theoretical framework would call into question the quality of life forecasting and related literatures just discussed as we could be skeptical of anyone’s claim to subjective ­well-​­being. The foregoing suggests that we should be very reluctant to ascribe joy and happiness to other individuals and instead we should ask more fundamental questions such as who is ascribing the joy and for what purpose? In the context of martyrdoms, ascribing joy to someone, such as noting the smile of joy before detonating a suicide bomb, could serve to mark them as an affective deviant or what Ahmed (2010) calls an affect alien, to distin­ guish ourselves from them thus solidifying our normalized identity. Labeling someone an affective deviant marks them as Other, as beneath humanity and thus beneath our sympathy. It also immunizes ourselves from being affected in a radical way by their actions. We can continue to judge their actions and our own in good conscience without radically questioning our judgments or our positionality. Something like this process of ascribing joy and the judgment of affective deviants is likely behind the wealth of headlines and news stories highlighting the joy of suicide bombers and tying that joy to deceit and deception. For instance, the actions of Restaurant Maxim bomber Hanadi Jaradat, discussed in greater detail below, are described in a New York Times headline as “Bomber Left Her Family with a Smile and a Lie” (October 7, 2003). And there seems to be a fetishization of the “smile of joy” and how it is a type of deception: “The suicide bomber arrives at the scene disguised, seemingly an everyday pedes­ trian, with the explosive material hidden under clothes; the purpose too is disguised, and the ­about-​­­to-​­­be-​­victim has no chance to see through the du­ plicity involved. The bomber smiles the ‘smile of joy,’ bassamat ­al-​­Farah, said to symbolize the joy of martyrdom” (Battin 2004, 31). Duplicity also seems to be a factor in the overemphasis in media and academic accounts on female suicide bombers. “When the first few female suicide bombers acted, the sense of duplicity was underscored: no one on the target side had expected women to play such roles” (Battin 2005, 243). Indeed, female suicide bombers have befuddled scholars. Unable to rely on common tropes, they often turn to per­ sonal causes. “After Idris’s suicide attack, Western media focused on the fact that Idris was infertile and had allowed her husband to marry another woman, watching him live nearby as he became a father. It was claimed that she was

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unhappy and, as she could not bear children, that her life was unworthy to her” (Naaman 2007, 936; cf. Banner 2016).

Martyrdoms as Jouissance; Martyrologies as Abject: Hanadi Jaradat and Palestinian Mothers In Lacanian terms, martyrdoms are a type of jouissance. They potentially de­ construct the symbolic realm by doing something unexpected, something that is not sanctioned by the prevailing pleasure principle. With the martyr­ doms of Mohamed Bouazizi and Khaled Saaed the unleashing of feelings in the revolutionary fervor was aleatory. This jouissance was painful as new norms were created, discarded, revised, and ­re-​­created sometimes in violent ways. In this case especially in Egypt, the new symbolic realm in many ways resembles the old symbolic realm with little structural change. Those who were abject remain abject. In the battle over the social meaning of martyrdoms, an especially effec­ tive weapon to rein in the ensuing impacts is to brand the martyr as an affec­ tive deviant. Recent psychological studies show that subjects “preferred greater social distance from affective deviants, reported more moral outrage in response to them, and inferred that these targets did not share their moral values” (Szczurek, Monin, and Gross 2012, 1105). Of course, this plays out in a number of courtroom settings where jurors are swayed by whether the de­ fendant is showing the proper emotion (cf. Reinert 2013; Camus 1989). This is why martyrologies are potentially subversive and prone to censorship. Mar­ tyrologies usually praise the martyr and their joy, serving as a ­near-​­permanent record claiming that the martyr was not an affective deviant. When memori­ alized, the abject remains always present challenging the symbolic realm. Thus, martyrologies cannot be neutral. Even a simple recounting of the events (if one could be written) would not be neutral. Not only is editorship a polit­ ical task in choosing who is represented and what part of their story is in­ cluded, but just the mere mention of some individuals is highly controversial. By representing martyrs, especially when they are portrayed as joyful, smiling, or even just “normal” an author is accentuating the abject, the ones who many believe have no place in representation, the ones who are excess to the sym­ bolic realm. Their very presence challenges the assumptive worlds of the privileged. Even an artwork that suggests the martyr’s actions are morally ambiguous

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would be repulsive to one invested in the symbolic realm. There can be no neutrality about someone like Hanadi Jaradat. The Restaurant Maxim bomb­ ing in Haifa that she carried out in 2003 resulted in t­ wenty-​­one deaths includ­ ing four children and the injuring of fi ­ fty-​­one others. Jaradat was a law student at the time, who was nearing graduation. Her younger brother had recently been killed by Israeli forces in her presence and her cousin and fiancé had also been killed by the IDF. In response to her suicide bombing Israeli forces con­ ducted a raid into Jenin and destroyed her family’s home. Palestinians de­ clared her a martyr and a bride of Palestine. She was feted with several major honors for her action and in the year following her bombing she was at the center of a controversial art installation. Snow White and the Madness of Truth created by Dror Feiler, an ­Israeli-​ ­born but now Swedish composer, and his artist wife Gunilla ­Sköld-​­Feiler is an art installation that was shown in the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm in 2004. The piece consisted of a shallow rectangular pool of ­blood-​­colored water with a small toy boat named Snow White floating in the middle that held a smiling portrait of Hanadi Jaradat, the perpetrator of the Restaurant Maxim suicide bombing. The exhibit was housed in a room that contained various texts on the walls with Bach’s “My Heart Swims in Blood” playing in the background. While the meaning of the installation by itself was ambiguous and clearly calls for reflection about tolerance, motivations, terror, and disillusionment, with the artists claiming that it shows “how weak people left alone can be capable of horrible things” (Ebony 2004, 33), the exhibit was accompanied by extremely controversial posters displayed in Stockholm with Jaradat’s smiling picture and the phrase “Making Differences.” When the Israeli ambassador to Sweden Zvi Mazel visited the museum he went berserk and attempted to damage the installation by throwing light stands into the ­blood-​­colored water. He did not see any nuances in the exhibit, proclaiming that “this is not a work of art. This is an expression of hatred for the Israeli people. This has glorified suicide bombers” (Myre 2004, 10). One would imagine that any exhibit featuring Jaradat’s smiling portrait would have caused a similarly violent reaction from the ambassador and many others. Not only was she an affective deviant, being a smiling female suicide bomber, she was abject, outside of the norms of law and decency, and thus not worthy of being portrayed in any form. She is what Lacan labeled the objet petit a, the abject of the symbolic realm.6 The abject is the waste, the filth, the excrement. It is the part of the self or the society which is cast off, because it does not fit with the conceptions of our world and ourselves.

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Figure 7. Snow White and the Madness of Truth. Art installation by Dror Feiler and Gunilla Sköld-Feiler depicting Palestinian suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, on display in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2004. The work was famously vandalized by the Israeli ambassador to Sweden. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow _White_and_The_Madness_of_Truth#/media/File:Snovit_och_sanningens _vansinne.jpg. Photo by Fabian Norlin.

Jaradat’s tragic backstory, religious beliefs, success as a student, and strong family ties could not tip the scales to where she should be listened to. Indeed, the Palestinians’ effusive praise for her actions surely further dehumanized them in Israeli opinion as did her family’s pride. Her brother claimed that “it is like her wedding today, the happiest day for her” (Toles Patkin 2004, 83). Her father elaborated: “My daughter’s action reflected the anger that every Pales­ tinian feels at the occupation. The occupation did not have mercy on my son Fadi, her brother. They killed him even though he was not a wanted person, they murdered him in cold blood before Hanadi’s eyes. . . . ​I will accept only congratulations for what she did. This was a gift she gave me, the homeland and

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the Palestinian people. Therefore, I am not crying for her. Even though the most precious thing has been taken from me” (­Levy-​­Barzilai 2003). The reaction of Hanadi Jaradat’s father is seemingly mirrored in the reac­ tions of Palestinian mothers of suicide bombers, at least those extensively por­ trayed in the media. Videos of the mothers often showed them expressing great joy at the loss of their sons or daughters, dancing and ululating loudly. These images of affective deviance reinforce preexisting (especially Israeli) concep­ tions of Palestinian women as “unfit mothers.” And since the rejoicing also re­ inforces the political imaginary created by Palestinian organizations of willing martyrs, it has rarely been called into question. Few have asked the mothers about their reactions. ­Shalhoub-​­Kevorkian (2003), though, worked with ten Palestinian mothers using group voice therapy to address their trauma and she found that both sides were wrongfully ascribing joy to the mothers. The moth­ ers, in their time of grief, found themselves bound by the expectations of the patriarchal system of their communities and the pressures of Palestinian leaders to adopt the appropriate countenance especially for the media. S­halhoub-​ ­Kevorkian (2003) by working with the women for months found that the women and their family members “felt the need to share their pain, loss, and trauma rather than ‘their happiness’ as portrayed in some of the media cover­ age” (396). The most poignant account is of a woman who still felt a great deal of pride about her son’s recent martyrdom. The other mothers in the group looked at each other thinking that reality has just not sunk in yet. After school started in the fall, the mother said: “I couldn’t sleep the past month; I always wanted him to graduate from school. Today I went to the grave and screamed at him, and cursed all leadership. I told him, Get up, son! (Kum Yamma), don’t stay beneath the earth, get up. . . . ​I prepared your schoolbag . . . ​all the kids went to school and you are lying here, get up! I don’t want a son who is a hero. . . . ​I want my son back. . . . ​He is my son. . . . ​I want him back” (­Shalhoub-​ ­Kevorkian 2003, 397). The mothers ultimately vocalized anger at the Palestinian leaders and the need to express joy despite their great loss. “They want to im­ pose rules even on our tears . . . ​it seems that their control over our lives, mar­ riage, and destiny is not enough for them” (­Shalhoub-​­Kevorkian 2003, 400).

Concluding Thoughts The socially constructed martyrdoms of Mohamed Bouazizi and Khaled Saeed have had great success in transmitting affect, and some argue that they

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have forever “changed the order of the sensible’ ” (Bady 2012, 137; citing Moosa 2011, 171). Ultimately, though the martyrdoms might have very little impact on those they might have advocated for. The new symbolic realm might not be far removed from the old symbolic realm though these are still very much in play. In the case of the Palestinian suicide bombers, their martyrdoms have further reinforced stereotypes of Palestinians as unfit citizens and unfit moth­ ers thus further reinforcing the need to occupy and discipline the region and its inhabitants. The smile of joy and the portraits of a smiling Hanadi Jaradat have only reinforced beliefs in psychopathology or affective deviance. Despite strong evidence that suicide bombers do not, for the most part, suffer from mental disorders, the stereotype of the suicide bomber as psychotic still holds among the media, policy analysts, and many academics. Though there have been some attempts to paint Middle Eastern martyrs as miraculous, this has not been the dominant trope. Theirs is not viewed as a transcendent joy. Being an affective deviant is a risky political move, too much of a deviant and you lose political rhetoric points. The suicide bombers with their smile of joy and the Palestinian mothers by not crying in public made them seem less than human, while it could be argued that the joy of the English martyrs on the scaffold made them seem almost more than human. However, once branded as an affective deviant basically as subhuman, there is little attempt to better understand their motives or patiently listen to their rights claiming (cf. the discussion of cauterization in Simmons 2011). For instance, while there is evidence that the joys of the mothers are incorrect ascriptions, their effect of reinforcing the dominant narratives about Palestinian mothers does not encourage exploration into how these narratives might be incorrect and what structural violence undergirds these actions. In considering why the early modern martyrs and the martyrology of John Foxe and others were successful while those in the Middle East have not had such an effect to date, we must remember that the martyrdoms in the Refor­ mation and ­Counter-​­Reformation lasted for hundreds of years and came at the end of centuries of religious warfare. Their most important impact was the adoption of a near universal belief in religious toleration and yet even here, many of the martyrs would not have embraced the expansive tolerance that won the day. The meanings of their martyrdoms as socially constructed re­ main contested.

CHAPTER 7

Human Rights Winners

The journey of healing is to move from being a victim to a survivor to a victor, to take back agency. —​­Father Michael Lapsley The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. —​­Gandhi

Preface: Jacques Lusseyran: Lightness, Joy, and Buchenwald Jacques Lusseyran is shockingly little known among ­post-​­Holocaust writers. While the works of Elie Wiesel, Viktor Frankl, Primo Levi, Gerda Weissmann Klein, and Jerzy Kosiński are routinely read and taught even at the middle and high school levels, Lusseyran has been almost completely neglected. This ne­ glect most likely stems from his diverging sharply from the accepted Holo­ caust etiquette as delineated by Des Pres (1988) (as well as his unorthodox spirituality that echoes theosophical principles). While most ­well-​­accepted accounts amount to heroic struggles to make sense of the Holocaust, Lussey­ ran almost miraculously was able to experience lightness during the Holo­ caust. Further, it was not the defining moment of his life: though the Holocaust tested him and almost killed him, it did not define him. Indeed, Lusseyran’s ­book-​­length biographical account up to age t­ wenty-​­one includes only a cou­ ple of relatively brief chapters detailing his fifteen months in Buchenwald. The pivotal moment in Lusseyran’s life, instead, came at age eight when his idyllic childhood was upset by a fluke accident at school leaving him

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permanently sightless. After several days of struggling to navigate the world in his old fashion, Lusseyran had an epiphany. “At this point some ­instinct—​­I was almost about to say a hand laid on ­me—​­made me change course. I began to look more closely, not at things but a world closer to myself, looking from an inner place to one further within, instead of clinging to the movement of sight ­toward the world outside. . . . ​I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place I knew nothing about, a place which might as well have been outside me as within” (Lusseyran 1998, 16). In this epiphany he saw a light unlike any other he had witnessed. It was an inner light that illuminated the world in ways he could not imagine. This light was a blinding bedazzlement that was “so continuous and so intense [it] was so far beyond my comprehension that I sometimes doubted it” (1998, 18). This light became his constant companion and was a source of great joy. “I found light and joy at the same moment and I can say without hesitation that from that time on, light and joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together” (1998, 17). His inner light, the “radi­ ance emanating from a place I knew nothing about” guided him. Lusseyran soon found that this inner light would be extinguished when he felt fear, but would shine brightest when he turned off his intentionality. Like a bat, he could feel the pressure of objects in a room and was able to navigate, but only when he was freed of his ego and its intentionality. “I had to let the trees come ­toward me, and not allow the slightest inclination to move ­toward them” (1998, 32). When he let negative emotions, such as anxiety, anger, or impa­ tience, overtake him, his inner light would fade. He found he had no choice but to focus on positive emotions about his condition and about others. The light beyond comprehension not only provided Lusseyran with a way to see, but it served as his moral compass. “Armed with such a tool, why should I need a moral code?” (Lusseyran 1998, 21). Lusseyran’s moral code consisted of finding himself through losing himself, by trusting his inner light, and by letting be, what he often called love. His life became an affirmation of Martin Buber’s call to live as one with a sacred world and with others in an ­I-​­Thou relationship. “When I was playing with my small companions, if I suddenly grew anxious to win, to be first at all costs, then all at once I could see nothing. Literally I went into fog or smoke. I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes. . . . ​ But when I was happy and serene, approaching people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light” (Lusseyran 1998, 20). Lusseyran’s parents, ignoring the experts’ advice, eschewed schools for the

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sightless, keeping him in regular schools and maintaining as normal a child­ hood as possible. Lusseyran’s childhood lessons are drawn from this mixture of exposure and humility. His parents were willing to expose him to the bumps and bruises of a normal childhood, and they were willing to believe that he was discovering a different reality. Lusseyran’s openness starkly con­ trasted with another boy who had lost his sight in similar circumstances but had been sheltered by his parents. “Today I have few memories as painful. This boy terrified me. He was the living image of everything that might have happened to me if I had not been fortunate, more fortunate than he” (1998, 31). Instead of being open to a new way of seeing, encouraging Lusseyran’s worldly and spiritual exploration with his new condition, the other boy’s par­ ents “cut him off from everything, and made fun of his attempts to explain what he felt” (1998, 31). Lusseyran’s parents, on the other hand, realized that the world consisted of more than objects that were useful. The other boy suf­ fered greatly, “He had thrown himself into brutal solitude.” “He was r­eally blind. He had seen nothing since his accident” (1998, 31). Lusseyran preached to sighted people to imagine that their world was not the only one. “Blindness is an obstacle, but only becomes a misery if folly is added” (1998, 30). Lusseyran proved to be an excellent student and became fluent in German in order to understand radio broadcasts about the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, what he called a “second blindness” (Lusseyran 2006, 34). In opposition to this second blindness he discovered a second light, that of human rights, “that freedom was the light of the soul” (Lusseyran 2006, 35). In human rights he would find his duty to work tirelessly for others. “No one has the right to in­ terfere with the free will of men or with their s­ elf-​­respect. No one has the right to murder in the name of an ­idea—​­still less in the name of an insane idea. Reminding myself unceasingly that freedom existed, and consequently re­ minding all those I met, had become for me the same unquestionable duty as keeping alive the light behind my closed eyes” (Lusseyran 2006, 35). Living in Paris as a high school student in 1940, Lusseyran sought to join the Resistance but felt he would be rebuffed, so he formed his own student resistance movement called the Volunteers of Liberty that quickly blossomed to 600 students. They were then welcomed by the Défense de la France, and he was responsible for distributing an underground newspaper which grew to a circulation of more than 250,000. Like others in the French Resistance such as ­Jean-​­Paul Sartre and Albert Camus or those in other resistance movements, Lusseyran and his friends felt, or more accurately smelled, freedom and joy in the midst of this great risk. “The air was different where my friends were.

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There you could smell joy. Even when they were sad and talking about their own death, the smell of their talk was good and gave you a lift” (1998, 238). Lusseyran insisted on interviewing all new recruits as he could sense their presence and have a sense of their essence. Eventually though, his student group was betrayed, and Lusseyran and his comrades were arrested. He was subject to brutal interrogation for more than f­ orty-​­five days and imprisoned in Paris for six months. But here he found that his inner light served as a ref­ uge that allowed him to transcend the interrogation in ways similar to that of John Foxe’s martyrs discussed in Chapter 6 and the Guantánamo detainees who tapped into an inner erotics in Chapter 4. “I forgot everything except what I found in the depths of my being, in the innermost sanctum of my inner world, in the place which, thanks to blindness, I had learned to frequent, and where there is absolutely nothing but pure light” (Lusseyran 1998, 251). Lusseyran was then shipped to Buchenwald where he would spend the last fifteen months of the war. The odds against his survival were staggering, on his transport of about two thousand, only about thirty survived. His survival is inexplicable, as he says, “My t­wenty-​­nine comrades cannot explain it any better than I can” (Lusseyran 2006, 39). His autobiography does not provide a ­blow-​­­by-​­blow account of the camp. Instead, he described it simply as a “record of one handicapped man, a blind man, and how he managed to live through it” (Lusseyran 1998, 273). His ac­ count of the cold and the random violence are told in almost methodical fashion evincing almost a banality felt at the experience of evil. Lusseyran was spared hard labor due to his “disability” but still suffered greatly. He was as­ signed to the invalids’ barracks which was built to hold 300 men, but held 1500 with great deprivations: “No one at the Invalids’ was whole, since that was the condition of entrance. As a result people were dying there at a pace which made it impossible to make any count of the block. It was a greater surprise to fall over the living than the dead. And it was from the living that danger came” (Lusseyran 1998, 279). These conditions were his reality, and at the same time they were not. His phenomenal story is not the story of his body, but of his inner light, which allowed him to transcend his conditions. Again, Lusseyran was mostly able to fight against negative emotions or any emotions that took away energy from the present moment, including those of hope and memory. He lived in the very moment embracing any form of joy he could. “When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just

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enjoy. . . . ​The amazing thing is that no anguish held out against this treatment for very long. Take away from suffering its double drumbeat of resonance, memory and fear. Suffering may persist, but already it is relieved by half ” (Lusseyran 1998, 290). Shortly after his arrival Lusseyran became quite ill and was near death. His friends carried him to the hospital to die. They remarked later that though hav­ ing such a high fever, he was not delirious. “You looked quite serene, and every now and then you would tell us not to put ourselves out on your account” (1998, 280). Lusseyran reports, “From the first moments of sickness I had gone off into another world, quite consciously. I was not delirious. Louis was right, I still had the look of tranquility, more so than ever. That was the miracle” (1998, 280). In sickness he felt fully alive, becoming closer to God, and the fundamental vul­ nerability that all people share. “It is true I was quite unable to help myself. All of us are incapable of helping ourselves. Now I knew it, and knew that it was true of the SS among the first. That was something to make one smile” (1998, 281; cf. Ilibagiza 2007, 94). He was no longer afraid: Buchenwald now seemed “at least possible,” and the realities of the camp receded in his mind for the last eleven months of his captivity. “Today I have not a single evil memory of those three hundred and thirty days of extreme wretchedness” (1998, 282). Recovering from illness, Lusseyran devoted his remaining time in Buch­ enwald to others. “I could try to show other people how to go about holding on to life. I could turn t­ oward them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me” (1998, 282). Without fear for himself, he aided others when he could. He found a potentiality to act, where none was previously apparent. Lusseyran encountered a good friend from the Resistance who had suffered horrible torture and had spent a harrowing week in Auschwitz. Lusseyran tried to transmit his joy to his friend. “I tried a kind of artificial respiration on him. At all costs he had to have joy breathed back into him. Otherwise he was bound to go under” (1998, 288). Unfortunately, his friend “was shattered” and soon succumbed. Lusseyran with his knowledge of German soaked up information and spread it throughout the camp including keeping his fellow prisoners abreast of news from the German radio. “I had become cheerful, and was cheerful almost all the time, without willing it, without even thinking about it. That helped me, naturally, but it also helped the others. They had made such a habit of watching the coming of the little blind Frenchman with his happy face, his reassuring words, that on days when there was no news, they had him visit just the same” (1998, 294–295).

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The most compelling part of his narrative is his description of another man who had also found inner refuge amongst the horror. Lusseyran mov­ ingly describes his remarkable encounter with Jeremy Regard, who others in the camp referred to simply as Socrates. For Lusseyran encountering such a joyful man was a great blessing as he was “a true old person, that is, one who is joyous. It is a blessing which is rarely given to us, because for most, alas, age is nothing but the blank and degrading addition of physical years. But when an old person is joyful, he is so strong that he no longer needs to speak: he comes and he heals” (Lusseyran 2006, 109). As others found succor in Lussey­ ran’s visits, Lusseyran found that inspiration in visiting with Jeremy Regard, which was a religious experience that had a profound effect on him. In the words of Audre Lorde, Regard had touched the erotic within him and it sus­ tained him and others. One went to Jeremy as ­toward a spring. One didn’t ask oneself why. One didn’t think about it. In this ocean of rage and suffering there was this island: a man who didn’t shout, who asked no one for help, who was sufficient unto himself. He had touched the very depth of himself and liberated the supernatural or, if this word bothers you, the essential, that which does not depend on any circumstance, which can exist in all places and in any time, in pain as in pleasure. He had encountered the very source of life. If I have used the word “supernatural,” it is because the act of Jeremy sums up to me the religious act itself: the discovery that God is there, in each person, to the same degree, completely in each moment, and that a return can be made ­toward Him. (2006, 117) Lusseyran and his acquaintance Jeremy Regard are extreme examples of overcoming their circumstances, but they are not unique. Others are able to find or to serve as ­life-​­affirming figures and experiences, those that surpass conditions that are seemingly impossible. Such extreme examples follow from recent work in affect theory that we do not know what the body can do, and from recent research in positive psychology, including Barbara Fredrickson’s influential ­broaden-​­­and-​­build theory and recent work on ­post-​­traumatic growth. Many readers of this book were probably doubtful that the martyrs of Chapter 6 actually felt joy on the pyre, and other readers might have been resistant to the idea that sadistic perpetrators in Chapter 5 could feel such joy. Yet, to take Spinoza’s comments on affect seriously we must accept that as we are affected, our capacities change and in near infinite ways. All victims of

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human rights abuses cannot experience a camp like Buchenwald in the man­ ner that Jacques Lusseyran did or in the way that Abdul Rahim was able to endure Guantánamo, but does it not provide hope that it is possible even if close to impossible to find refuge when facing such overwhelming oppres­ sion? Is there not something to learn from their experiences and those of others who have lived through horrible situations and recovered to the point that they can consider themselves human rights winners? This is not to be sanguine about the difficulty of such a journey, but to accept that recovery and reinvigoration are possible. It is to take seriously and honor the journeys that many are engaging in, and to seek joy even when joy seems impossible. Just like Roberto Benigni’s film Life Is Beautiful showing that against all odds some subjectification and joy can be found after Auschwitz. Can joy abide even in the worst of situations? It must.

Human Rights Winners Resisting Victimization By far this was the hardest chapter to conceptualize. I was uncomfortable with the original title “joyful victims” as I was hesitant to ascribe either victimiza­ tion or joy to those who had survived human rights abuses. But then my good friend former Eritrean political prisoner Semere Kesete who wrote this vol­ ume’s Foreword said in a videoconference with my Human Rights Voices class that he did not consider himself a victim, or even a survivor, but a winner. By living, by being successful, he is defeating the regime that tried to destroy him by locking him in solitary confinement. Against the odds Semere escaped, fled to Ethiopia and then to Sweden where he started his life anew. He and his wife just had a baby girl, so I would say he is a huge winner. My friend Brooke Elise Axtell who is a child sex trafficking and domestic violence survivor conveys the same sentiment in one of her poems: This is my story and in my story I rise without shame, without apology. I know what it is to live in terror, exiled from the stunning reality of my own worth. But I did not just survive, I thrive as a creatrix of change. I am a warrior for peace and this peace is more powerful than anything they forced on my body. I am a freedom fighter, taking a stand for those who are not yet free . . .

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Similar language of a warrior is used by my friend and author Terri Jentz when discussing the critical role of righteous anger in her recovery from an act of “pure evil.” She and her college roommate were victims of an utterly incomprehensible attack while touring across the US by bicycle in 1977. While camping for the night in Cline Fall State Park in Oregon, in “an act that defied all comprehension” a young local man drove his pickup truck over their tent and them, got out of the truck and attacked them with an axe. Terri blunted the force of an axe blow aimed at her chest. Terri’s roommate had had her skull crushed. Drenched in blood, in immense pain, with her shoulder destroyed, Terri was able to flag down a passing car and they miraculously survived, though the physical, emotional, and social trauma had profound impacts on both their lives. Terri has since written a chilling tome, Strange Piece of Paradise, about the incident and her efforts to come to terms with it. After a num­ ber of years living from inertia, only a shadow of her former self, Terri developed a “righteous anger” against the perpetrator and the fact that he was never held accountable for the crime. Driven to find the man, in 1992 she journeyed back to Oregon to discover his identity and bring him to justice. Retracing their journey, she became reconnected to “that wounded, injured animal self that I had abandoned that night” (Jentz 2011). Visiting the state park where the attack occurred, Terri lay down in the very spot where the tent stood, and was able to soak up the blood and the life energy that had been taken from her so many years before. Retrieving the case file she found out that the case was closed because the statute of limitations had run out twelve years earlier. The lack of justice further reawakened her anger. By nurturing and directing her anger at the perpetrator, who “commit[ted] evil deeds for the sheer joy,” she was able to become whole once again. She became a warrior fueled by “righteous anger” and she “came alive” (Jentz 2011). Subjectification

Recall also that the family members of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez had been brought up on stage so many times to testify to their victimhood, but by doing so they were also testifying to the fact that they were standing up, sub­ jectifying themselves in Jacques Rancière’s terms, claiming that they will not be intimidated by the oppressive forces. Rancière usefully flips the meaning of a human right wrong so that it is no longer only equated with victimization. A wrong, similar to the legal word tort, is now a person or a people standing up and claiming they have been wronged. “With victimization, one claims to be wronged and demands com­

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pensation. The onus of recognizing equality lies on those who are supposed to provide that compensation. With a wrong as Rancière defines it, the project of recognizing equality lies first with the demos, with those who act on their own behalf. By expressing their equality, they display for all to see that the police order has all along denied it. Subjectification” (May 2010, 78–79). To subjectify is to do what was previously unfathomable. It is expressing a voice from where a voice is unexpected and thought impossible. The voice had been silenced by the system, either by actively suppressing it, attempting to crush it, or ignoring it. When Semere Kesete was placed in solitary confine­ ment the Eritrean dictatorship must have expected they had forever crushed his voice. Instead his voice is now stronger than ever and his strength and creativity draw others to him, amplifying his voice as they work in solidarity with him. In the battle between the Eritrean state and Semere Kesete, Semere is clearly the winner, especially as the state is now under constant pressure for its horrendous human rights record. Similar to Semere, in what will probably be one of the last Holocaust trials, that of the Auschwitz guard Reinhold Han­ ning, a US survivor Joshua Kaufman traveled to Germany to testify but was not allowed to because of legal rules. Still Kaufman could claim a “triumph of the victim” over the Nazis, “this is my revenge to the murderers that I have four beautiful daughters, college educated, and four grandchildren” (Eckardt and Angerer 2016). This is a subjective ­rights-​­claiming similar to that of Je­ susa Rodríguez in Chapter 4. They, like Brooke Elise Axtell are “warriors for peace,” they are as Brooke says “freedom fighters taking a stand for those who are not yet free” or as Joshua Kaufman said, he “came to speak for those who can no longer be heard” (Eckardt and Angerer 2016). I AM a Man!

All too often, human rights movements want their victims to be only victims. They want them to show their helplessness, their need for help. Consider the difference between the medallion of the abolitionist forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially in juxtaposition to the “I AM a Man” protests from Memphis in 1968. The abolitionist medallion designed by the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood featured the image of a kneeling slave in supplication to White abolitionists above the rather meek question “Am I not a Man and a Brother?” Similar images are ubiquitous in the a­ nti-​­trafficking crusades of the past two decades with images of helpless women tied up and commodified calling out to be saved by what has derisively been called the “rescue industry”

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Figure 8. Josiah Wedgewood’s abolition medallion “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” Medallion designed by the famed potter Josiah Wedgewood in the 1780s for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The medallion and the image were widely circulated serving as effective marketing tools for abolitionism. Source: Library of Congress.

(Agustín 2007). Migrant sex workers in one study are only portrayed as vic­ tims having no agency: “as tremendously disadvantaged: poor, oppressed, coming from violent societies, having no choices. They are never described as feminists and rarely as politically active or possessing consciousness of their own situation” (Agustín 2007, 179). Thankfully, numerous activists like Brooke Axtell practice survivor leadership in their ­anti-​­trafficking work. In this model, survivors are not only empowered through ­self-​­expression and creativity but valued as those with the knowledge and skills to lead organiza­ tions and movements. Contrast the antislavery and ­anti-​­trafficking images to the message on the

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Figure 9. I AM a Man, Memphis 1968. Photo of sanitation workers striking in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968 with their famous placards. Source: http:// www.ozy.com/flashback/from-i-am-a-man-to-black-lives-matter/61443. Photographer unknown.

placards and the countenance of the sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968. “I AM a Man,” with the second word shouting in all caps, “represented a dis­ pute over what it meant to be a man” (Estes 2005, 132; cf. Lorde 1984a, 152). Reverend Ralph Jackson, one of the leaders of the Memphis movement, said it even more forcefully after one of the marches: “I am sick and tired of Ne­ groes getting on their knees and begging the great white father for the crumbs that fall from his table” (Estes 2005, 137). To announce I AM a man was to subvert the racist society that denied manhood to African Americans, rein­ forced by calling grown African American men by the term “boy.” Martin Luther King recounts the following powerful story of driving with his father while growing up: One day, when the two were driving together, a white traffic cop pulled them over and demanded of King’s father, “Boy, show me your license.” “Do you see this child here,” King’s father replied defiantly, refer­ ring to his son. “That’s a boy. I’m a man. I’m Reverend King.” (Estes 2005, 138)

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A couple of weeks after Dr. King’s assassination a rally was held in his honor in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel with a number of protestors carrying their “I AM a Man” placards that could now be read as “I AM STILL a Man.” Similarly abolitionist Frederick Douglass recounts in his autobiography an “undignified” incident, a lengthy physical fight with his notorious slave mas­ ter, Mr. Covey. Douglass describes it as “the turning point in my ‘life as a slave’ ” as it “revived a sense of my own manhood.” Where “I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW. It recalled to life my crushed ­self-​­respect and my ­self-​­confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be A FREEMAN.” “A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of human­ ity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, al­ though it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise. He can only understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has himself incurred something” (Douglass 1895, 177). In words reminiscent of Jacques Lusseyran, Douglass describes how he had passed beyond feeling fear and this set him free, though still physically a slave. “I had reached the point, at which I was not afraid to die. This spirit made me a freeman in fact, while I remained a slave in form. When a slave cannot be flogged he is more than half free. He has a domain as broad as his own manly heart to defend, and he is r­ eally ‘a power on earth’ ” (Douglass 1895, 177–178). These examples should not be read merely as extoling masculinity rooted in physical prowess and violence. Estes clarifies Black militants’ views of man­ hood using a quotation from Latino civil rights activist Cesar Chavez: “I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men!” (Estes 2005, 143). Chavez, Douglass, and Lusseyran find ways to reclaim manhood or person­ hood through a joy that is a forgetting of the self and an overcoming of cur­ rent conditions. It is a kenosis, a giving, and a subjectification. It is to eschew fear, to be exposed, to recognize the sacred in others and in the world, to es­ chew intentionality.

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Problematizing Victimization, PTSD and the Survivor Syndrome Human rights is often the story of human rights abuses perpetrated on indi­ viduals and groups. Human rights activists bear witness to these abuses by presenting the bodies or voices of those we too quickly easily refer to as vic­ tims (Dawes 2007). The concept of victimization as recent research shows is much more complex than previously imagined. On the one hand, victimiza­ tion and violence are multifaceted and the trauma suffered is f­ar-​­reaching and, in many cases, seems intractable. At the same time, however, the after­ math of victimization is more varied than what previous studies of survivors, especially scholars of Holocaust survivors, had claimed. The famous “survivor syndrome” with accounts of individuals completely ruined by their experi­ ences only tells part of the story. Polyvictimization and Multiple Violences

This is not to be sanguine about human rights abuses. Many victims did not have a chance to reflect on their fate. Most shipped to the Nazi death camps such as Birkenau or Majdanek did not find lightness like Lusseyran or even have time to express agency. Those who faced roundups, brutal train trips to Birkenau and were chosen by Mengele or his ilk with a wave of his hand to be immediately gassed, had little chance to stand up with any form of subjectifi­ cation. Such brutality on a massive scale did not allow agency. So many vic­ tims never had a chance to claim they were human rights winners including those killed at places that have been synecdochized with brutality such as Rwanda 1994, El Mozote, and My Lai. To expect such would be inhumane, and it would be even worse if we judge them from our privileged positions, from an “Olympian authority” (Ellison 1995, 156) for not standing up to their oppressors or for not bouncing back with their lives afterward.1 Those who survive such atrocities are scarred in profound ways that schol­ ars and psychologists are just beginning to fathom. Victimization for most is not a ­one-​­time event, and its impacts often last a lifetime. Suzanne Kaplan, who for years has studied child survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust, provides the following succinct description of the perforation caused by such trauma: “The psychic membrane has figuratively and literally become ‘full of holes,’ for example, by an invading frightening voice, a tearing away (from family members, important objects, and routines), and ‘body

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markings’ (both actual and symbolic)” (2013, 94). Those who suffer human rights abuses are likely subject to a number of types of violences. My colleague Cecilia Menjívar (2011) in her field work on Guatemalan women documents the following types of violences: structural, political, everyday (interpersonal, criminal), symbolic (including internalized violence), and gendered. Polyvictimization and Sexual Violence Against Migrant Women and Children

Recent psychological research on polyvictimization shows that the effects of such multiple violences and traumas are additive or even multiplicative or exponential. Such polyvictimization is common among refugees, child survi­ vors of domestic violence, torture survivors, genocide victims, and so many others. Consider a recent study that I conducted with Michelle Téllez, Cecilia Menjívar, and others on sexual violence against migrant women and children in Arizona and northern Mexico (Simmons and Téllez 2014; Simmons, Men­ jívar, and Téllez 2015). Our research shows that, similar to recent accounts from migrants to Europe, significant percentages of women and children are sexually assaulted as they migrate to the US. In the US context, since large percentages of migrants were likely to cross the border multiple times through­ out their lives, the risk of exploitation for any given woman or child migrant is likely quite high. Our study found that the sexual assault and terror that the women and children suffer while migrating to the US is only part of a series of violences they face. Women and girls are victimized and revictimized over time in a number of ways. Many of the immigrants are victims of abuse by family members and acquaintances in their home country before they ever consider migrating. Throughout their journey, not just at the U ­ S-​­Mexico bor­ der, they suffer exploitation. The exploitation continues in the border crossings and at drop houses in cities such as Phoenix and Tucson. And it is not uncom­ mon for the exploitation to continue once the women and children are re­ united with their families or when they reach their final destinations. Migrants that are apprehended by law enforcement officers and subsequently detained are also at risk of abuse, both in the US and in Mexico. Our findings suggest that “victimization is more of a ‘condition’ than an ‘event’ ” (Finkelhor, Orm­ rod, and H. Turner 2007, writing about victimized children in the US). Or, as Ruiz Marrujo (2009) writes, “Along the U.S.-​­Mexico and ­Mexico-​­Guatemala borders sexual violence has become [a] fact of life for migrant women” (31). The physical, psychological, and social effects of these abuses are complex, iterative, and long lasting. As one social worker who worked with unaccom­

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panied migrant girls in Phoenix, and was ­well-​­known for her expertise work­ ing with this population, reports: “And that’s the challenge of working with girls who have, have gone ­through—​­there’s, just there’s so much there, because it’s not just . . . ​the, the trafficking, there’s so much more that started very, very early; abandonment by mothers, I mean, at very, very young ages, babies, toddlers, abandoned by moms, being bounced around from home to home, incurring abuse and physical abuse in all those homes, neglect, it’s tough, it’s tough. And so . . . ​you get all of that and then this happens . . . ​it’s just, it’s just a lot of . . . ​trauma” (Simmons and Téllez 2014, 61). Recent research has shown that this form of multiple victimization or polyvictimization is especially per­ nicious with each abuse having a cumulative effect on the victim’s physical and mental health (Finkelhor, Ormrod, and H. Turner 2007). Unfortunately, social services set up to protect and service these victims have been over­ whelmed by the sheer number of cases and they are mostly ill prepared to deal with multiple victimizations. In addition, the structural ­violence—​­poverty, nativism, racialization, misogyny, and so ­forth—​­that renders migrant women and children vulnerable in the first place creates considerable additional ob­ stacles to adequate provision of services. What would make sensationalistic media headlines about sexual preda­ tors or serial rapists on the loose if the victims were White and not immi­ grants, do not seem to be, at least on the surface, defining or “­life-​­changing” events for these women. The assaults seem to be perceived as part of a larger condition of violence that these women face and endure over extended peri­ ods of time. As part of their condition, and often as part of a ­long-​­term calcu­ lus, the women do not come forward or complain about sexual assault because it is “the least of their problems.” Instead, they often find ways to cope with it in isolation when they can find the time. One interviewee said their attitudes often are: “I will deal with it, I just need a job, it is not a priority to report the assault or to get ­therapy—​­the priority is to get a job and their kids.” Indeed, some are rightly questioning whether scholars’ and activists’ focus on sexual violence “erase other aspects of women’s experiences of conflict and a more comprehensive gender analysis” (­Bueno-​­Hansen 2015, 9). The assaults can be also seen as part of a ­well-​­calculated decision made intentionally, with varying levels of knowledge of the risks involved, to make the journey in the first place. Migrant women exercise agency by making de­ cisions about the journey, factoring in many of the risks to themselves and their children. Some are aware of the risks from previous trips of their own, or from stories from family members and friends, or from warnings in the

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mass media. Often indigenous migrants will shed their traditional clothing in order to better “pass” as nonindigenous. Those from Central America often know to tell law enforcement officials if they are apprehended that they are from Mexico, so that they will only be deported across the U ­ S-​­Mexico bor­ derline where they can attempt the journey again. Even the sexual assaults seem to be a possible outcome and so the women and girls take steps to pre­ vent assault or to ameliorate the possible consequences. The immense and complex impacts of multiple traumas was vividly de­ scribed by Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Catholic nun from the US, who was arrested, tortured, and raped multiple times in Guatemala in 1989. When it was discov­ ered that she was a US citizen and that her disappearance had become a media event, she was released. She was held for only t­ wenty-​­four hours, unlike many other torture victims, whose ordeals last, incredibly, for months or even years. But those ­twenty-​­four hours resulted in a complete loss of memory of every­ thing in her life before being tortured. She had to be reintroduced to her own parents, and she still has almost no memory of her childhood, her college ­ re-​­torture friendships. But she has in­ years, how she became a nun, or her p tense memories of everything from her abduction onward including the tor­ ture and rapes. Ortiz’s book (2002) The Blindfold’s Eyes is an extraordinarily moving and sharply focused account of being tortured and how it shaped her subsequent life. Writing about her ordeal and pursuing successful legal ave­ nues helped Ortiz make some meaning out of the experience. She has since founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International which aids fellow torture survivors as they deal with the pernicious ­long-​­term effects of their torture. On the other hand such victimizations are not always overwhelming, nor, pace Elaine Scarry’s famous work, torture does not always totally deconstruct the subject. After all, Dianna Ortiz has been able to do incredible human rights work after enduring torture. Similarly recent scholarship on resilience and p ­ ost-​­traumatic growth calls into question some of the more extreme con­ clusions of prevailing schools of victimization such as the “survivor syn­ drome” and “concentration camp syndrome” found in Holocaust survivors and the debilitating effects of ­post-​­traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD Model and a Talent for Life

­Post-​­Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a term originally coined in the 1970s and then institutionalized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, has quickly become ensconced in medical and public

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discourses (for a genealogy, see Fassin and Rechtman 2009). It is now com­ monly used to describe the suffering of human rights victims of all stripes and it is also seen as a key form of secondary or vicarious victimization suffered by human rights workers. Thankfully the growth of PTSD diagnoses has led to increased calls for therapeutic intervention for victims, better treatment of victims in legal proceedings, and practices of ­self-​­care among social workers, psychologists, and human rights workers. At the same time, it has been em­ ployed by those accused of human rights abuses as to why certain witnesses would not be reliable (Furundžija 2000) and as a mitigating factor when a witness was sentenced to prison for contempt of court (ICTY 2011). It has even been used by perpetrators as a reason why they should not be subject to trial such as in the case of South African torturer Jeffrey Benzien (­Scheper-​ ­Hughes 2008, 41), who was later deemed to have been suffering from “­perpetration-​­induced PTSD” (Kraft 2014, 91).2 That a condition is being used by victims and perpetrators alike is reason enough to further interrogate the term. As “Allan Young once argued, with reference to the Mei Lai massa­ cre, that there was something very troubling about a medical diagnosis that could be as easily appropriated by the perpetrators of a massacre as by its victims” (­Scheper-​­Hughes 2008, 41). In a series of works the medical anthropologist Nancy S­ cheper-​­Hughes has radically questioned the ways in which trauma and victimization are nor­ mally conceptualized in academic and activist discourses (see also Casper and Wertheimer 2016). In her massive Death Without Weeping (1992) she presents a vivid portrait of life among the very poor in the sprawling shantytown of Alto do Cruzeiro in northeastern Brazil, concluding that immense suffering requires the very poor to adopt coping mechanisms that might be abhorrent in other times and contexts. For instance, to cope with the trauma of so many children dying in infancy, mothers would sometimes resort to selecting some children to let die. They would “ ‘let go’ of and even to help some of their ­de-​ ­selected babies to die, by reducing already insufficient food, water and care. Mothers said their infants died because the babies themselves wanted to die, so it was best to ‘help them go’ quickly” (­Scheper-​­Hughes 2008, 28). This contextualized view of trauma is given a much more optimistic gloss in a remarkable extended essay that S­ cheper-​­Hughes (2008) penned reflect­ ­ igh-​ ing on her career and connections as an ethnographer and activist in h t­ rauma regions of Brazil (in the shantytowns and among street children) and South Africa at the end of the Apartheid era. She notes that there’s been an overemphasis on victimization, and echoes the findings of ­post-​­traumatic

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growth theory (discussed below) that humans can be strongly affected both positively and negatively by the same experience. “The PTSD model underes­ timates the human capacity not only to survive, but to thrive, during and following states of emergency, extreme adversity, and everyday as well as ex­ traordinary violence. The construction of humans as resilient and hardy or fragile, passive and easily overwhelmed by events should not be viewed as an either/or opposition” (42). Further, the PTSD model only works best for those who have endured discrete experiences that have come to an end, while many human rights “victims” such as migrant women suffer ongoing violences. There is no “post” to their traumatic experiences. Counselors in South Africa argue that “the ­post-​­trauma victims . . . ​were the world’s lucky few” (2008, 40). She cautions, as does Allan Young, that the PTSD model can be used by per­ petrators to evade responsibility and that an emphasis on past traumas can stir grudges and nationalist fervor that can enflame further conflict. Instead, S­ cheper-​­Hughes focuses on the wide variety of innovative coping mechanisms employed by the poor and victimized as well as their enormous resilience. She admits that some of “the tactics may offend ‘our’ sensibilities and tastes” but that these are “shaped by very different subjectivities, notions of value, human worth, and the good life, meaning always, the life that is worth living” (2008, 43). Here, I’ll just mention a couple of examples. In her earlier work ­Scheper-​­Hughes points out that many previous anthropologists and other commentators found carnival as a time of forgetting and role rever­ sal that served as a useful coping mechanism for vulnerable people. S­ cheper-​ H ­ ughes does find evidence of a revolutionary moment in carnival but not among the poorest of the poor in the shanty town. She finds that among the “marginals” not able to participate fully in the ceremonies it “is as much a ritual of intensification [of their condition] as a ritual of reversal” (1992, 482). Especially for the women of the shantytown carnival reminds them of “their own exclusion, marginality, sickness, and debt” (1992, 482). However, two decades later, ­Scheper-​­Hughes is able to find evidence of the carnivalesque among the shantytown’s women, but it is much more on their own terms and at their own time. One woman, Biu, finished her ­life-​­story narrative by refer­ encing carnival in a spiteful and joyful way: “No, Nancí, I won’t cry,” she said. “And I won’t waste my life thinking about it from morning to night. My life is hard enough. One husband hung himself and another walked out on me. I work hard all day in the cane fields. What good would it do me to lie awake at night crying

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about my fate? Can I argue with God for the state that I’m in? No! So I’ll dance and I’ll jump and I’ll play carnival! And yes, I’ll laugh and people will wonder at a pobre like me who can have such a good time. But if I don’t enjoy myself, if I can’t amuse myself a little bit, well then I would rather be dead.” (2008, 50) ­Scheper-​­Hughes cites Donna Goldstein’s (2003) ethnography on the Brazilian favelas for the important place of humor in coping with utter poverty. This is laughter not just for amusement or as a coping mechanism, but a very maca­ bre black humor that allows people to subjectify themselves despite their con­ ditions: It is “a way of bearing witness to tragic realities without succumbing to them. . . . ​even jokes about rape, child stealing and abandonment, physical abuse, and gang murder contain layers of bravado, anger, defiance, deep sad­ ness as well as strength” (2008, 49). Finally, some of the children given up for dead that S­ cheper-​­Hughes discussed in her earlier work proved physically resilient and did not die, just like Lusseyran who was taken to the Buchenwald infirmary to die but survived. “These stubborn children were loved above all others.” Upon reaching adulthood they “held no grudges against their neglect­ ful caretakers, they displayed few of the classic symptoms of trauma victims” (2008, 31). Indeed, “they viewed themselves as victors not as victims, as hav­ ing met death ­face-​­­to-​­face and won!” (31). ­Scheper-​­Hughes concludes her 2008 essay: “While for many years searching in the nooks and crannies of oppressed and excluded communities for political mobilizations and orga­ nized resistance in the face of terror as usual, I found, instead, forms of every­ day resilience. And in the context of these besieged lives existence i­ tself—​­living and surviving to tell the t­ ale—​­is more than enough to celebrate” (2008, 49). To show how far we have come from the PTSD framework, S­ cheper-​ ­ ughes even finds victimization to be potentially transcendent. “The imme­ H diate experience of trauma produces altered states that are not totally dissimilar from states of ecstasy or what William James called ‘Varieties of Religious Experience.’ We can call them transcendental” (2008, 50). Trauma, like mystical experiences that transcend our normal lives, changes our values, our conception of time and our identity. She quotes a­ nti-​­Apartheid fighter Father Michael Lapsley who was severely injured by a mail bomb sent to him by the South African Apartheid regime. “ ‘I was never closer to God,’ he said during an interview, ‘than in the moment of the explosion that took away my eye and my hands. I could sense the Holy Spirit at my side, holding me up, telling me that I would survive’ ” (2008, 51).

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The Survivor Syndrome and The Aftermath

The embrace of PTSD as an a­ ll-​­encompassing and frequently used diagnosis versus the talent for life that ­Scheper-​­Hughes describes also played out among Holocaust survivors and commentators. Instead of being classified with PTSD which had not yet been constructed, Holocaust survivors were often diag­ nosed with “survivor syndrome,” a term coined by noted psychoanalyst and refugee from Nazi Germany William G. Niederland. He developed it based upon his clinical work with approximately 2000 Holocaust survivors as well as victims of other disasters, natural and ­man-​­made. The survivors of the Holocaust faced massive traumatization for years. They had faced a systematic attempt to dehumanize and destroy their selves, their families, their ethnicity and their religion as well as suffering a bewildering displacement after the war with the changed circumstances, adapting to new homelands and coming to terms with the realities of the destruction of most of their families and com­ munities. These individuals experienced extreme anxiety, chronic depression, vivid flashbacks, “a lasting impairment of the self,” and survivor guilt. Accord­ ing to Niederland, many took on the image of a “shuffling corpse,” similar to the “Muselmann” in the camps, that “gives the victim a macabre, shadowy, or ­ghost-​­like imprint, difficult to describe, but which seems to be in the nature of an a­ ll-​­pervasive psychological scar on the total personality” (1968, 313). Niederland (1981) concluded that these individuals “rarely heal” (414), exhib­ iting powerful symptoms for the rest of their lives. These results, especially on the ­long-​­term effects of the concentration camps, were confirmed by the works of fellow psychiatrist and Holocaust sur­ vivor Leo Eitinger (e.g., 1972), who has been called “the father of victimology.” Eitinger served as a physician in Auschwitz providing what succor he could to his fellow inmates including a young Elie Wiesel who later beautifully wrote of him: “Between the torturers’ sneers and the victims’ tears there must be room for a comforting smile. It is not surprising that he became a psychiatrist. With­ out him it would have been impossible to survive the madness of that world. Between the torturers’ sneers and the victims’ ­tears—​­between the pain of sick­ ness and the patients’ ­tears—​­there was an upright human being” (Genefke 1997, 158). Eitinger devoted his ­post-​­Holocaust professional life trying to un­ derstand how victims could cope with such overwhelming trauma. He coined the term “concentration camp syndrome” which is “a mental disability which affects every side of the personality’s psychic life, both the intellectual func­ tions, and especially, emotional life and the life of the will” (cited in Hass 1995,

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2). Eitinger was later instrumental in the widespread acceptance of PTSD as a medical condition. Other psychiatrists though found starkly different results among Holocaust survivors. Aaron Hass, a clinical psychologist and child of Holocaust survivors was “dumbfounded and exasperated” as he read through previous psycholog­ ical accounts of survivors as they did not accurately describe his patients. “Were survivors as depressed, as emotionally anaesthetised, as unable to love, as dysfunctional as these authors would have us believe?” (1995, xi). His sub­ sequent book, The Aftermath: Living with the Holocaust, based on interviews with ­fifty-​­eight Jewish survivors provides a much more varied view with ample evidence of ­well-​­adjusted and successful survivors, many of whom also found joy. Some suffered from symptoms of PTSD or other psychological effects, but at the same time they also evinced “significant success at coping with a trau­ matic past” (Hass 1995, 6). This is not to minimize their experiences, as one interviewee said, “We didn’t live five years of Holocaust. We lived a thousand years of degradation, humiliation, and torture” (Hass 1995, 13). But it is to recognize that there is no stereotypical account of survivors’ experiences. Nonetheless, along with the accounts of survivor’s guilt Hass finds some who are proud to have survived, especially so that they could tell the world what they had witnessed. Many too expressed Semere Kesete’s view that he was a winner, but flipped it upside down to say that if they let the past destroy them, “to admit irreparable damage, to admit that their tormentors’ reach has extended to their new life, would imply that, ultimately, they had lost” (Hass 1995, 69).3 Many claimed that they were normal, and others claimed that their experiences had made them stronger even though, or because, their “sense of self has been fundamentally shaken” (73). They even find happiness, though as Hass intuits, some of these happy individuals force themselves to be happy, often by refusing to let the past haunt them, and may not be reaching genuine happiness. Some become work­ aholics to avoid thinking of the past, others refrain from attending memorials or talking about their experiences, especially to their children. One survivor said, “You experienced so much difficulty, you have a right to be happy. In my life I strive for happiness . . . ​the other is kept separate. I am a messenger from Auschwitz and that’s just my job. I wouldn’t let that make me unhappy” (Hass 1995, 75). Others though find that their lives are pervaded by sadness, and “for some survivors, joy after Auschwitz is sacrilegious. Joy would imply a betrayal of the memory of all those murdered” (Hass 1995, 77). Others though, echoing some examples discussed previously in Chapter

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3, find that they have a new appreciation for life and experience more joy than ever before. One interviewee said “I enjoy life . . . ​every minute I can, believe me. If you don’t do it now, tomorrow you may not be able to do it. One thing I learned in life. If you want something, do it now” (Hass 1995, 78). Many described the immediate postwar years especially as times of extreme happi­ ness with feelings of new possibilities. They had been granted a miracle to have survived, “We wanted to enjoy life” (Hass 1995, 101). Victimization and Silencing

Individuals experience victimization in a wide variety of ways that are influ­ enced by sociocultural conditions. Similarly our expectations of those who have been victimized are socioculturally inflected. Assuming that someone who has endured abuse has been damaged beyond repair or must be suffering from PTSD or related symptoms as is so often done today risks silencing them. To label them as victims risks revictimizing them to reduce them to the torments that they were subject to. As I said earlier, to see the women of Ciu­ dad Juárez merely as victims, as so many had, would be to reduce them to a small (albeit important) part of their lives. Indeed, to see them as just victims, would be colluding with the perpetrators of the feminicides, for whom wom­ en’s lives could be reduced to almost nothing (see Wright 2011). To treat them merely as victims is to deprive them of their joy or their potential for joy. It is to work against their opportunity to change their symbolic order, to change their identity, to take away the chance they can be victors. To have the opposite expectation, that individuals should just move for­ ward with their lives and work together to build a better future for everyone also reduces their experiences and their suffering. Many like Holocaust sur­ vivor and writer Jean Améry are unable “to join in ‘the unisonous peace cho­ rus all around him, which cheerfully proposes: not backward let us look but forward, to a better, common future’ ” (Améry 1980, 69). Also, to focus on those, like Jacques Lusseyran who can be labeled as human rights winners can be “an insult to survivors’ experience, and does nothing to help us understand what it means to survive atrocity, what it means to live a life shattered by mass violence, and to be silenced by terror” (Oppenheimer 2015). Those who have endured such abuses are survivors, autonomous individ­ uals who are seeking to move forward, they are trying to find meaning and make the best of a tragic situation. They have agency and they are usually able to pursue their own goals. They often realize possibilities in their lives beyond what human rights activists and workers are able to envision.

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Many survivors know that to receive attention or help from human rights workers, they must exhibit characteristics of victimization. Canadian theater professor Julie Salverson, with admirable transparency, relates that in staging theater of the oppressed with community groups, the participants know that “the person who displays the most pain gets her story featured. I was once told by a teenager working with me on a project like this, ‘You are paying me to be a kid in trouble, ­aren’t you, you don’t want to hear about my good day.’ ” For Salverson this example points “to tendencies in both pedagogy and aesthetics to reduce the Other to the explainable, as in the case of the performance de­ scribed above where victims are explained as terminally tragic” (2006, 149). Branding or cauterizing such individuals as tragic victims allows us to speak for them, ventriloquize them in good conscience. Poet Carolyn Forché in her moving “Return” tells of the chasm between the realities she witnessed in 1980s ­war-​­torn El Salvador and what Americans wanted to hear about when she returned. She references the gifted Salvadoran poet and revolutionary Lil Milagro Ramírez who was brutally tortured over several years and killed in a Salvadoran prison with her fellow revolutionaries. Americans who “will read torture reports with fascination” would not listen to a “long, dull story of corruption” or about “water pumps and ­co-​­op farms” but instead craved inti­ mate details of her torture: Tell them about the razor, the live wire, dry ice and concrete, grey rats and above all who fucked her, how many times and when. (Forché 1981, 18) We must patiently listen to those who have suffered such abuses and listen as much as possible in their own idiom (Simmons 2011). ­Scheper-​­Hughes pro­ vides an excellent example of having her expectations invalidated while pa­ tiently listening to survivors of the struggles against Apartheid in South Africa. Far from seeing themselves as victims, “the survivors insisted on framing the attack on their lives as politically motivated and therefore as ‘meaningful’ ” (2008, 40). They were not only warriors for peace like Brooke Axtell, they were warriors against an oppressive regime, and they wanted to be recognized as such. “They were revolutionaries, not patients or victims. The trauma model stripped them of their identities, not to mention of their glory. ‘I am a victor, not a victim,’ Albie Sachs, an ANC ‘warrior,’ is fond of saying” (2008, 41). ­Scheper-​­Hughes’s assistant recounted the time that he was taken in custody and tortured at the age of twelve. When asked if he had sought counseling to

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deal with the trauma. “ ‘No!’ he said emphatically and then he chuckled. ‘When I came home, everyone came out to cheer me and to t­ oyi-​­toyi (a militant h ­ igh-​ ­stepping dance) in my honor. Now I was a real hero. It was a fantastic experi­ ence’ ” (2008, 42).

­Post-Traumatic Growth: Not Just Coping or Resilience We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a ­situation—​­just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable ­cancer—​­we are challenged to change ourselves. —​­Victor Frankl The work of S­ cheper-​­Hughes and Hass on the varied experiences of survivors presage insights from one of the newest fields in psychology, that of ­post-​ ­traumatic growth (PTG). Stephen Joseph (2011), one of the leading research­ ers and popularizers of PTG, helpfully employs the metaphor of a broken vase. Imagine an elegant vase, one that we particularly fancy, that tumbles to the floor and shatters. We can become distraught or we can pull out the Super Glue and attempt to put it back together as it was, but that will probably leave it with many unsightly cracks and chips. Or, we can recognize the many beau­ tiful pieces and craft those into a new piece of artwork, perhaps a tapestry of beautiful shards. Joseph suggests that broken vase is like an individual expe­ riencing severe trauma. Some will be dispirited, some will attempt to ­re-​­create who they once ­were—​­what we might call resilience, and others will use the experience to shape themselves anew, what is now labeled ­post-​­traumatic growth (PTG). The latter would be a longshot in the predominant PTSD and “survivor syndrome” paradigms, but the examples laid out by ­Scheper-​­Hughes and Hass suggest that PTG might be much more common than previously thought. This is not to say that PTSD and “survivor syndrome” do not exist,

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but that even those who suffer from them might be able to find growth from their traumatic experiences. PTG is often opposed to resilience, which has become a buzzword in psy­ chology, social work, and human rights. Etymologically, resilience means to rebound or snap back into place. In academic and clinical literature it still carries this connotation as someone being able to adapt, to continue function­ ing on the same trajectory as before suffering a traumatic event. To expect someone to snap back to who they were before their experience is to risk eliminating substantial meaning from their experience. To suggest that their profound experiences have not changed their capacities or their trajectories, neglects the insights of affect theory. Such a resilience model “fails to account adequately for new adaptive p ­ ost-​­traumatic living and the existential reality that one is forever changed by experiences of suffering” (Werdel and Wicks 2012, 4–5). Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun coined the term ­post-​­traumatic growth in 1995, though of course, examples of PTG date back to earliest human records and has been well documented in a wide range of circumstances. Historically, we might look at US president Teddy Roosevelt, the Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, the psychiatrists William Niederland and Leo Eitinger, or the sociologist John M. Steiner who found strength enough to conduct his ­in-​­depth ethnography of SS officers. More recently we might consider the human rights activist and author Malala Yousafzai, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize almost exactly two years to the day that she was shot three times and almost killed in Pakistan. Numerous recent ac­ ademic studies have documented PTG in a range of populations, such as ­first-​ ­time female prisoners (Ginneken 2016), Iraqi war survivors in Turkey (Kiliç, Magruder, and Koryürek 2016), warriors in Sri Lanka (Jayasuriya 2014), for­ mer political prisoners like Semere Kesete (Erbes et al. 2005; Feder et al. 2008), survivors of intimate partner violence (Valdez and Lilly 2015; Cobb et al. 2006), survivors of childhood abuse (Hartley et al. 2015), and those facing ­life-​­threatening illnesses (Hefferon, Grealy, and Mutrie 2009).4 Joseph (2011) recounts working on a l­arge-​­scale study involving inter­ views with maritime disaster survivors. After three years of work involving numerous questions about PTSD and coping, he included a solitary question on whether the horrible experience led to any positive changes. A surprisingly large number of individuals (43 percent) reported positive effects from the traumatic experience. This did not mean that they did not experience PTSD

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symptoms. They did. Many resorted to alcohol and drugs to cope with their symptoms. But alongside the negative sequelae, a large percentage of individ­ uals also experienced profoundly positive changes.5 Subsequent studies found that such ­post-​­traumatic growth tends to group into five factors. These in­ cluded “seeing new possibilities, changed relationships, the paradoxical view of being both stronger yet more vulnerable, a greater appreciation for life, and changes in the individual’s spiritual and existential domain” (Calhoun and Tedeschi 2004, 95). While coping and resilience are most likely to occur in the face of minor challenges, PTG seems to occur more frequently in reaction to “seismic” trau­ matic events (Tedeschi and Calhoun 1995). For instance, in a retrospective study of US soldiers imprisoned and tortured during the Vietnam War, “the more severe their treatment, the more likely the former POWs were to report posttraumatic growth” (Tedeschi and McNally 2011, 20). More recent studies now show that it is not necessarily the severity of the traumatic event that leads to growth as much as it is how thoroughly the event shakes the person’s assumptive ­world—​­what Lacan would call the symbolic ­realm—​­that set of core beliefs that orient a person (Cann et al. 2010; see J­ anoff-​­Bulman 1992).6 To develop a new sense of self and the world seems to be dependent on a se­ rious disruption of the old sense of self and the world. Of course, at some point if the trauma is overwhelming, PTG will be highly unlikely and this is likely what early psychological studies of the Holocaust were encountering (McCaslin et al., 2009). Of course, and unlike Deleuze and Guattari and some theorists of masochism, the PTG literature does not encourage people to ex­ perience traumatic events in order to shake the self to its foundations, and thus lead to potentially more PTG. Once the assumptive world is shattered like the elegant vase, PTG will occur when the individual creates “new beliefs about themselves and the world, and build a new way of life that is experienced as superior to the pre­ vious one in important ways” (Williamson 2016, 42). Making meaning of the experience and cognitive adaptation are crucial. A study of newly incarcerated women found that “the initial shock of incarceration challenged these prison­ ers’ assumptive worlds, but they managed to overcome this crisis by finding meaning in the prison experience and using it as an opportunity for personal development. This facilitated a positive reconstruction of their identity” (Gin­ neken 2016, 208). The individual can, in Piaget’s (1952) terms, either accommodate the new information or assimilate it. Accommodation requires an openness to a new

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version of reality with a new identity and a new assumptive world, while assimilation would close off significant effects of the traumatic experience, to reduce its meaning, and to live as if nothing has changed. This would be the realm of resilience and not PTG. An assimilationist most likely will engage in intrusive rumination whereby they repeatedly and reflexively dwell upon the trauma but do not open themselves to its meaning. This inability to rec­ oncile their previous way of being with their new reality leads to increased suffering. “In contrast, deliberate rumination consists of thoughts that occur deliberately, through which the individual purposefully ­re-​­examines the event and its inherent implications. Thus, during deliberate rumination, the individual is involved in intentional attempts to understand and assign a meaning to the traumatic event, which, in turn, can lead to increased aware­ ness about the positive repercussions of the experience” (Ramos, Leal, and Tedeschi 2016, 2).7 The personality traits correlated highly with PTG are instructive. These include “openness to experience,” “extraversion,” and “conscientiousness” (Lin­ ley and Joseph 2004; Tedeschi and Calhoun 2004). With a major role for open­ ness and growth, we should not be surprised that strong social support networks are positively related to PTG. Further, “Younger people will report more growth than much older people, since the young may be open to the learning and change of this process to a greater degree than the old, who might have already learned their life lessons” (Tedeschi and Calhoun 2004, 4). Coun­ terintuitively, at least on the surface, more resilient people have been found to experience less PTG. “Because of their strong coping skills, the former group is less likely to struggle with the psychological consequences of trauma and hence to experience as many opportunities to change” (Tedeschi and McNally 2011, 20). PTG as it has been described, resonates with ­Scheper-​­Hughes’s de­ scription of trauma as transcendental, and it seems to share many similarities with awe, ecstasy, and joy. To only focus on PTG, of course, would be to do a disservice to the suffer­ ing that individuals experience. PTG does not remove the suffering of PTSD: “Posttraumatic growth and distress are essentially separate dimensions, and growth experiences do not put an end to distress in trauma survivors” (Tedes­ chi and Calhoun 2004, 13). More bluntly, Jean Améry wrote, “Whoever was tortured, stays tortured” (1980, 34).

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Paths to ­Post-Traumatic Growth Several interconnected methods have been recommended for clinicians to facilitate PTG (see Calhoun and Tedeschi 2006b). Narrative and group ther­ apy have been productive in cultivating PTG, especially for constructing meaning from the traumatic experiences (Calhoun and Tedeschi 1999). Te­ deschi and McNally (2011) created a PTG program for US soldiers that in­ volved highlighting the potential for growth in traumatic experiences as well as developing skills that led to deliberate and thoughtful rumination that seeks to inculcate positive meaning from trauma. This includes learning nar­ rative techniques for soldiers to positively express their experiences so they begin to create meaning from their trauma, which includes new productive ways of being in the world. In each of these methods of facilitating PTG the therapist is accompanying the patient on a high wire much like the Lacanian analyst discussed in Chapter 2. It “is a delicate balancing act of honoring, processing, and sitting with the unspeakable pain of suffering and inviting reflection, awareness, and exploration of growth and newfound meaning in the aftermath of traumatic events” (Toler 2015, 908). This is not grasping at answers or ­over-​­identifying with an authoritarian figure who claims to have all the answers. Tedeschi and Calhoun (2006a) champion a model of “expert companionship” that would be quite challenging for some therapists to adopt as it “focuses on the constancy of the companion, humility, respect for the survivor’s narrative and perspective, and a highlighting of strength and change” (Tedeschi and McNally 2011, 21). According to the PTG literature, finding positive meaning from traumatic events requires the development of a relatively rare form of wisdom that places the events in perspective and shows a productive way to move forward. ­Broaden-​­­and-​­Build and Expressive Arts Therapies

Fredrickson’s “­broaden-​­­and-​­build” theory is a useful framework to keep in mind when discussing PTG especially in the context of affect theory. Individ­ uals can use positive emotions to change their capacities to be more receptive to additional positive emotions as well, having substantial impact on several aspects of an individual’s physical, social, and psychic ­well-​­being. ­Broaden-​­­and-​­build functions much like Spinoza’s theory of affect, or even the theory of social capital, but at an individual level. It posits that the experi­ ence of positive emotions builds resources that individuals can tap into when

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needed. This theory is often seen as an antidote to the hedonic treadmill the­ ory, where positive emotions ultimately do not lead to increased capacity but decreased satisfaction. On a treadmill, individuals achieve some positive good, but instead of enjoying that good, undergo hedonic adaptation and seek more. The more the individual gains, the more the individual seeks, ultimately leading to frustration and other negative emotions. Fredrickson, though, pos­ its that positive emotions such as joy and happiness can have the opposite effect; they can lead to greater life satisfaction, less depression, and better health. Through a plethora of innovative experiments she and her research teams have demonstrated that positive emotions build social, physical, psy­ chological, and cognitive resources and they do this in ways that resonate with my phenomenology of joy. Positive emotions broaden an individual’s concep­ tion of reality, and make them open to new experiences, which “little by little, reshape who they are” (Fredrickson et al. 2008, 1045). In other words, these new perspectives on reality broaden their capacities. They feel more con­ nected with others and the world around them. Individuals who experience positive emotions are more optimistic and content with themselves. Over the past decade Fredrickson’s research group at the University of North Carolina has conducted several studies especially pertinent to this chapter. They have shown the enormous power of positive emotion for dealing with trauma (Tu­ gade and Fredrickson 2004; Fredrickson and Levenson 1998). Of particular interest for cultivating PTG are the studies that show that b ­ roaden-​­­and-​­build is a useful framework for understanding how expressive arts therapy and meditation can nurture happiness and joy, especially in those who have expe­ rienced trauma. The broad field of expressive arts therapy, which includes many diverse methods such as dance/movement therapy, music therapy, and writing ther­ apy, has had significant success in facilitating growth after trauma (Malchiodi, 2005). The varied approaches to expressive arts therapy share some common themes that have played important roles in this book, such as ­self-​­expression of the inexpressible, detachment, memorializing trauma, creating a new nar­ rative, empathy, deep listening, and withholding judgment. The creative pro­ cess allows individuals to transform or metabolize their trauma by creating meanings from their meaningless experiences and encourages positive rumi­ nations about them. Note that expressive therapies seek to simultaneously honor the experience, the PTSD, and the possibilities of PTG. A wide range of studies, ­field-​­based, clinical, and neurological, have shown that trauma can be inexpressible at least through vocalization, so traditional

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talk therapies alone may not allow individuals to work in group settings or by sharing their experiences with therapists (D. Harris 2009).8 In such cases, expressing experiences through art, be it theater, dance, murals, or writing, can allow individuals and groups to express themselves in ways they never had previously. Arts therapies can also be culturally sensitive and empower­ ing, and when done with groups they have the added benefit of building social support. When tailored to cultural roots of the participants, they can tap into a common ancestral tradition as in the Mexican cabarets of Jesusa Rodríguez. David Harris (2008) writes of using dance/movement therapy to address multiple traumas in Dinka youth that were part of the Lost Boys of southern Sudan resettled in the US. His expressive therapy consciously mirrored that of recent critical development practices for empowerment and transformation. Providing a space for the youth, he humbly, “without judgment,” took the lead from them in adopting dances from their culture. Tapping into their common roots, “immersed now in an ancient rhythm” they were able to connect to a much happier time and place, like Audre Lorde, “rekindling in themselves the ancestral spirit that both empowers and restores” (D. Harris 2008, 255). Natalie Rogers, one of the pioneers of expressive arts therapy, and daughter of Carl Rogers, writes in a similar vein, “Part of the psychotherapeutic process is to awaken the creative ­life-​­force energy. . . . ​It is a process of discovering ourselves through any art form that comes from an emotional depth” (Rogers 1993, 1–2). For Rogers, we all have a “deep wellspring of creativity,” an inner playful self, that has been suppressed by trauma. By recovering that self and presenting it to others through creative expression we can create or more accurately ­co-​ ­create a new story about our traumatic experiences. Dance/movement therapies have been especially productive in this area because of their emphasis on our corporeal selves. If torture reduces the indi­ vidual to the bodily as Améry argues, it also leaves its marks on the body. Practicing intentionally directed bodily movements, an individual can recon­ nect with the body, find it whole again (Gray 2001). Performance artist Natalia Duong has been employing dance/movement therapies by increasing kinesthetic empathy through shared movements. In workshops in Vietnam with survivors of Agent Orange, she is able to have individuals with severe disabilities use their bodies to act out their life paths in the past, present, and future (Duong 2013). Others in the workshops mirror these movements alongside the survivor. Through shared movements connec­ tion is created. Those doing the mirroring have to engage in deep listening to

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the survivor. Also, shared movement amplifies the movements, giving each movement more meaning and being able to observe it in others. Similar to other arts therapies, the individual is able to map an alternative future for himself. Sophia Richman (2014) draws upon her experiences as a Jewish Holocaust ­survivor—​­living in Poland with her mother posing as Catholics as her father hid in their attic after escaping from a concentration ­camp—​­and many de­ cades as a psychotherapist working with trauma victims to argue that creativ­ ity is especially powerful for dealing with seemingly intractable trauma. Richman rightly criticizes some Holocaust scholars for holding that there is a “ ‘generic’ survivor experience” that involves severe psychological and cogni­ tive dysfunction. Instead, survivors each have their own path to coping and ­ ell-​­known Holocaust survivors for example, have found so­ healing. Many w lace and healing in artwork. And while Richman includes many famous ex­ amples of artists who dealt with their trauma through creative expression, she also considers “everyday creativity” and those “artists” who are “engaged in the process of making art, without judgment regarding the quality of the product” (2014, 2). Through ­self-​­expression of an internalized pain “the artist externalizes it, fashions a container for it, and invites others to become wit­ nesses to his suffering” (13). In this way, art can creatively transform the trauma in a similar fashion to the metabolization of anger that I discuss below. The inexpressible is a constant theme of this work and it plays a central role in Richman’s work: she was a hidden child, with her father hiding in their attic, during World War II. To speak out loud was life threatening. In a way similar to Brooke Axtell’s (2012) discussion of the multitude of ways that she was silenced as a child, Richman sees this early experience of having to shush as affecting her ability to speak as an adult. Such experiences have a profound effect on the individual, often in ways that are not cognitively understood. Richman and her family members have each turned to the creative process in their own ways. She argues that trauma leads us to various avenues where we might find resources for coping or mending. There is something of a drive to heal. “We are driven to find release and express our psychic pain” (Richman 2014, 12). Most interesting is her rethinking of dissociation in ways that mirror the empirical work on ­post-​­traumatic growth. Recall that those who were most likely to access PTG, as well as those most likely to experience awe and joy, were those who were open to new experience. While most current psychology sees moderate to severe dissociation, especially as a sequela to trauma, as a

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pathology that needs to be cured, Richman sees dissociation as potentially productive. It is an altered state that is “essentially neutral and paradoxical in nature” (2014, 5). Dissociation, for her, can also be found in the moments when an artist is so caught up in the creative process that they lose themselves as well as the sense of time. The rest of the world melts away. This detachment allows an individual to gain perspective on their trauma, and through the creative process, the individual is able to express their trauma in ways never imagined before. The work of art stands as a testimony to that which has been experienced and provides a space for the individual to witness the trauma from a more detached point of view. The finished or somewhat finished art­ work also encourages the therapist or loved one to c­ o-​­witness the trauma, to get a sense of how it continues to affect the individual. For Richman, it is critical that witnessing is done in a nonjudgmental way; requiring “the wit­ nessing other be open to surprise, free of preconceptions and misconceptions about the survivor experience” (2014, 102). Mindfulness, ­Loving-​­Kindness, and Mudita (Sympathetic Joy)

To help us bring benefit to others through our words and actions, it is useful to cultivate an attitude of sympathetic joy in others’ achievements and good fortune. —​­The Dalai Lama Tedeschi and Blevins (2015; cf. Garland et al. 2015a) also argue that mindful­ ness and other types of meditation could instill positive forms of rumination that honor trauma, the old reality, and potentialities in the new reality. Mind­ fulness meditation can be especially good at gaining perspective on the trau­ matic experience and living in the now. It has been shown to be successful in dealing with personal trauma with a standardized technique known as “­mindfulness-​­based stress reduction” (MBSR) being adopted in numerous clinical settings. For instance, mindfulness meditation has had powerful ef­ fects on survivors of complex childhood trauma, with one of the main mech­ anisms being the building of compassion and empathy for others, thus creating better interpersonal relationships (Lord 2013). Here, I’d like to situate mindfulness meditation into its larger Buddhist context especially to show how it is related to the critical concept of mudita (sympathetic joy) and how it can be mobilized to metabolize anger into a

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productive force (McRae 2015). Like most Buddhist concepts mudita will not translate (linguistically or conceptually) neatly into this type of academic writing. The Buddha taught the following to his son Rahula: Rahula, practice loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding any­ thing in return. Practice compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the ca­ pacity to remove the suffering of others without expecting anything in return. Practice sympathetic joy to overcome hatred. Sympathetic joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes oth­ ers ­well-​­being and success. Practice ­non-​­attachment to overcome prejudice. ­Non-​­attachment is the way of looking at all things openly and equally. This is because that is. Myself and others are not separate. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another. (Nhất Hạnh 1991, 17) These four immeasurables (mudita, ­loving-​­kindness, compassion, and nonat­ tachment), nicely referred to as the “Four Applications of Mindfulness” (B. Wallace 2011), are the boundless sublime states of Buddhism, and the Buddha says they will change Rahula into “a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others” (Nhất Hạnh 1991; Salzberg 1995). These four should be considered as a whole as they complement each other: all involve happiness for others while loosening the attachment to the self. The fourth, nonattachment, con­ nects the other three by seeing the self and the other as connected and it is reminiscent of Shiota’s conception of awe (discussed in Chapter 2) with its emphasis on openness combined with a happiness for others. The four immeasurables are clearly related to some of the major root causes of human rights abuses, as they overcome anger, cruelty, hatred, and prejudice. More formally, Buddhist thought considers these the four ­far-​ ­enemies of the immeasurables with the ­far-​­enemy of mudita specifically being jealousy, resentment, or envy, where one is unable to rejoice in the happiness of others. The ­far-​­enemies of the immeasurables arise from being too attached to the ego. In ­non-​­attachment one learns that the ego and the Other are not separate. Good fortune for the Other is good fortune for all and thus, we should rejoice in the good fortune of anyone and not feel envy, jealousy, or

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competition. Nor should we be hypocritical and feign happiness for another and harbor inner envy. Mudita, like Lorde’s erotics, requires experiencing a deep inner joy. Since, “it’s all but impossible to experience happiness for others unless we first de­ velop the capacity to taste it in our own lives, many Buddhist teachers inter­ pret mudita more broadly as referring to the inner fountain of infinite joy” (Cushman 2007). Joy for ourselves and joy for others are reciprocal. Mudita calls for us to serve as a “refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others” and to be drawn to joy in others. “The more deeply we drink from this foun­ tain, the more secure we become in our own abundant happiness, and the easier it then becomes for us to relish the joy of other people as well” (Cush­ man 2007). This cyclical nature of Buddhist joy means that it serves to broaden and build in Fredrickson’s terms and that its affects are near infinite as it en­ gages in an upward spiral driven by inner joy and joy for others. “Let us teach people to seek and to find real joy within themselves and to rejoice with the joy to others! Let us teach them to unfold their joy to ever sublimer heights! Noble and sublime joy is not foreign to the Teaching of the Enlightened One” (Thera 1994). Though it is usually considered the most difficult of the immeasurables to attain, mudita or sympathetic joy can be attained by all individuals. Buddhists, over centuries, have developed a series of techniques for cultivating mudita that usually start by targeting the first two immeasurables through ­loving-​ k­ indness meditation (LKM) and compassion meditation. Each teaches the connectedness of all beings and arouses sympathy for the suffering of the other, despite what we are personally going through. At the same time this meditation loosens ties with the self. This is a type of kenosis, but it is a keno­ sis of connectedness, a connectedness to the flow of reality, an understanding or at least an acceptance of ordinary and extraordinary affects. At the same time, LKM allows us to cultivate love in our selves. It is attaining a great ca­ pacity to be affected and to affect as in Spinoza. This is a slightly different type of meditation than is often practiced. While most Buddhist practices are focused on mindfulness, referred to as shamatha or living in the Now through focus on breath or some other aspect of the loving-​­ kindness and compassion meditation are more intentional body, ­ (Hofmann, Grossman, and Hinton 2011). For instance, LKM asks you to re­ flect on obstacles that keep you closed to others and their suffering, including the enemies of ­loving-​­kindness and compassion: anger and cruelty. Put more positively, LKM “begins with cultivating appreciation of our oneness with

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others through generosity, nonharming, right speech, and right action” (Sal­ zberg 1995, 5). LKM requires an individual to focus first on inner joy then on those moments when we are open to others and their joy. In the meditation session we practice thinking good thoughts for ourselves and for others, that we may be free from emotional and physical suffering. This is very much akin to the deliberate rumination of PTG, but it is aimed t­oward ourselves and others. At first, the individual considers someone that is close to them and for whom they hold great affection. It is easy to wish them well and to find loving qualities. Next, the meditator focuses on someone for whom they have neutral thoughts, and then finally focuses on someone they dislike, in whom it is difficult to find good qualities. The meditator ultimately wishes happiness for those that have done them harm. Early studies on c­ ompassion-​­based and l­oving-​­kindness meditation now show great potential for being an important resource for human rights vic­ tims. Numerous studies have more directly shown that c­ ompassion-​­based or ­loving-​­kindness meditation have had profound impacts on mental and phys­ ical ­well-​­being including reducing severe depression and anxiety as well as increasing calmness and ­self-​­acceptance (for a review see Cheng and Tse 2015). They have also been shown to build better social connections and openness to strangers, and reduce repetitive negative thoughts as found in intrusive ruminations. Some studies have now been directly done with trauma survivors. One study of US military veterans suffering from PTSD showed that ­loving-​­kindness meditation significantly increased ­self-​­compassion and decreased PTSD symptoms (Kearney et al. 2013). To focus on the suffering and joy of others, as taught by these meditation techniques, is an effective way to deal with personal suffering. Finding a space for forgiveness for perpetrators, to realize that they too can become Buddhas, can also serve as a form of healing. An extreme example of this from a Chris­ tian perspective is found in Immaculée Ilibagiza’s (2007) account of being trapped in a small hidden bathroom with several other women and girls for weeks during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Despite the slaughter all around her and hearing of the brutal killings of most of her family, she found an inner space nurtured by meditating on biblical passages. “I knew my bond with God would transcend the bathroom, the war, and the holocaust . . . ​it was a bond I now knew would transcend life itself ” (107). From this place of inner joy she remarkably envisions the killers as children of God who have misbehaved and thus can be saved. “Despite their atrocities, they were children of God, and I could forgive a child, although it would not be easy . . . ​especially when that

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child was trying to kill me” (94). She is ultimately able to offer forgiveness to the killers in part because she has undergone a radical k­ enosis—​­losing mate­ rial goods and her family, as well as shedding her anger and her ­self-​­centered thoughts. She has nothing else left to give them. Further Reflections on Mudita and Anger

Anger (dosa) in Buddhism is a f­ ar-​­enemy of l­ oving-​­kindness or as a klesha, one of the three poisons that prevents us from reaching the four immeasurables. Anger emphasizes attachment to the self and its interests. We cannot reach nothingness or remain in the now, while holding an attachment to anger. Several Buddhist traditions, for instance in Vajrayana or Tantric traditions (Thanissara 2015; McRae 2015), however, find that anger can be transformed and provide resources to be channeled at injustices in the social realm. Through mindfulness we can focus on our anger and accept it for what it is, a part of our self. Through this acceptance and slight detachment, we can deter­ mine whether we have a suitable reason for anger. Thanissara, a leading pro­ ponent of engaged Buddhism, writes in words strongly reminiscent of Lorde, that “women can recognize outrage at its root: the activated energy experi­ enced in their bodies. This energy, when distilled into clarity and wisdom, burns away the dross of s­ elf-​­seeking desires and fears. It cuts through one’s subtle addiction to transcendent, calm s­ tates—​­an addiction all too common among dharma practitioners” (Thanissara 2017). Applying mindfulness to the kleshas like anger, as with ­loving-​­kindness meditation, is a higher order practice because it involves separating out the I, embracing the ­no-​­self (McRae 2015), and giving attention to anger and not attempting to suppress it. Improperly done though, mindfulness about anger risks dwelling or ruminating on it, and can turn to hatred as Audre Lorde worried. We must “catch emotions in the net of mindfulness, and then exam­ ine them before reacting” but if “we harbor or act out of anger, it almost al­ ways poisons us, diminishing our credibility and harming others” (Thanissara 2017). Or as Thích Nhất Hạnh (2001) writes, “When you are angry, you suffer as though you are being burned by the fires of hell. When you feel great de­ spair or jealousy, you are in hell” (3). Two of the major lojongs or mind trainings in the Vajrayana and Ma­ hayana traditions of Buddhism focus on the potential of, and proper methods for, transforming anger into a tool for good. These are the Poison Peacock mind training and the Wheel Weapon mind training (see Sweet and Zwilling 2001). The first verse of the latter reads:

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When peacocks roam through the jungle of virulent poison, Though the gardens of medicinal plants may be attractive, The peacock flocks will not take delight in them; For the peacocks thrive on the essence of virulent poison. (Sweet and Zwilling 2001, 59) According to tradition, the peacock was a rather drab looking bird, until it confronted a nest of poisonous snakes. When the snakes attacked, the pea­ cock was able to dodge the snakes and eat them, poison and all. The poison was metabolized by the peacock and caused it to develop beautiful plumage. In Buddhist thought, the peacock is the symbol of one who can confront and transform the kleshas or poisons. Thus, purification rituals in Buddhism often feature peacock feathers. What was once poisonous now becomes a tool for achieving enlightenment. The key here is the process of “metabolizing” the anger (McRae 2015). The anger is transformed into something that resembles anger but is not, it is “tantric anger.” Just as when we suffer physical ailments, we must take steps for spiritual healing. Indeed, we can take preventive mea­ sures to reduce anger that include mindfulness and ­loving-​­kindness medita­ tion. As Thích Nhất Hạnh said, “Anger is just an energy, and all energies can be transformed. Meditation is the art of using one kind of energy to transform another” (2007, 48). In some Buddhist traditions, the transformation of anger must be fought in an epic battle: “We are to rage against anger” according to the ­eighth-​ c­ entury Indian Buddhist monk Shantideva (S. Harris 2017, 332). Other tradi­ tions claim that anger can be metabolized through more peaceful means: “Mindfulness is you and anger is also you, so you shouldn’t transform yourself into a battlefield, one side fighting the other. . . . ​You only need to recognize that anger is a negative energy and that mindfulness is a positive one” (Nhất Hạnh 2001, 68). Practicing patience, which is developed through mindfulness training as well as compassion for all others, can dissolve anger, or more ac­ curately, transform it into “an overarching deeply ingrained, caring orienta­ tion” (McRae 2015, 474). Thích Nhất Hạnh casts this in flowery prose: “Anything embraced by the energy of mindfulness will undergo a transforma­ tion. Your anger is like ­that—​­it needs to be cooked. In the beginning it is raw. You cannot eat raw potatoes. Your anger is very difficult to enjoy, but if you know how to take care of it, to cook it, then the negative energy of your anger will become the positive energy of understanding and compassion. You can do it. It is not something only a Great Being can do. You can do it, too. You

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can transform the garbage of anger into the flower of compassion” (2001, 29–30). Metabolizing anger furthers our own empowerment. It brings something beautiful like a peacock. We can transform “the heat of anger, and the fever of suffering” into “joy and peace in the here and the now” (Nhất Hạnh 2001, 52). This is a greater joy and peace than if we never felt anger. Being a peacock taps into the erotic power of anger. “Metabolized anger makes use of the desire to harm by recruiting its power and energy into a larger project of beneficence and spiritual/moral development” (McRae 2015, 474). Feeling anger also deepens our “understanding of n ­ o-​­self ” by disrupting our “habitual dualistic patterns of thinking and perceiving” (McRae 2015, 474). In this way, anger resembles and complements joy.

Being with Human Rights Winners I began this work lamenting that human rights as it is generally taught often consists of a litany of abuses followed by deconstructing students’ impulses to help fight these abuses. We rarely dwell on human rights success stories, and we rarely mention the necessity of s­ elf-​­care let alone equip students with re­ cuperative methods. Students often report having difficulty watching human rights films, reading assigned narratives, and discussing sensitive topics. Trig­ ger warnings are now a topic of major concern throughout the university, not just in human rights classes. For many years I have been addressing trauma in my classes, urging stu­ dents to keep journals, seek solace in social networks, in their faith, or through physical activity. When I cover especially sensitive topics like sexual violence on college campuses, domestic violence, or racism, I provide alternative as­ signments, usually more reflective than the original or on a completely differ­ ent topic. In the MA program in Social Justice and Human Rights at Arizona State University, Monica Casper developed a course called Critical Trauma Studies that successfully combined theoretical, narrative, and personal discus­ sions of trauma, in part to address the very real possibility of secondary trauma among our students. Of course, many other human rights faculty rou­ tinely engage in informal counseling for students who undertake difficult in­ ternships or study abroad adventures. Nonetheless, I am disconcerted to find that many social justice or human rights programs and courses, and most ­so-​­called 100 percent community engagement initiatives initiated by univer­

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sity administrators, do not even consider providing such resources. I am con­ stantly amazed that a ­ten-​­question classroom survey in a Psychology 101 class about what students eat for breakfast requires a fairly rigorous review by a human subjects review board, but I do not need approval to take students to a maximum security wing of a local prison or take them to visit a migrant shelter at the ­Arizona-​­Mexico border where all sorts of violence and trauma are likely to be discussed. Despite the very real possibility of vicarious trauma in these programs and experiences, I have also noticed a parallel phenomenon. Students and I can draw sustenance from hanging out with trauma survivors. These human rights winners set indelible examples and remind us that we can handle so much that the world throws at us. There is now a scholarly name for this phe­ post-​­ traumatic growth (VPTG). Mirroring ­ post-​ nomenon: vicarious ­ t­raumatic growth (PTG), VPTG is the growth that individuals experience while hanging out with human rights survivors and others. This is not to say that vicarious or secondary trauma does not exist, but that in these experi­ ences we can also be nourished. The mechanisms facilitating VPTG seem to be nearly identical to those found in studies of PTG. For instance in a study conducted in Australia of caregivers working with trauma and torture survivors, it was found that all seventeen of the respondents reported symptoms of vicarious trauma and all also reported symptoms of VPTG including “forming new relationships, in­ creased ­self-​­understanding, and gaining a greater appreciation of life” (Bar­ rington and ­Shakespeare-​­Finch 2013, 89 ). In this study, the vicarious trauma had disrupted the caregivers’ assumptive worlds and then proactive attempts to find meaning in their work facilitated VPTG (cf. Arnold et al. 2005). Sim­ ilar findings have been reported in studies of interpreters who work with ref­ ugees, who reported “feelings of joy, hope, admiration, and inspiration” (Splevins et al. 2010, 1710). Many caregivers report that they find profound meaning in their work that leads to a greater understanding of trauma and increased appreciation of their lives. “To be able to help such vulnerable peo­ ple, I just feel privileged to be in this job, to be sitting and listening to their stories . . . ​to see them opening up and talk about things. I just feel quite priv­ ileged to be sitting there and listening to their stories” (Barrington and ­Shakespeare-​­Finch 2013, 96). Much of the ­self-​­care literature in social work and related fields is framed in terms of homeostasis, aiming to avoid burnout and compassion fatigue so that health care professionals can continue their job effectively. As with PTG

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though, there is also an opportunity for transcendence, for being truly af­ fected in a positive way by our work. Joy can be found even when working in the most difficult of situations and with the most difficult forms of trauma. David A. Crenshaw (2008), one of the leading experts on play therapy, re­ flected back over his career working with traumatized children in a chapter fittingly titled “Tales of Heartbreak and Joy and Reflections on the Healing Path”: “I feel honored and privileged that my life work entails listening to the stories of countless children; children whose narratives call out for under­ standing; children whose pain requires witnessing; children who long to un­ burden; and whose voices need to be heard. It is the sensitive and delicate work of empathic and relationship healing of the wounded spirits of our chil­ dren. I feel so fortunate; I can’t imagine a calling more rewarding or meaning­ ful” (141). I call for us to embrace the joy of doing human rights work. I encourage professors of human rights to incorporate more joy into their classrooms, for activists to embrace their victories, for victims to seek routes to joy, knowing that everyone’s route to recovery and fullness is different. One of the joys of my life is to meet human rights winners. They serve for me, as Jeremy Regard served for Jacques Lusseyran as springs that I am drawn to and that can be refreshing. Thus, I conclude with testimonies from two good friends who con­ stantly inspire me. I am thrilled that they have the last words in this volume. Jany Deng

My name is Jany Deng. I am a former Lost Boy of Sudan with a story to tell beginning with my childhood in Sudan up to the present time where I am living in Phoenix, AZ and am a father of a beautiful girl named Nya. I was born in 1979 in a small village called Jokau which is located in South Sudan. At that time, the civil war had not yet started. My life was normal; living with my father, brothers and sisters. My mother passed away when I was 6 years old so my father raised us. In 1989, when I was ten years old, my life completely changed due to the Sudanese civil war. The conflict was rooted in economic, cultural, and religious disparities between the north, mainly Mus­ lims and the south, mainly Christians. There were bombings going on all around my village. In many southern rural villages, troops from both sides would wage raids, taking food and killing as many people that they found. Most of the boys became orphans during this time. Many of us avoided cap­ ture or death because we were away from our villages tending cattle at the cattle camps and were able to run and hide in the dense African bush.

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Motivated by the loss of family members and our need to find food and safety from the soldiers, we knew we had to get away. So we started walking, not knowing where we were going It did not seem important at that time to know where were going, we just wanted to get away from the bombings and to be safe. Most of our travel took place in large groups of barefooted boys. On average, the journeys could be up to thousands of miles to the nearest camps. Travel for many lasted two or more years. We had no possessions besides the clothes we were wearing. We depended on the charity of villages as we passed for food, necessities, and treatment of the sick, but most of our travel was in isolated regions with very little contact with others. The oldest boy in the group, who could be as young as ten or twelve years old, led the boys in our group. We were extremely malnourished. We were vulnerable to starvation, dehydration, heat exhaustion, pneumonia, malaria, and other diseases, and had little means for treatment. There were attacks on the boys by lions, snakes and other wild animals. Over half of the 20,000 boys died along their epic journey. Government soldiers attacked us and some were forcibly recruited as child soldiers for the rebel army. After several years on the move, most of us settled in refugee camps in northern Kenya. The United States government decided if anyone in this world was tired, hopeless and poor it was the orphaned boys from Sudan, and they began calling us The Lost Boys of Sudan. There were girls who were orphans but the majority of them were kidnapped and placed into slavery. I was one of the first Lost Boys to resettle in the United States. In 1995, at the age of 16, I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona where I have been living ever since. Almost immediately, I was enrolled in a local high school, which was so different to what I was used to in Sudan. The only language I knew was Nuer. My first task was very difficult but I tackled it. It was to learn English so I could communicate with others and learn my lessons in order to complete my high school education. The next step was to go to community college and after much hard work I graduated with my Associates degree. My goal was to receive a social work degree so I enrolled at Arizona State University, and received my Bachelor’s degree in Social Work. Sports, especially running, have always been a passion of mine. I ran in several marathons but the highlight of my life was when I qualified to run in the Boston Marathon. My dream was to represent the U.S.A. in the Olympics, however, that was never been achieved due to an injury. While obtaining my education, I worked f­ ull-​­time as Program Manager at the AZ Lost Boys Center. This Center was established to offer the Lost Boys a

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place to go for help in their new life in America. As Program Manager, I helped the Boys find employment and was available for counseling with per­ sonal needs. I oversaw the volunteer program and managed the soccer and basketball teams. Currently, I am Program Manager for the Lost Boys Center for Leadership Development (LBCLD). LBCLD works with individuals from the Sudanese community to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to become empowered global leaders who support South Sudan. As Program Manager, I travel to elementary, high school, colleges and businesses through­ out Maricopa County to give presentations on the life of the Lost Boys and my own life journey. Recently, I returned from New Jersey and Massachusetts where I was invited to tell our story. The motto of the Lost Boys is “Education is our mother and father.” Education is so important to me, which is why I am returning to Arizona State to work t­ owards my Master’s degree in Business. As I look back over my life’s journey, I see where I experienced numerous peaks and valleys. I know God was with me the entire time and surrounded me with His love and strength to enable me to walk through the valleys I en­ countered. There were evil people out there trying to hurt me, however, there were so many kind people who had opened their hearts and hands to help in so many ways in Africa, and especially here in America. It is because of this outpouring of love I received that I want to reach out to others to help them live an enriched and fruitful life. Brooke Elise Axtell

There is no greater joy than knowing our worth as human beings. We learn this worth in community when we are heard, respected, and celebrated. A hunger for human rights is a hunger for our voices, our desires to finally matter. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the Be­ loved Community.” For me, true community is the key to enduring joy. True community moves beyond a mere collection of people tied by similar interests to the creation of sacred space, where I know myself as Beloved. In the end, I find joy in the face of injustice through a return to love, that vast, wild compassion that includes us all. It is the restoration of connection when connection has been severed. It is the great remembering of who we are, our unconditional value and dignity. The war waged against my basic human rights taught me to reverence the power of radical intimacy, the kind of relationship that bears luminous wit­ ness and shows me I no longer have to carry my pain alone.

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Radical intimacy with other survivors helped me transmute my pain into healing wisdom and soul medicine. This is the irresistible alchemy of walking our path together. When I face human rights violations in my work as an advocate, it is my community that reminds me it is safe to grieve, to have my heart broken open and, then, to laugh again, to let all the emotions of being human pass through me. Happiness depends on circumstances. Enduring joy is closer to aliveness, a willingness to be with all that is and still sing because I know love will have the last word. As a woman who has overcome child sex trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence, my path to joy has been a path of ­self-​­definition. As poet and activist Audre Lorde said, “If I did not define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” Abuse taught me that other people’s fantasies for me could consume and destroy me. Telling the truth about my life saved me from that erasure. Here is how I define myself. I am not a victim or even merely a survivor. I am a leader, poet, performing artist, and human rights activist deeply devoted to helping women and girls reclaim their worth. Joy is my birthright and my resistance. I am a woman who has learned my pleasure is sacred, my worth undeniable and my untamed laughter is part of what makes me a force of nature. When I am in circle with survivors of human trafficking, I do not ask them what they are grieving. I ask them what they are celebrating. We have made our peace and danced with our sorrows. Now is our time to rise.

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NOTES

Chapter 1 1. Joy of the worm refers to a line from Antony and Cleopatra where a clown lectures Cleo­ patra as she contemplates suicide by the bite of an asp, referred to as a worm in the play, and bids her farewell by wishing her the joy of the worm. For more on clowns/jesters as sage advisors and ­counter-​­hegemonic forces, see Chapter 4. 2. Primo Levi (1988) wrote of Améry’s defiance during the camps ­toward another prisoner and afterward: “I admire it, but I must point out that this choice, protracted throughout Améry’s ­post-​­Auschwitz existence, led him to positions of such severity and intransigence as to make him incapable of finding joy in life, indeed of living” (110). 3. Surprisingly, Langer and other historians were required to do some initial ground clearing to argue for the importance of Holocaust testimonies for the work of professional history. I share Langer’s bewilderment that “oral testimony . . . ​for a long time was held in low esteem by those who argued that evidence of atrocity based on memory was an untrustworthy origin for histor­ ical truth and that it could not equal the intrinsic reliability of written documents” (Langer 2006a, 298; see also Bauer 2001, esp. 14–38; Browning 2003). Langer suggests “perhaps the psy­ chological burden of prolonged contact with such material may have strengthened the idea of its questionable value” (2006a, 300). Langer praises Charlotte Delbo for attempting to find a linguis­ tic idiom to describe the “deep memory” of her experiences during the Holocaust (305). Finally, I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for urging me to consider Langer’s work on trium­ phal Holocaust narratives silencing the experiences of so many victims. 4. Dan Baker, a psychologist who formerly directed the Life Enhancement Program at Can­ yon Ranch, a few blocks from our home in Tucson, Arizona, supervised a survey of scholarly articles on mental health. His team “found 54,000 studies on depression and only 4­ 15—​­less than 1%—​­on happiness” (Corliss 2003). Such numbers have been partially reversed by the rapid rise of positive psychology. 5. For instance, Chapter 7 begins with a long vignette on Jacques Lusseyran, “the blind poet of Buchenwald.” Audre Lorde, who was visually challenged as a child, is featured, and Joan Waste, a blind English martyr, is mentioned. I was strongly tempted to explore the role of joy in the work of renowned Hopi carver Brian Honyouti who is legally blind (Pearlstone 2012). Sightlessness as ­anti-​­empirical and therefore a­ nti-​­rational was a common trope throughout the Enlightenment as will be pointed out below in the writings of Locke and Hume. Most blatantly the trope is used as a pejorative in Diderot’s ­anti-​­Cartesian work “A Letter About the Blind for Those Who Can See.” It is also common to refer to the transcendent in terms such as a “blinding bedazzlement”

240  Notes to Pages 22–36 (Levinas 1999, 4). For a defense of the concept of vision in philosophical works see Martin Jay’s Downcast Eyes, which bemoans the denigration of vision in contemporary philosophy. Here, I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to several excellent eye surgeons (Drs. Jaimie Gaitan, Mingwu Wang, Todd Altenbernd, Cameron Javid, Ofer Eytan, and Scott Sneed), who performed six in­ tricate eye surgeries on me and guided my messy recuperation, thus keeping me from the ranks of the sightless.

Chapter 2 1. Shouse (2005), for instance, following Massumi’s and Deleuze’s readings of Spinoza, makes a very helpful typology of these closely related concepts. Anderson (2006) rightly points out, “The three modalities slide into and out of one another to disrupt their neat analytic distinc­ tion” (737). Ahmed (2010) also worries about sharp distinctions, because “the distinction be­ tween affect/emotion can ­under-​­describe the work of emotions, which involve forms of intensity, bodily orientation, and direction that are not simply about ‘subjective content’ or qualifıcation of intensity” (230). 2. See also Michel Henry’s (1973) phenomenology of affectation, which places a privileged role for joy (and suffering, and the oscillation between them). 3. Siegworth and Gregg (2010) usefully distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary affects. Cf. Levinas’s (1978) phenomenology of the nameless background of existence as the il y a (the “there is”). 4. Perhaps the extreme of this view is seen in several interpretations of the Marquis de Sade’s work, where the repetitive violence even in search of the greatest intensity produces apathy at least upon the reader. MacKendrick (1999) writes, “Even the most patient (or perverse) reader is likely to be moved to great weariness at the notion of yet another detailed portrayal of yet another vigorous ‘embuggering’ by yet another oversized male member” (48). 5. Inexplicably the authors then make an odd choice for the conceptual definition of joy. “We use the term ‘amusement’ to refer to the emotion evoked by humorous material and ‘joy’ to refer to the emotion brought about by ­well-​­being, success, or good fortune” (Herring et al. 2011, 211). In another study the authors write, “Two reviewers expressed their reservation concerning the label Joy for a scale comprising the items ‘excited,’ ‘enthusiastic,’ and ‘proud.’ We acknowledge that this label may be suboptimal, but we are unable to offer a term that captures the common content of the three items in a more satisfactory way” (Egloff et al. 2003, 531). 6. Herring et al. (2011) defined joy as: “­well-​­being, success, and good fortune.” Another defined it “people’s achievement of desirable goals and pleasant and free feelings”; while another defined joy using three variables, “excited,” and “proud,” and “enthusiastic” (Egloff et al. 2003). Bracke (2001) used s­ elf-​­reported questions that included such items as “I am happy to be alive”; “In the morning I look forward to what the day will bring”; and “Sometimes I can r­ eally enjoy myself ” (228). A brain activity study of joy had the subjects read “such sentences as: I won a lottery, I won at gambling at a casino, I ate my favorite cake, I had a date with my girl/boy friend, I received a Christmas present, and I went to Hawaii with my friends” (Takahashi et al., 2008). 7. Freud (1930) critiques this “oceanic feeling” as a “primitive e­ go-​­feeling” which results from the infant’s inability to separate itself from the mother’s breast, to continue to hold that the world remains its own. It has not separated from the world and seen it as it is, a world full of objects. Marcuse dissents (1966, 168–171). 8. Interestingly, their measure of joy was not significantly related to need for cognitive clo­ sure. However, the ­six-​­question scale they used for joy was closer to the concepts of happiness or

Notes to Pages 36–61  241 experiencing positive events in life than what I have labeled joy in this work (Shiota, Keltner, and John 2006, 70). 9. Scott Wilson (2008) usefully attempts to distinguish jouissance from joy in Lacan’s work. He writes that “joy is the cry, the squeal, of jouissance captured, coiled, and divided in the rings of the Borromean knot” (5). Here Wilson is attempting to distance his “order of joy” from the systematized and institutionalized jouissance of Lacan’s followers, especially that of Lacan’s ­son-​ ­­in-​­law ­Jacques-​­Alain Miller. Joy and jouissance in Lacan’s formulation must remain fluid, uncap­ tured, undivided, and unsystematized. This insight helpfully haunts my analysis. Also haunting is Grace’s (2012) analysis on Lacanian accounts of jouissance, especially through the key concept of the sacred/sacrificial victim to problematize the seemingly intractable interconnection be­ tween gender and victimhood. Most helpfully for my project, she critiques previous uses of La­ canian jouissance for their “muscular celebration” of carnivalesque transgressions (2012, 4). 10. Perhaps the only thing that scholars agree on about Lacan’s thought is that jouissance is untranslatable from the French (see Gallop 1984). 11. The manipulation of jouissance or strong affects for political means has been discussed in several theoretical works, some of which call for the introduction of strong affects or “good en­ counters” to push the ego off course (see Anderson 2006 and numerous articles by Nigel Thrift). 12. MacLachlan (2010) cautions against labeling some resentments as reasonable or unrea­ sonable: “A theoretical measure designed to revalue emotional expressions of moral protest may result in the exclusion and silencing of those with the most serious wrongs to protest” (424). 13. For instance, in a fecund ethnographic analysis, Soldatenko (2011) describes the social erotics of the barrios in Los Angeles. It “is a testament to the social power that is possible through collective action and c­ o-​­operation. Even with all its limitations, la vida loca offers us a glimpse of not only the frustration and anger harbored in the barrio, but also at its hope and willingness to love, at least each other, regardless of the circumstances” (211; cf. Holland 2012).

Chapter 3 1. Ehrenreich (2006) points to several major factors for the demise of collective joy in the modern world, including rationalization, asceticism as found in Calvinism and Wahhabism, imperialism, and a p ­ ost-​­Reformation collective melancholy. Ehrenreich argues that these move­ ments were aided by elites who banned ecstatic rituals and carnivals to suppress revolutionary spirits. These factors clearly played a role in the demise of joy, but further analysis is needed to understand the sharp separation between joy and human rights, especially the philosophical divide that took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is not merely that various actors and movements sought to elide joy, but that the very structure of the liberal state built upon rights is anathema to joy. 2. Simon Wiesenthal’s powerful and visceral book Every Day Remembrance Day even syn­ ecdochizes every day of the year. It is a “chilling calendar of horrors” that equates nearly every day of the year with human rights abuses against the Jewish people. “Items from diverse centuries are clustered under the dates on which they occurred: on August 23, for instance, we find the massacre of the Jewish population of Koric, Ukraine, in 1648 and a Gestapo shooting of 16 Jews in 1942. Astounding in scope, horrifying in content, this calendar vividly rescues victims from statistical oblivion” (Chase 1987, 116). Such accounting intended to rescue victims from oblivion risks reifying persecution and victimization as dominant and quotidian facts of life. 3. Dershowitz’s proposal is ultimately a historicist casuistry that is easily refuted by what Kant called the “melancholy haphazardness” of facts, “the intractable, unreasonable stubbornness of

242  Notes to Pages 61–66 sheer factuality” (Arendt 1968, 243). In another context, I wrote, “If the universal human rights that we hold so dear are drawn from the current concrete facts, we must ask whether the same universalism would have evolved under a different set of facts, such as a hypothetical victory of Nazism or Stalinism. Likewise, if the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) had been drafted 150 years previously, would it have included Article 4’s denunciation of slavery or Article 2’s prohibition of discrimination based on ‘race, color, sex, language, religion, etc.’?” (Simmons 2011, 8). 4. The murky origin of human rights spurs contentious academic debates. Lynn Hunt’s thor­ ough scholarship (2007) pinpoints the origins of human rights in the phrase droits de l’homme (rights of man) with Rousseau’s Social Contract in the 1760s. She focuses on Voltaire’s and Rous­ seau’s response to the mostly public torture and execution practices in England and France. My analysis of martyrs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (see Chapter 6) is largely conso­ nant with her work. Zaret (2007) moves the “nascent doctrine of human rights” (47) back until the English Civil Wars, especially with the right to petition as epitomized by the Levellers. In addition to political and economic changes, Ishay (2004) emphasizes religious intolerance and brutality as major catalysts for human rights. Moyn (2010) tellingly is dismissive of Hunt’s work, and only mentions Locke and the Enlightenment in passing before arguing for the beginnings of modern human rights in the 1970s. 5. Incidentally, Potkay (2007) calls Locke’s definition of joy the “best concise definition” of the concept, although it bears little semblance to my phenomenology in Chapter 2. Locke writes, “Joy is a delight of the Mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching pos­ session of a Good” (Locke 1690, chap. 20, para. 7; quoted in Potkay 2007, 4). My use of the term has much more in common with Shaftesbury’s conception of enthusiasm outlined below. 6. For an important critique from a critical disabilities studies perspective of this community of c­ orrect-​­reasoning subjects making decisions based on ­self-​­evidence, see Arneil (2009). 7. Though it does not appear to have been in Locke’s library (see Harrison and Laslett 1971), it is safe to assume that Locke was quite familiar with the book. Knott (1993) shows how Foxe’s work had wide influence, including on Lilburn, Milton, Bunyan, and Fox. He relates an anecdote about Bunyan that his library supposedly consisted of two books, the Bible and Foxe’s (179). 8. For a recent lively debate about the validity of this functional argument for religious tol­ eration see Waldron (1988), and his many critics such as Tate (2010) and Vernon (1997). 9. Cf. Chaplin’s (2001) argument that Hobbes, Locke, and Burke all established liberal prin­ ciples in opposition to a sense of dread of the sublime, especially the feminine sublime. “They are concerned, not only with the annihilation of the self, but with the destruction of civil society and the institution of property, the latter of which is deemed essential in the eighteenth century to the identity of the legal subject. The object of dread for these writers is most often the revolu­ tionary mob, or, in more abstract terms, the ‘state of nature,’ both of which threaten the security of the male ­property-​­owning subject and his social world” (202). 10. Interestingly for this volume, Voltaire, on the other hand, famously grounded toleration on irrationality or at least the limits of rationality. Toleration “is the natural attribute of humanity. We are all formed of weakness and error: let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly. That is the first law of nature” (quoted in Ishay 2004, 81). 11. Hall continues: “Whereas one finds arguments at every turn that the use of reason is crucial to politics, one must look long and hard to find an argument that the use of passion is crucial to politics. . . . ​If passions or desires are discussed at all, it is usually as a s­ ubject-​­matter that politics exists to manage” (2002, 735).

Notes to Pages 70–87  243 12. The links between enthusiasm as hyperpresence and various strands of modern “conti­ nental” philosophy such as ­Jean-​­Luc Marion’s (2002) phenomenology of saturated phenomena are unmistakable and not too surprising as they share common roots in Descartes’s “idea of the infinite” from the Meditations. Shaftesbury described enthusiasm as “too big for the narrow human vessel to contain” while t­ wentieth-​­century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas described the idea of the infinite as “a thinking that finds itself thinking more than it can embrace, the blinding bedazzlement of the gaze by an excess of light and a bursting of knowledge in adoration” (Levinas 1999, 4). 13. Interestingly, the Earl of Shaftesbury was recently cited on this point by US appeals court Judge Bea in dissent in a case that upheld an injunction against Arizona’s infamous a­nti-​ ­immigrant SB 1070. “In the year 1709, Anthony Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, wrote, ‘Twas the saying of an ancient sage that humour was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit’ ” (United States v. Arizona, 641 F.3d 339 (9th Cir. 201l)). 14. Shaftesbury like Foxe before him finds great benefits ultimately in the public martyr­ doms of reformers. “It was a happy thing for us that when popery took over, Smithfield was used in a more tragical way” (Shaftesbury 1999b, 22). 15. Ehrenreich (2006) nicely limns the various ways that Protestantism and other reforms cracked down on festivals, and joyful groups. She quotes Stallybrass and White (1986) that “there were literally thousands of acts of legislation introduced which attempted to eliminate carnival and popular festivity from European life” (Ehrenreich 2006, 99). Indeed, joylessness was a major component of several prominent religious orders of the time. “The most urgent task” of Calvin­ ism, Weber wrote, was “the destruction of spontaneous impulsive enjoyment”; and John Bunyan famously strived for a “­fun-​­free life” (Ehrenreich 2006, 144). However, Ehrenreich errs here by equating carnivals with joy as will be discussed in Chapter 4, and dismissing a vibrant discourse on joy found in ­non-​­Calvinistic Protestantism (see Potkay 2007, chap. 3). 16. Within a couple of weeks the anxiety was replaced by joy in large part due to the Polly­ annic vision in journalist/propagandist William Laurence’s writings downplaying the horrors of atomic weaponry and raving about the potentials of atomic energy, and the war department’s successful attempts to minimize the reporting of the ghastly effects of radiation sickness. 17. For a truly chilling account of the reception of the Diary, see its use to indoctrinate school children against the US in ­twenty-​­­first-​­century North Korea (M. Wallace 2004). 18. Kertész (2001) nicely counters this transcendent view of the Holocaust: “I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life (whether in the private sphere or on the level of ‘civilization’ as such) and the very possibility of the Holocaust. Here I have in mind those representations that seek to establish the Holocaust once and for all as something foreign to human nature; that seek to drive the Holocaust out of the realm of human experience” (270). 19. Nevertheless, a wonderful recent book by high school history teacher Matthew Rozell documents how American troops liberated a death train near Magdeburg, Germany, in the wan­ ing days of the war with approximately 2500 survivors from ­Bergen-​­Belsen. Rozell (2016) in­ cludes testimonies of survivors and liberators and documents how he and his students brought them together for emotionally charged reunions decades later. The book includes ­now-​­iconic pictures of the liberation including an image of shocked survivors running ­toward the American troops once they realized they had been saved.

244  Notes to Pages 87–99 20. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer echoes Benigni’s concerns when discussing his 2012 film The Act of Killing about mass killings in 1960s Indonesia, which features reenactments of the killings by the perpetrators: “I consider it axiomatic that the past, the unspeakable reality, the unspeakable real of what they did, the horror of what they did, is beyond our g­ rasp—​­it is in the past and the past itself is beyond our ­grasp—​­and yet it still exerts its terrifying force in the pres­ ent. If I were able to create through ­re-​­enactment with these men a realistic portrayal of what happened in the past, one that truly is adequate to what happened, not only would that somehow be insane and wrong, it would be a meaningless thing to attempt” (2014a, 417). 21. I focus here on Peary’s claim that life cannot be beautiful for those who survived the Holocaust, but many have also shown how there can be a spiritual meaning in the Holocaust without trivializing the events (see Melnick 1995). 22. Upon awarding the Medal of Freedom to Gerda Weissmann Klein in 2011, President Obama remarked: “She has taught the world that it is often in our most hopeless moments that we discover the extent of our strength and the depth of our love” (White House 2011). 23. When interviewed, Kertész (2002) directly connected his Auschwitz experience to hap­ piness: “I experienced my most radical moments of happiness in the concentration camp. You cannot imagine what it’s like to be allowed to lie in the camp’s hospital, or to have a ­10-​­minute break from indescribable labor. To be very close to death is also a kind of happiness. Just surviv­ ing becomes the greatest freedom of all.” 24. The ­only-​­­in-​­Las Vegas scene shows two Auschwitz survivors, Firestone and Elly Gross, reflecting on life and joy in an indoor gondola ride in the Venetian Hotel. While the gondolier serenades them with “Volare,” Gross explains that she cannot enjoy the song “because I remem­ ber for so many youngsters, who were perished and they can’t enjoy this beautiful place.” Fires­ tone responds: “But you know, you survived. You’re alive. How can you not have pleasure out of the fact that you survived?” Gross says, “Always I remember the children screaming, the selec­ tion. You know, that is like in our shadow. You cannot forget. I do not live in the shadows, but the shadows follow me all my life” (Pearlstein 2016).

Chapter 4 1. Though mostly tangential to human rights, at least as it has been traditionally conceived, Rebecca Solnit’s Paradise Built in Hell finds joy, which she describes as “an emotion graver than happiness but deeply positive,” in the aftermath of such tragedies as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Halifax munition explosion of 1917, and the attacks of 9/11. She recalls the writings of philosopher William James who was teaching at Stanford University at the time of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. James learned from the tragedy’s aftermath that society does not fall into chaos, but an orderliness is soon created and the survivors shared an equanimity and “temper of helpfulness.” Seemingly intractable divisions of class and race were lifted as a new civic spirit rose up in what Solnit refers to as a beloved community or even a moment of carnival. Unfortunately, such a positive grassroots feeling is often quickly tempered by the official pro­ nouncements that seek to set the proper emotional tone for the aftermath. This can even be an “elite panic” as was apparent in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Solnit points to the amazing acts of heroism and the amount of solidarity and pride that was common among those stranded in New Orleans, but such acts were quickly displaced in the public imagination by news reports that repetitively focused on the same transgressions by survivors. This refocusing confirmed elites’ beliefs about the survivors and reinforced a narrative that New Orleans had devolved into a Hobbesian state of nature or postapocalyptic Mad Max scene. Such beliefs exacerbated the

Notes to Pages 99–144  245 massive tragedy as bridges that could easily serve to evacuate the citizens were blocked by police (Simmons and Casper 2012). 2. Shepard (2011) quotes from an interview he conducted with the groundbreaking scholar of social movements Frances Fox Piven: “All these political veterans who portray themselves and their lives as bitter struggles, as virtually martyrdom, even though the struggle part might have been only a year or two. They are not telling the truth. They did it because they wanted to and because it was so joyful and so satisfying. . . . ​It’s a lot of fun to act with your comrades” (259). 3. The New Carpa Theater in Phoenix, Arizona, founded by my good friend James E. Garcia, similarly draws upon Teatros de Carpa for inspiration. James has written, directed, staged, and acted in wonderful political farces, i­n-​­­your-​­face social justice plays, and works that recall often forgotten events in Mexican American history (see https://www.newcarpa.org/).

Chapter 5 1. Penttinen (2013) provides a useful corrective though to the emphasis on victimization or perpetrators in accounts of wartime experiences of women. She finds joy, healing, ­loving-​ ­kindness, and resilience in wartime narratives from disparate contexts. 2. As evidence of this widespread guilt the authors state that 30 percent of Vietnam veterans were suffering because of acts they perpetrated and in one study “a psychiatrist who dealt with German soldiers assigned to shoot civilians early in World War II estimated that 20% of the soldiers on such duty suffered psychiatric problems such as anxiety, depression, and sleep disor­ der, and many others suffered physical complaints such as vomiting and other gastrointestinal disturbances” (Baumeister and Campbell 1999, 212). Of course, these figures beg to be inter­ preted in the opposite way; for example, that 80 percent of German soldiers “assigned to shoot civilians early in World War II . . . ​suffered [no] psychiatric problems such as anxiety, depression, and sleep disorder.” 3. Bernstein (2010) attempts to salvage Arendt’s conceptual category of the banality of evil though admitting that the archetype probably did not fit Eichmann, but fit other Nazis and current genocidaires. 4. Though scholars appear not to have compared the pleasures of bullies and bystanders, Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals held that schadenfreude was worse than inflicting suffering directly, because engaging in the evildoing involves a form of competition and is thus earned. 5. I want to publicize a ­little-​­known but hopeful, joyful, and perhaps even miraculous story connected to this particular lynching photo, one that I was blessed to learn firsthand from James Cameron. This lynching took place in Marion, Indiana, on the night of August 7, 1930. That night, a mob of thousands gathered at the Marion county jail demanding vengeance for the killing of a young White man Claude Deeter and the alleged rape of his girlfriend Mary Ball. The mob, with the assistance of sheriff ’s officers, broke into the jail and dragged out two of the per­ petrators, Cameron’s friends, Abe Shipp and Thomas Smith. The mob brutally tortured and killed them before stringing them up in the stately tree when this famous photo was snapped. The crowd then returned to the jail and dragged out and beat a third boy, s­ ixteen-​­­year-​­old James Cameron who had been with Shipp and Smith that night but was not directly involved in the killing. They put a rope around his neck and led him to the lynching tree. As the crowd started to tie him to the tree, an unexplained silence descended, and the crowd parted, inexplicably al­ lowing Cameron with the rope still around his neck to walk back to his second floor jail cell and close the cell door behind him. Cameron survived and was later found guilty of being an acces­ sory before the fact to the crime and served four years in jail. Upon his release he attended Wayne

246  Notes to Pages 144–191 State University and became a leading activist against lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. He founded the American Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, where I had the good fortune to get to know him and meet his wife Virginia. Despite the horrors, Mr. Cameron was one of the most hopeful and quietly joyful men I’ve ever met. Mr. Cameron died in 2006. 6. Luz Arce’s painfully difficult to read narrative The Inferno describes Romo “as massive and greasy, a ferocious dog sicced on opponents and militants. He terrified me” (Arce 2004, 125). Despite his gruesome activities Arce is “inclined to forgive him” because of the way he was scapegoated by the media and former members of the regime.

Chapter 6 1. Bady (2012) writes, “To put it simply, this perspective leaves a great deal outside the frame. For what becomes of the forms of ­dissent—​­say, the hundreds of Egyptian police stations that protesters burned to the ­ground—​­that do not match this model? What of the many sites of protest that were not so neatly arranged in a centrally located and photogenic square in Cairo?” (139). 2. Berko and Erez (2005) borrow Browning’s term “Ordinary Men” to describe the suicide bombers. “The narratives portray suicide bombers as ‘ordinary men’ (and women) whose actions would not have ignited the public fascination had their own planned demise not been the ex­ pected outcome” (605). 3. One failed suicide bomber explained that “she and her girlfriend who was a classmate were preparing homework assignments at her home. They both were bored and felt that ‘there was nothing to do’ and looked for some excitement. Living in a militant town that produced dozens of suicide bombers, they felt they ‘wanted to do something’ and decided that they would volunteer to become shahidas” (Berko and Erez 2005, 611). 4. A study of suicide notes by Korean martyrs protesting the Korean government and US involvement in the country, similarly finds “There is a uniform tunnel vision in almost all the notes. . . . ​There is a poverty of thought, exhibited by the sole focus on permutations and combi­ nations of only one shared trauma: the oppression of military dictatorship and the grasp of US dominion and aggression, and the best solution, suicide as duty for national salvation” (Leenaars et al. 2010, 665). 5. A stark example of incorrect affective forecasting leading to dehumanization and human rights abuses involves Ota Benga, the pygmy kept in a zoo in New York City in 1906. His initial placement there caused consternation especially among activist African American clergy. In the ensuing battle for affect, the hegemonic discourse won out with the New York Times declaring that “A little after the noon hour Benga was allowed to go into the woods. A keeper watched him from a distance. It is doubtful if anyone has ever seen a happier mortal. Grabbing his bow and arrow, he jumped into the thickest of the underbrush and frisked about” (New York Times, Sep­ tember 9, 1906). Another editorial argued that it is “absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation he is suffering” because “they are very low in the human scale.” 6. Kristeva (1982) distances her formulation of the “abject” from Lacan’s petit objet a, but in the context of suicide bombers like Jaradat, there is something of an asymptotic relationship between the two concepts. Jaradat serves as an eruption of the Real into the Symbolic Order as with the abject and it threatens our structures of meaning. Thus, we seek to purify the abject by reducing it to more palatable meaning. The Israeli ambassador reduced Jaradat to a murderer and could not countenance any meaning that would encroach on his understandings. And yet, a trace of Jaradat remains, a surplus of the Real.

Notes to Pages 207–224  247

Chapter 7 1. The first part of this sentence is a thinly veiled critique of Hannah Arendt’s treatment of Jews in her writings on the Eichmann trial. Lozowick (2000) goes too far, perhaps, when he writes, “I am left with no doubt that the witnesses at the Eichmann trial were a nuisance to her” (270). 2. Benzien admitted to using a wide range of torture techniques. ‘’If I say to Mr. Jacobs I put the electrodes on his nose I may be wrong,’’ he testified. “If I say I attached them to his genitals, I may be wrong. If I say I put a probe in his rectum, I may be wrong. I could have used any one of those methods.’’ He was notorious for using a form of waterboarding (Daley 1997). 3. Barbara Schwartz Lee (1988) recounts a similar narrative: “Although Hitler had killed my parents and taken away all my possessions, as long as he permitted me to live, he could not de­ stroy my mind, a mind nourished and strengthened by being reared in a family that cared and loved” (77). 4. The transformation of trauma into joy is at the heart of Carl Milles’s sculpture Man and Pegasus depicted on the cover of this volume. Milles draws upon the legend of Bellerophon, a mythical Greek hero who was able to harness the famous winged horse and use him to defeat the ­fire-​­breathing beast Chimera. Bellerophon, buoyed by hubris, attempted to fly to Mount Olym­ pus to take his place among the gods. Zeus, outraged by his presumptuousness, sent a gadfly to bite Pegasus, causing Bellerophon to fall to earth. Badly hurt, he lived out his mortal days in misery. Milles metamorphizes this tragic narrative. His sculpture captures the moment when the “man” and Pegasus part company to pursue their separate desires, each to soar even higher. The formerly tragic image has become “a symbol of hope and accomplishment” (Des Moines Art Center 1998, 191). 5. Writing this, several years after conducting our research on sexual violence against migrant women and children discussed above, we are now tempted to ­re-​­do the study to include questions about growth, empowerment, and those who assisted the migrants on their journey. By focusing so heavily on their victimizations, we were, in part, reducing them and their journeys. 6. The ­nine-​­item Core Belief Inventory developed to measure disruption of the assumptive world includes such items as Because of the event, I seriously examined my assumptions con­ cerning why other people think and behave the way that they do; Because of the event, I seriously examined my beliefs about my relationships with other people; and Because of the event, I seri­ ously examined my beliefs about the meaning of my life (Cann et al. 2010). 7. For an extreme example of intrusive rumination consider Bataille’s intensive and lengthy meditations on photographs of Chinese torture victims discussed at the end of Chapter 5. Medi­ tating on such violence and brutality raises all sorts of issues of representation of human rights abuses and reminds me of the repetitive viewing that many instructors face as they show the same human rights films semester after semester. How many times can someone watch documentaries about the Holocaust or other genocides without being seriously affected in a negative way? 8. For an especially vivid account of the inability to voice pain through language consider Shahla Talebi’s haunting account of befriending a little girl named Bahareh in an especially brutal Iranian prison in 1983 (Talebi 2016). Bahareh spoke only one word while imprisoned, a distor­ tion of the word “mama,” but she loved music and hummed frequently. Despite not speaking in words, “one could make sense of most of what she said, if one took time to become accustomed to the music of her otherwise silent words and the scope of her language, which was rather min­ imal” (102).

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INDEX

Abel, Lionel, 137 Abernathy, Ralph, 96, 107–8, 110 abject, the, 20, 68, 101, 105, 148, 246n6; Lacan and, 39–40; Lorde’s erotics and, 46; martyrdom and, 190–93; phenomenology and, 36, 46, 53. See also object petit a; surplus Abrams, Kathryn, 99 accommodation, 35, 220 accountability, 77, 78–79 activism. See social movements Act of Killing, The (Oppenheimer), 148, 159–64, 244n20; demonic joy and, 158; sadism and, 19; sinister joy and, 56 Addison, Joseph, 74–75 Adorno, Theodor, 81–82, 89–90, 92; Auschwitz and, 80; authoritarianism and, 141 affect aliens, 53–54, 189. See also affective deviance affective deviance, 189; Lorde’s erotics and, 49; martyrdom and, 171, 194; Palestinian mothers and, 190, 193; suicide bombers and, 191 affective forecasting, 188–90; dehumaniza­ tion and, 246n5 affect theory: anger and, 49–54; anthems and, 108; blindness and, 200; carnival and, 101; clowning and, 116; emotion and, 240n1; empirical psychology and, 30–32; erotics and, 111; expressive arts therapy and, 222; extraordinary affect and, 25–28; hege­ monic discourses and, 56; impact of joy and, 35–36; intensity and, 240n1; Izard and, 32–34; jouissance and, 36–39, 42–45; Lacan’s four discourses and, 39–42; Lorde

and, 46–50; martyrdom and, 177–80; mindfulness and, 228; opponent-​­process theory and, 135–36; playfulness and, 97; post-​­traumatic growth and, 219; sadism and, 148–52; Shaftesbury and, 70; sinister joy and, 56–58; social construction and, 193; social erotics and, 54–55; social movements and, 98; theoretical frame­ works and, 18; transgressive affect and, 24–25; transmission and, 71, 74; tristitia and, 29–30 Agee, James, 80 agency, 178, 195, 204; polyvictimization and, 207, 209; Ahmed, Sara: affect aliens and, 189; collective joy and, 98; intensity and, 240n1; Lorde’s erotics and, 49, 52; Aleichem, Sholem, 92 Alford, Fred, 140, 147, 152, 158; sinister joy and, 156, 167 Ali, Taha Muhammad, 9–10 Alinsky, Saul, 115 Allen, Jafari, 54–56 Allen, James, 144 Allende, Salvador, 150 Améry, Jean, 15–16, 177, 224, 239n2; post-​­traumatic growth and, 221; silencing and, 216 Amnesty International concerts, 108–9 Amsterdam Rebel Clowns, 115 Anabaptists, 176, 180 analyst, discourse of the, 40, 42; jouissance and, 43 anarchism: dancing and, 12–14; nomadic micropolitics and, 102 Angela of Foligno, Saint, 34, 168

276 Index anger: erotics and, 232; Holocaust memoirs and, 16; Lorde’s erotics and, 49–54, 57; mindfulness and, 226–28; rationality and, 66; righteousness and, 202; survivors and, 15 Anglican Church, 65–66, 182; enthusiasm and, 75; superstition and, 74; toleration and, 180 An Intimate History of Killing (Bourke), 146 “An Open Letter to Mohamed Bouazizi” (Sansal), 185 anthems, 108–9 anti-​­Semitism, 17, 136–38. See also Holocaust apartheid, 78, 93–95, 108, 213; victimization and, 217 Arab Spring, 99, 184; martyrdom and, 20, 171. See also Tahrir Square Arendt, Hannah: clowning and, 160; discussion of Jews by, 247n1; perpetrators and, 19; sinister joy and, 133–39, 166. See also banality of evil Aristophanes, 73 Arizona anti-​­immigration fervor, 2 Armenians, 78 Arnon, Yehudit, 22, 88 Askew, Anne, 172, 178, 180 assimilation, 220; impacts of joy and, 35–36; post-​­traumatic growth and, 221 assumptive world, 190, 247n6; clowning and, 116; Congo and, 166; mysticism and, 34; post-​­traumatic growth and, 220–21; winners and, 233. See also symbolic realm atomic weapons, 79–80 Aurelius, Marcus, 71 Auschwitz, 80, 201; Adorno and, 80–82; books on, 80–81; centrality to human rights of, 14; happiness and, 244n23; Holocaust memoirs and, 16; sinister joy and, 132, 135, 167; survivor syndrome and, 215. See also Arendt; Holocaust authoritarianism, 141–42; certainty and, 154; expert companionship and, 222; sinister joy and, 155 awe: epistemic closure and, 42; impacts of joy and, 35–36; Izard and, 33; Lorde’s erotics and, 46–47; philosophy of rights and, 61; post-​­traumatic growth and, 221; Shiota and, 227; sinister joy and, 57 Axtell, Brooke Elise, 201, 203–4, 217, 225, 236–37

Badiou, Alain, 28 Baker, Dan, 239n4 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 100, 103, 105–6, 111; authorized transgression and, 147; carnival and, 100–101; sinister joy and, 151 banality of evil, 19; conceptual category of, 245n3; obedience and, 139–42; rethinking of, 136–39; sadism and, 134–36; sinister joy and, 136–39 Baraghani, Fatimah (Táhirih), 173 Barraza, Salvador, 126–27 Basil, Saint, 114 Bataille, Georges: animality and, 157; ecstasy and, 169; erotics and, 100; Erotism: Death and Sensuality, 149; inner experience and, 106; intrusive rumination and, 247n7; law and, 77; Lorde’s erotics and, 46; sinister joy and, 149, 167–68; “The Story of the Eye,” 158 Baumeister and Campbell, 135–36, 159, 245n1 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 183 Benga, Ota, 246n5 Benigni, Roberto: Adorno and, 90, 92; audience response to, 83; criticisms of, 84–85, 87–90; Diary of Anne Frank and, 85–86; elision of joy and, 11, 19; 22; humor and, 90–92; poetry after Auschwitz and, 81–82 Benzien, Jeffrey, 211, 247n2 Berlin Wall, 11, 110 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 44–45, 147 Bertelsen and Murphie, 29–30 Bey, Hakim, 102 Biko, Stephen, 108 Birkenau, 22 Black Cubans, 54–55 Black freedom festivals, 104 Black Power movement, 108 Blindfold’s Eyes, The (Ortiz), 210 blindness, 22, 195–201, 239n5; enthusiasm and, 63, 67; rationality and, 22 body: Bakhtin and, 106, 111; carnival and, 101; clowning and, 116; extraordinary affect and, 27–29; martyrdom and, 178, 180; sinister joy and, 167; Spinoza on, 55–56; symbolic realm and, 170; torture and, 224; transgression and, 110; victory through medium of, 177 Bogad, L. M., 103

Index 277 Bonner, Edmund “Bloody,” 174, 179–80 Book of Common Prayer, 65 Book of Martyrs (Foxe), 174–77, 179–80; religious toleration and, 64 Borromean knots, 42, 241n9. See also jouissance Bouazizi, Mohamed, 22, 171, 182–85; social construction and, 193; symbolic realm and, 190 Bourke, Joanna, 146–48 Braght, Thieleman J. van, 176, 180; religious toleration and, 181 Braschi, Nicoletta, 83–84 broaden-​­and-​­build theory, 21, 222–23, 228; impacts of joy and, 35; Jacques Lusseyran and, 200 Brooks, Mel, 82 Browning, Christopher, 134, 246n2 Broyles, William, 146, 148 Brudholm, Thomas, 15 Buber, Martin, 34, 105, 196 Buchenwald, 20, 195–201 Buck v. Bell (1927), 67 Buddhism, 226–32; martyrdom and, 172–73; mindfulness and, 227, 229; no-​­self and, 34; winners and, 20 bullying, 133, 143–46, 245n4 Bunyan, John, 242n7, 243n15 Caillois, Roger, 101, 149, 151–52 Calhoun, Lawrence, 219 Calvinism, 98 Cambodia, 150, 158 Cameron, James, 145, 245n5 cannibalism, 158, 167 Caputo, Philip, 148 carnival: activism and, 19; muscular celebration of, 241n9; Nazis and, 153–54; nomadic micropolitics and, 106; Protestant crackdowns of, 243n15; shantytown women and, 212–13; sinister joy and, 151–52; social movements and, 100–105; symbolic realm and, 149 Carnival of Full Enjoyment, 103 Carrillo Rowe, Aimee, 55 Casaldáliga, Pedro, 128 Casper, Monica, 8n3, 232 Catholicism: enthusiasm and, 74, 181; liberation theology, 121–25; martyrdom and, 174, 176; Reformation and, 179;

religious toleration and, 66; Rwandan genocide and, 133, 150; superstition and, 68 cauterization, 194, 217 Čelebići prison camp, 132 certainty, 72, 76, 154; authoritarianism and, 154. See also epistemology Chavez, Cesar, 206 Chile, 109; Romo and, 159–60. See also Pinochet Chinese Cultural Revolution, 150 Christianity: clowning and, 114; ecstasy and, 168; enthusiasm and, 181; Hitler and, 153; jouissance and, 38; martyrdom and, 174–77; mindfulness and, 229; mysticism and, 34 Circus Amok, 115 Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 3–5, 202–3; silencing and, 216 civil rights movement, 19 Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, 102–3 Clarendon Code (1661–1665), 65 closed-​­mindedness, 40; impacts of joy and, 36; jouissance and, 39 Clown Bloq, 115 clowning: activism and, 19; affect and, 25–27; Clowns Without Borders and, 117–21; enthusiasm and, 74–76; hospitals and, 116; jestering and, 114–15; joy of the worm and, 239n1; Life is Beautiful and, 90; Rodríguez and, 112; Romero and, 127; significant role of, 22; social movements and, 100–105; symbolic realm and, 39. See also humor; playfulness Clowns Without Borders, 100, 117–21; activism and, 19; assumptive world and, 116 Coatlicue, La (Rodríguez), 112–13 cognitive closure, 36, 42, 240n8 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 69 collective effervescence, 34 collective joy, 98; social movements and, 241n1 Collins, Patricia Hill, 106 Columbus, Christopher, 131 combat joy, 146–48 communitas, 34, 100, 104–5 compassion, 228 concentration camp syndrome. See survivor syndrome

278 Index Congo, Anwar, 148, 160–64; confessions of, 159; dancing and, 22; sadism and, 19; sinister joy and, 167 coping, 211–13, 215, 218–20 Counter-​­Reformation, 171, 174–77, 179–80; martyrdom and, 20, 194 Crenshaw, David A., 234 Critical Trauma Studies, 232; See also Casper, Monica dance/movement theory, 223–25 dancing, 109; Goldman on, 12–14; Holocaust and, 88–89; Lorde and, 13; Romero and, 127; sadism and, 160–64 Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (Ehrenreich), 98 de la Cruz, Juana Inés, 113 de Las Casas, Bartolomé, 131–32 Delbo, Charlotte, 239n3 Deleuze, Gilles: extraordinary affect and, 25, 28–29; liberalism and, 61; masochism and, 220; sinister joy and, 167 Delić, Hazim, 132 de Man, Henry, 147 demonic joy, 19, 143, 156–59, 166, 179. See also sinister joy Deng, Jany, 234–36 Dershowitz, Alan, 61, 79, 241n3 Descartes, René, 243n12 Des Pres, Terrence, 86, 195 Diary of Anne Frank (Frank), 85–86 Diderot, Denis, 239n5 Diem, Ngo Dinh, 173 Diogenes the Cynic, 114 disappearances, 22, 78, 210; dancing and, 109; Romero and, 124–25 dissociation, 225–26 Dost, Abdul Rahim Muslim, 107, 201 Douglass, Frederick, 206 dread: enthusiasm and, 62; liberalism and, 93; passions and, 69; religious toleration and, 63–67 Duong, Natalia, 224 Durkheim, Emile, 34, 156 Eagleton, Terry, 102 Eastern Congo, 158 ecstasy: erotics and, 147; martyrdom and, 169; post-​­traumatic growth and, 221; sinister joy and, 168

“Ecstasy of St. Teresa, The” (Bernini), 44–45 Edict of Nantes, 65 ego, 20; extraordinary affect and, 25, 29–30; Four Discourses and, 41–42; I-​­Thou relation and, 105; jouissance and, 38; mindfulness and, 227; mysticism and, 34. See also self Egypt, 182–85; martyrdom and, 20, 171; symbolic realm and, 190 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 98, 241n1, 243n15 Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt), 19; banality of evil and, 245n3; clowning and, 160; obedience and, 140; sinister joy and, 134–39, 166; treatment of Jews in, 247n1 Eitinger, Leo, 214–15, 219 elision of joy, 1–17; academia and, 5–7; content searches and, 7–10; Goldman and, 12–14; iconic human rights moments and, 10–11; Locke and, 18; personal experi­ ences of, 2–5 El Salvador: Forché and, 217; Romero and, 121–25, 128–29; Romero’s martyrdom and, 125–27 emotion: difference between feeling and affect and, 25–30, 240n1; playfulness and, 97; Plutchik’s wheel of, 32; positive psychology and, 223; social movements and, 98–100; words describing, 9. See also affect theory; elision of joy empirical psychology, 21, 30–32 England: Bill of Rights (1689) and, 66; Civil Wars in, 62, 242n4; martyrdom and, 171, 194; treason trials of 1794 in, 76 enjoyment. See happiness; humor; jouissance Enlightenment era, 62; blindness and, 239n5; elision of joy and, 18; Shaftesbury and, 70; toleration and, 242n4 enthusiasm: anti-​­gravity and, 75–76; Catholicism and, 74; Christianity and, 181; clowning and, 74–75; conception of, 242n5; Four Discourses and, 40; Hume on, 67–70; hyperpresence and, 243n12; impacts of joy and, 35; laws and, 77; liberalism and, 93; Life is Beautiful and, 89; Locke and, 62–63; Locke’s critique of, 66; Lorde’s erotics and, 48; nobility and, 73, 75, 81; rights discourse and, 59–60; Shaftes­ bury and, 70–75. See also passions epistemology: awe and, 42; certainty and, 72, 76 Eritrea, 201, 203

Index 279 eroticism: Battaile and, 100; sinister joy and, 156 erotics: activism and, 19; anger and, 49–54, 232; animality and, 157; anthems and, 108–9; blindness and, 200; body and, 170; carnival and, 103–4; clowning and, 116; communitas and, 105; elision of joy and, 13; ethical joy and, 71; Lorde and, 46–50; martyrdom and, 171, 178; mindfulness and, 228; Rodríguez and, 111–14; social erotics and, 54–55; social movements and, 105–10; transgressive affect and, 24–25. See also social erotics Erotism: Death and Sensuality (Bataille), 149 Escape from Camp 14 (Harden), 144 Estes, Steve, 206 ethical joy, 70–71 execution procedures, 180. See also martyrdom expert companionship, 222 expressive arts therapy, 222–25; clowning and, 120 Farr, James, 75 Fascism, 83, 89; Italy and, 155 father figure, 39–41, 48, 150, 155–56 Feiler, Dror, 191–92 Felipe, Liliana, 111–13 feminicides, 3–5, 202, 216; femininine, the: jouissance and, 25, 43–45; martyrdom and, 178–79, 187, 189; sublime and, 242n9 festivals. See carnival Firestone, Renee, 92, 244n24 Flanzbaum, Hilene, 86, 89 fools, 100–102. See also clowning Forché, Carolyn, 217 forgiveness, 15–17 Foucault, Michel, 61, 77 Four Discourses (Lacan), 39–42 four immeasurables, 227, 230. See also mindfulness Foxe, John, 171, 181, 194; Book of Martyrs, 64, 174–77; influence of, 242n7; subjectifi­ cation and, 178 Frank, Jason, 69, 74, 76 Frankl, Viktor, 218, 219 Fredrickson, Barbara, 35, 200, 222–23; mindfulness and, 228. See also ­broaden-​ a­ nd-​­build theory

French Resistance, 20, 197, 199 Freud, Sigmund, 37–39, 240n7 Fromm, Erich, 142, 152, 156, 160 Gabriel, Peter, 22, 108–9 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 195 Garcia, James E., 245n3 Gaynor, Gloria, 22, 88 genocide, 78, 89; demonic joy and, 158; intrusive rumination and, 247n7; obedience and, 141; sinister joy and, 152; transgression of old laws and, 149–51. See also Holocaust; Rwandan genocide Ghonim, Wael, 183 Glover, Clifford, 22, 52–53 God Grew Tired of Us (Quinn and Walker), 11 Goldhagen, Daniel, 139 Goldman, Emma, 12–14, 22 Goldstein, Donna, 213 Good Old Days, The (Klee, Dressen and Riess), 151 Grande, Rutilio, 123, 126 gravity: enthusiasm and, 75–76; humor and, 70–75; solemnity and, 81, 86, 89, 93, 95 Grese, Irma, 132 Grosz, Elizabeth, 18 grotesque, 101, 111, 116 Grotius, Hugo, 180 Guantánamo Prison, 106–7, 171, 201 Guattari, Felix, 29, 61; masochism and, 220 Habayarimana, Juvénal, 150 Hakudo, Nagatomi, 157 Hall, Cheryl, 66, 242n10 Handel, Georg Frederic, 109 happiness: affective forecasting and, 189; Auschwitz and, 244n23; Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness and, 153; limits of, 57; Lorde’s erotics and, 53; positive psychology and, 17; words describing, 9–10, 31–32 Hardy, Thomas, 76 Harris, David, 224 Hass, Aaron: The Aftermath, 215–16, 218 Hatzfeld, Jean, 157 Haukes, Thomas, 177 Hausner, Gideon, 137–38 hedonic treadmill theory, 223 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 80

280 Index hegemony, 103; affect theory and, 56; laws and, 77; martyrdom and, 178; permissible rupture of, 102; symbolic realms and, 55; transitional justice and, 14 Heinsohn, Gunnar, 150 heroism, 148; Congo and, 160–64; perpetra­ tors and, 166–67; sadism as, 159–60, 163–66 Herz-​­Sommer, Alice, 88 Heydrich, Reinhard, 134 Hezbollah, 186 Hier, Marvin, 92 Himmler, Heinrich, 104, 137, 153 Hinton, Alexander Laban, 158 Hitler, Adolph, 43, 92, 247n3; identity and, 142, 152; personification of evil and, 166; sinister joy and, 155 HIV/AIDS, 103, 118, 158 Hobbes, Thomas, 72 Hochschild, Arlie, 10, 98, 188 Hoffman, Abbie, 115 Holmes, Barbara A., 106 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 67 Holocaust: blindness and, 195–201; carnival and, 151–52; denial of, 89–90; elision of joy and, 19; etiquette discussion of, 86, 195; generic survivor experience and, 225; intrusive rumination and, 247n7; Jewish law and, 150; martyrdom and, 172; memoirs of, 15–17; obedience and, 139–41; oral testimony of, 239n3; polyvictimization and, 207; post-​­Holocaust era and, 79–81; post-​­traumatic growth and, 220; sinister joy and, 131; spiritual meaning in, 244n21; survivor syndrome and, 210, 214; transcendence and, 243n18; transgression of old laws and, 152–53; Wannsee Conference and, 137–38; winners and, 20. See also Arendt; Auschwitz; Life Is Beautiful (Benigni) homeostasis, 135–136, 233 Honyouti, Brian, 239n5 hooks, bell, 71 Höss, Rudolph, 167 Hours After, The: Letters of Love and Longing in the War’s Aftermath (Klein), 88 Huguenots, 65 human rights paradigm shifts, 21–23 Hume, David, 63, 67–70

humor: enthusiasm checked by, 92; Holocaust and, 86, 90–92; Life is Beautiful and, 82, 90–92; martyrdom and, 125, 181; PTSD and, 213; rights discourse and, 59–60; Romero and, 121–25, 128–29; Sachs on, 94; Shaftesbury and, 70–75. See also clowning Hungarian Jewish deportations, 137–38 Hunt, Lynn, 242n4 hypnotic discourse, 42, 48; jouissance and, 43 hysteric, discourse of the, 40, 42 “I AM a Man” protests, 203–6 identity: activism and, 99; Hitler and, 152; jouissance and, 37, 39; Lorde’s erotics and, 46; martyrdom and, 178; multimodal forms of, 46, 50–51; normalization and, 189; obedience and, 142; post-​­traumatic growth and, 221; transgressive affect and, 25. See also self Idris, Wafa, 189 Ilibagiza, Immaculée, 6, 199, 229 imaginary realm: Four Discourses and, 42; jouissance and, 37, 43; sinister joy and, 155; totalitarianism and, 92 immigration: Arizona anti-​­immigrant fervor and, 2, 243n13; migrants in the Arizona desert, 2–5; reform of, 130; sexual violence and, 247n5 Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), 118 Indonesia, 133, 148. See also Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing intensity: affect theory and, 240n1; demonic joy and, 158; phenomenology and, 26–27, 29; ritual and, 212; de Sade and, 240n4 intentionality, 206; feminine jouissance and, 43–45; impacts of joy and, 36; jouissance and, 36, 40; Lorde’s erotics and, 46; non-​­intentionality and, 43–45 interahamwe, 133 International Criminal Court, 78 International Criminal Tribunals, 78; Rwanda and, 132–33; Yugoslavia and, 132 intifada. See Second Intifada Iraq, 182 Irigaray, Luce, 18, 45 Irvine Jr., Weldon, 108 Israel, 186–87; clowning and, 115; suicide bombers and, 191–93

Index 281 Italy, fascism and, 155 I-​­Thou relationship, 34–35, 47, 105, 196 Ivan the Terrible, 114 Izard, Carroll, 32–35, 47 Jackson, Ralph, 205 Jakob the Liar (Kassovitz), 85 James, William, 213, 244n1 Jaradat, Hanadi, 189–94; abject and, 190–93, 246n6 Jay, Martin, 240n5 Jentz, Terri, 201 Johnson, James Weldon, 107 Joseph, Stephen, 218–19 jouissance: Borromean knot and, 241n9; demonic joy and, 158; erotics and, 106; feminine form of, 43–45; Lacan’s Four Discourses and, 39–42; Levinas and, 122; Lorde’s erotics and, 48; martyrdom and, 190–93; playfulness and, 100; Romero and, 128; sinister joy and, 56, 148–52, 155; theoretical frameworks and, 18; transgres­ sion and, 36–39 Kant, Immanuel, 57, 61, 241n3; Critique of Judgment, 30 Kaplan, Suzanne, 207 Kaufman, Joshua, 203 kenosis (loss of self), 206; communitas and, 105; impacts of joy and, 35; martyrdom and, 20; mindfulness and, 230; mysticism and, 34; sinister joy and, 57–58. See also self Kertész, Imre, 86, 91, 243n18, 244n23 Kesete, Semere, 201, 203, 215, 219 Khmer Rouge, 150, 158 King Jr., Martin Luther, 107; activism and, 19; “I AM a Man” protests and, 205–6; mountaintop speech of, 128–29; nonvio­ lence and, 236; pillow fights and, 96–97, 121, 128 King Philip’s War, 182 Klein, Gerda Weissmann, 88, 244n22 klesha (poison), 230–31 Knott Jr., John B., 175–78, 242n7 Kohn, Adolek, 22, 88 Kony 2012 movement, 76 Korman, Jane, 88 Kristeva, Julia, 246n6 Kuhn, Thomas, 21

Lacan, Jacques: body and, 170; Borromean knot and, 241n9; carnival and, 101; father figure and, 48, 150; feminine form of, 43–45; Four Discourses of, 39–42; law and, 77; liberalism and, 61; sinister joy and, 136, 149, 155; transgression and, 36–39; transgressive affect and, 24–25 Lady in Number 6, The: Music Saved My Life (Herz-​­Sommer), 88 Langer, Lawrence, 15–16, 85, 87, 239n3 Lapsley, Michael, 195, 213 Last Laugh, The (Pearlstein), 91–92 Latimer, Hugh, 181 laws, 77–79; transgression of, 150–51. See also norms Lee, Barbara Schwartz, 247n3 Lemkin, Raphael, 78 Lengyel, Olga, 132 “Letters on Enthusiasm” (Shaftesbury), 72, 74 Levi, Primo, 239n2 Levinas, Emmanuel, 80; enjoyment and, 122–23; the idea of the infinite and, 243n12; the Other, 125 Lewes, Joyce, 64 liberalism: dread and, 242n9; elision of joy and, 13; enthusiasm and, 62, 76; impartial­ ity and, 66; laws and, 77; passions and, 67; philosophy of rights and, 61–62; rights discourse and, 59–60; stable order of, 68–69. See also Locke, John liberation theology, 123, 128. See also Romero, Oscar Life Is Beautiful (Benigni): Adorno and, 90, 92; audience response to, 83; criticisms of, 84–85, 87–90; elision of joy and, 11, 19; humor and, 90–92; poetry after Auschwitz and, 81–82 “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (Johnson), 107 lingchi (death by one thousand cuts), 168 Linge, Lotta, 116 Lipman, Steve, 91 Locke, John: elision of joy and, 18; enthusi­ asm and, 62–63; epistemological certainty and, 72; law and, 77; philosophy of rights and, 61–62; rationality and, 69; religious toleration and, 63–67; rights discourse and, 60; rights of man and, 242n4; Shaftesbury and, 70. See also liberalism Lofland, John, 98

282 Index Look of Silence, The (Oppenheimer), 163 Lorde, Audre: anger and, 49–54; blindness and, 200, 239n5; body and, 170; communitas and, 105; dance/movement therapy and, 224; elision of joy and, 13, 17; erotics and, 46–50; ethical joy and, 71; identity and, 99; martyrdom and, 178; mindfulness and, 228; “Power,” 52–53; Rodríguez and, 113; self-​­definition and, 237; sinister joy and, 57, 156; social erotics and, 54–55; transgres­ sion and, 111; transgressive affect and, 24–25; “Who Said It Was Simple,” 51–52; Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, 112. See also erotics loving-​­kindness, 21, 228–31 Lozowick, Yaacov, 138–39, 247n1 Lusseyran, Jacques, 206, 234; blindness and, 195–201, 239n5; resilience and, 213; silencing and, 216; winners and, 20 lynchings, 144, 245n5 Magic Lantern theater, 115 Man and Pegasus (Milles), 247n4 Mandela, Nelson, 19, 22, 93–94 Mansour, Abdel Rahman, 183 March on Washington (1963), 107 Marcuse, Herbert, 46, 105, 240n7 martyrdom: affective forecasting and, 188–89; affect theory and, 177–80; benefits of public forms of, 243n14; ecstasy and, 169; erotics and, 170–71; examples of, 20; Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and, 174–77; Korean suicide notes and, 246n4; Middle East and, 182–85; Palestine and, 186–87, 190–94; religious toleration and, 63–67; Romero and, 125–27; Shaftesbury and, 74; social construction of, 160, 171–74; toleration and, 180–82; women and, 178–79, 187, 189 Martyrs Mirror (Braght), 176 Marx, Karl, 77, 188 Marxism, 98 Massumi, Brian, 28, 240n1 master, discourse of the, 39–43; feminine jouissance and, 45; sinister joy and, 155. See also Four Discourses Matejko, Jan, 114 Mazel, Zvi, 191 Medellín Conference of 1968, 123–24 meditation, 33, 223, 226–30. See also Buddhism; mindfulness

Meister, Robert, 14–15, 21, 81 Mekins, Richard, 180 melancholy, 72–73; haphazardness of facts, 241n3 Menjívar, Cecilia, 207–8 metta. See loving-​­kindness Mexico, 111–14 Middle East, 182–87, 194 Milgram, Stanley, 19, 166; demonic joy and, 156; obedience experiments and, 139–42; sinister joy and, 133–36; taboo and, 147; totalitarianism and, 148 Milles, Carl, 247n4 mindfulness, 121, 226–30 mindfulness-​­based stress reduction (MBSR), 118, 226 Minuteman militia, 4 Monseñor: The Last Journey of Óscar Romero (Carrigan and Weber), 127 Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 109 mudita (sympathetic joy), 20–21, 226–30 Munzigura, Adalbert, 157 Murrow, Edward R., 80 Mussolini, Benito, 155 My Lai massacre, 131, 148, 158, 207, 211 mysticism, 33–34, 45. See also ecstasy Nanjing, Rape of, 157–58 National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), 50 Nazi Doctors, The (Lifton), 158 Nazism: carnival and, 151, 153–54; Hanning trial and, 203; martyrdom and, 172; Swing Kids and, 104; torture and, 177; transgres­ sion of old laws and, 152–53. See also Holocaust Nhất Hạnh, Thích, 230–32 Niederland, William G., 214, 219 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 47, 49, 61, 75, 77, 82; Genealogy of Morals, 245n4 Nikolić, Dragan, 132 noble enthusiasm, 73, 75, 81 nomadic micropolitics, 102, 106 nonattachment, 227. See also mindfulness norms, 13, 37–38, 41, 43, 57, 99; carnival and, 101; demonic joy and, 156–59; jouissance and, 190–91; martyrdom and, 178; pleasure principle and, 152–55; transgres­ sion and, 111, 150–51. See also laws Nuremberg trials, 167

Index 283 Nussbaum, Martha, 49, 66 Nyiramasuhuko, Pauline, 132 obedience: Milgram and, 139–42; sinister joy and, 135; taboo and, 147. See also authoritarianism objective discourse. See university, discourse of the object petit a, 39, 44; formulation of the abject from, 246n6; Four Discourses and, 41–42; Palestinian mothers and, 191. See also abject; surplus Occupy Wall Street movement, 19, 103 Oceanic societies (Caillois), 149, 151–52 Oppenheimer, Joshua, 159, 244n20; The Act of Killing, 160–64; demonic joy and, 158 opponent-​­process theory, 135–36, 164 oppression, 49–54. See also victimization Orange, James, 97 Orellana, Irma, 127 orgiastic joys, 133. See also sadism; sinister joy Origins of Totalitarianism, The (Arendt), 138 Ormes, Cecily, 176 Ortiz, Dianna, 210 Other, the: affective deviants and, 189; branding and, 217; ego and, 227; feminine jouissance and, 44–45; Four Discourses and, 41; jouissance and, 38–39; Levinas and, 122, 125; Romero and, 128; sinister joy and, 57; victimization and, 158 Ozick, Cynthia, 85 Palestine, 186–87; clowning and, 115; martyrdom and, 171, 194; mothers and, 190–93. See also Second Intifada Pancasila, Pemuda, 163 Paradise Built in Hell (Solnit), 244n1 Parrott,W. Gerrod, 32 passions: dread and, 69; elision of joy and, 18; enthusiasm and, 76; human rights abuses and, 59–61; laws and, 77, 79; liberalism and, 67, 93; martyrdom and, 64–66; philosophy of rights and, 61; rights discourse and, 59–60. See also enthusiasm Payne, Leigh A., 159–60 Pearlman, Wendy, 99 Pearlstein, Ferne, 91 Peltrona, Tortell, 117, 120 Pentagon, levitation of, 115

People’s Christmas, The (Volksweihnachten), 153 perpetrators: everydayness of, 134; PTSD and, 211–12; reconciliation and, 14; sadistic, 166–67; sinister joy and, 19; theoretical frameworks and, 18; women and, 132–133, 245n1. See also sinister joy persecution: martyrdom and, 64–66; Shaftesbury and, 74. See also victimization phallic jouissance , 44–45 phenomenological psychology, 18, 223; empirical psychology and, 30–32; extraordinary affect and, 25–28; impact of joy and, 35–36; Izard and, 32–34; jouissance and, 36–39, 42–45; Lacan’s four discourses and, 39–42; Lorde and, 47; theoretical frameworks and, 18; transgres­ sive affect and, 24–25 philosophy, 61–62 Piaget, Jean, 35, 220 Pinochet, Augusto, 109; Congo and, 159; new symbolic order of, 160; sinister joy and, 133, 150 Piven, Frances Fox, 245n2 Plato, 38, 61, 80 playfulness, 100–105. See also clowning play therapy, 234 pleasure principle: demonic joy and, 156–59; human rights principle and, 43; jouissance and, 37, 43; Lorde’s erotics and, 55; martyrdom and, 181; new symbolic orders and, 152–55; Palestinian mothers and, 190; sinister joy and, 136, 149 poetry, 80–82, 89–90 Poison Peacock mind training, 230 polyvictimization, 20, 30, 207–10 Portillo, Lourdes, 4 positive psychology, 17, 111, 200, 223, 239n4 post-​­traumatic growth, 30, 211–12, 218–22; anger and, 230–32; broaden-​­and-​­build-​ ­theory and, 222–23; expressive arts therapy and, 222–25; mindfulness and, 226–30; vicarious form of, 233 Post-​­Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 210–13; diagnosis of, 215; mindfulness and, 229; silencing and, 216; survivor syndrome and, 214; victimization and, 207 potentiality: Bakhtin and, 106; extraordinary affect and, 26–27, 29; jouissance and, 39 Potkay, Adam, 70, 242n5

284 Index poverty: liberation theology and, 121–25; Romero and, 126–28 “Power” (Lorde), 52–53 primary emotions, 32 privilege, 51–53, 190 Promise of a New Spring: The Holocaust and Renewal (Klein), 88 Protestants, 65, 181; carnival and, 243n15. See also Foxe, John Puebla Conference (1979), 124 Quảng Đức, Thích, 173–74 queer theory, 98, 113; clowning and, 115 Don Quixote, 40 Rabelais, François 100–101 radical intimacy, 236–37 Ramírez, Lil Milagro, 217 Rancière, Jacques, 202–3 rationality: anger and, 66; blindness and, 239n5; enthusiasm and, 62, 76; extraordi­ nary affect and, 26, 30; liberalism and, 67, 93; Life is Beautiful and, 82; martyrdom and, 65; philosophy of rights and, 61; rights discourse and, 60; Shaftesbury and, 70–72, 75; stable order of, 69; toleration and, 242n10; totalitarianism and, 91 Rault, Jasmine, 111 Rawls, John, 61 Real, the: feminine jouissance and, 44; formulation of the abject and, 246n6; Four Discourses and, 42; jouissance and, 37, 40; sinister joy and, 155 reconciliation, 14–15, 167. See also transi­ tional justice Reformation, 171, 174–77, 179–80; martyrdom and, 20, 194 refrains, 29–30 Regard, Jeremy, 200, 234 Reichart, Johann, 173 releasement, 18, 34, 44 remorse, 159, 164–66 Republic, The (Plato), 38 resentment, 15–17; reasonableness of, 241n12 resilience: clowning and, 118, 120; post-​ ­traumatic growth and, 218–21; PTSD and, 210–13; winners and, 20 Resistencia Creativa, 113 Restaurant Maxim bombing, 186, 189, 191

Restoration era, 171, 179–80 “Return” (Forché), 217 revelation, 62–63 Richman, Sophia, 225–26 Riefenstahl, Leni, 155 rights discourse, 59–60. See also liberalism rights of man (droits de l’homme), 76, 242n4 Robbins, Brent, 34 Robinson, Jacob, 137 Rodríguez, Jesusa, 111–114, 224; activism and, 19; clowning and, 100 Rogers, Natalie, 224 Roman empire, 74, 181 Romanticism, 153 Romero, Oscar: activism and, 19; enjoyment and, 121–25, 128–29; martyrdom and, 125–27; social movements and, 100 Romo, Osvaldo, 19, 159–60, 167; The Inferno and, 246n6 Rosenberg, Alfred, 155–56 Rousseau, Jean-​­Jacques, 77, 242n4 Rubin, Jerry, 115 Ruiz Marrujo, Olivia T., 208 Russell, Bertrand, 130 Rwandan genocide: dancing and, 22; demonic joy and, 156; elision of joy and, 11; forgiveness and, 229; International Criminal Tribunals and, 132–33; norms and, 157; obedience and, 141; polyvictim­ ization and, 207; sinister joy and, 149–51, 167; transgression of old laws and, 150 Sachs, Albie, 19, 93–95, 217 de Sade, Marquis, 157, 240n4 sadism, 131–33, 143; affect theory and, 148–52; banality of evil and, 136–39; combat joy and, 147; Congo and, 160–64; definition of, 152; heroism and, 159–60, 166; new symbolic orders and, 156–59; obedience and, 139–42; perpetrators and, 19; Romo and, 159–60; sinister joy and, 134–36. See also sinister joy Saeed, Khaled, 171, 182–85, 190, 193 Salverson, Julie, 217 Samaritans/Los Samaritanos, 2–3 Sanctuary Movement, 3–4 Sandoval, Chela, 54, 56 Sansal, Boualem, 185 satisfaction (contentment), 31, 107, 123, 128 Scarry, Elaine, 177, 210

Index 285 schadenfreude, 133, 142–47; Nietzsche and, 245n4 Scheper-​­Hughes, Nancy, 211, 213; post-​ t­ raumatic growth and, 218; survivor syndrome and, 214; transcendence and, 213, 221; victimization and, 217; winners and, 20, 217–18 Schindler’s List (Spielberg), 82, 85 Scholl, Hans and Sophie, 172–73 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 143 Scottish Enlightenment, 75 Second Intifada, 171, 186–87; martyrdom and, 20. See also Palestine self: loss of, 157; no-​­self and, 230, 232; Shaftesbury and, 70–71; sinister joy and, 58, 148. See also identity; subjectivity self-​­care, 232–33 self-​­definition, 237 self-​­immolation, 22, 171, 173, 183 self-​­making, 54–55 Seneca, 49 sexual violence, 208–10 Shaftesbury, Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper): Arizona anti-​­immigration dissent and, 243n13; awe and, 47; enthusiasm and, 63, 70–75, 242n5; humor and, 92; the infinite and, 243n12; Life is Beautiful and, 82, 89; Lorde’s erotics and, 48; martyrdom and, 181, 243n14; rights discourse and, 59; solemnity and, 93 Shakespeare, William, 102, 114 Shantideva, 231 Shepard, Benjamin, 102–4, 245n2 Shepard, Matthew, 172 Shin Dong-​­hyuk, 144–45 Shiota, Michelle N., 36, 42, 227 Shipp, Thomas, 145, 245n5 Shoah, 91 Shouse, Eric, 240n1 sightlessness. See blindness Sikkink, Kathryn, 78 silencing, 216–18 Simmons, Irene, 3 Simon, John, 84, 86 Simone, Nina, 108 sinister joy: affect theory and, 148–52; banality of evil and, 136–39; Congo and, 160–64; demonic joy and, 156–59; ecstasy and, 168–69; erotics and, 56–58; impacts of joy and, 35; military battle and, 146–48;

obedience and, 139–42; perpetrators and, 19, 130–33, 166–67; pleasure principle and, 152–55; Romo and, 159–60; sadism and, 134–36, 164–66; schadenfreude and, 142–46; social movements and, 99; transgressive affect and, 25. See also perpetrators Sköld-​­Feiler, Gunilla, 191–92 slavery, 68–69, 206; Lost Boys of Sudan and, 235; martyrdom and, 172. See also trafficking smile of joy (bassamat al-​­farah), 187, 189, 191, 194 Smith, Abram, 145, 245n5 Smith, Robert, 174, 177 Snow White and the Madness of Truth (Feiler and Sköld-​­Feiler), 191–92 Sobrino, Jon, 123, 125 social constructions, 160, 171–75, 181, 185, 193–94 social erotics, 54–55; activism and, 19; carnival and, 103; Los Angeles barrios and, 241n12; social movements and, 105–10; symbolic realm and, 48; transgression and, 111. See also erotics social movements: carnival and, 100–105; clowning and, 19, 100–105; collective joy and, 241n1; emotion and, 98–100; erotics and, 105–10; King’s pillow fights and, 96–97; martyrdom and, 171–74, 182; Piven on, 245n2 Socrates, 73 Soldatenko, Gabriel, 241n12 solemnity. See gravity Solnit, Rebecca, 244n1 Sonnenfeldt, Richard W., 167 South Africa: joy of voting in, 10–11; PTSD and, 212; victimization and, 217. See also apartheid South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 15 Spinoza, Baruch: body and, 55–56; extraordi­ nary affect and, 25–26, 28–29, 200; Lorde’s erotics and, 47; mindfulness and, 228; post-​­traumatic growth and, 30; sinister joy and, 167; theoretical frameworks and, 18 Stańczyk of Poland, 114 state power, 77 Steiner, John M., 141–42, 152, 155, 160 Sting, 22, 108–9 Stoicism, 70–71, 103

286 Index Stone, Dan, 140, 153 Strength Through Joy program (Kraft durch Freude, KdF), 153–54 subjectification, 206; empirical psychology and, 32; martyrdom and, 177–78; torture and, 177; winners and, 202–3 subjectivity: gender and, 179; Izard and, 33; well-​­being and, 31. See also self sublime, the, 57; dread and, 242n9 Sudan, Lost Boys of, 224, 234–36; God Grew Tired of Us and, 11 Suharto regime, 161. See also Act of Killing, The (Oppenheimer) suicide bombers, 171, 186–87; affective deviance and, 191; affective forecasting and, 189; boredom and, 246n3; dancing and, 22; formulation of the abject and, 246n6; martyrdom and, 20, 194 superstition, 68–69, 74 surplus: feminine jouissance and, 44; formulation of the abject and, 246n6; Four Discourses and, 41–42; jouissance and, 40, 43; sinister joy and, 155. See also abject; object petit a survivors: anger and, 15; generic experience of, 225; leadership and, 204; preconcep­ tions/misconceptions about, 226; winners and, 20 survivor syndrome, 207, 210, 214–16, 218 Suu Kyi, Aung Saan, 110 Swing Kids, 104 symbolic realm: agency and, 178; carnival and, 101; clowning and, 115; communitas and, 105; demonic joy and, 156–59; erotics and, 106; feminine jouissance and, 44–45; formulation of the abject and, 246n6; Four Discourses and, 40–42; hegemonic discourse and, 55; jouissance and, 37–39, 43; Lorde’s erotics and, 48; martyrdom and, 194; new symbolic orders and, 152–55; Palestinian mothers and, 190–91; post-​­traumatic growth and, 220; rupture of, 181; sinister joy and, 56, 149; taboo and, 157; transgressive affect and, 25. See also assumptive world Syria, 99, 182 taboo, 147–49, 157; demonic joy and, 158; sinister joy and, 166–67 Tahrir Square, 183, 185. See also Arab Spring

Teatros de Carpa (tent theaters), 112, 245n3 Tedeschi, Richard, 219, 222, 226 Telesca, Paola, 110 Temporary Autonomous Zones, 102 Teresa, Saint, 44, 55, 147 Tertullian, 181 Thanissara, 230 theater of the oppressed, 217 Tiananmen Square, 181 Till, Emmett, 172, 184 “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (Irvine Jr. and Simone), 108 toleration, 180–82; Enlightenment era and, 242n4; martyrdom and, 63–67, 180–82, 194; rationality and, 242n10 Toleration Act of 1689, 66 Tomkins, Silvan S., 116 torture, 177, 210, 224; Benzien and, 247n2; intrusive rumination and, 247n7. See also sinister joy totalitarianism, 90–91, 148; imaginary realm and, 92; sinister joy and, 136, 138, 155 trafficking, 76, 203–4, 237; images of, 203–4. See also slavery Train de vie (Mihăileanu), 85, 90 transcendence: body and, 170; erotics and, 56; Holocaust and, 243n18; martyrdom and, 194; post-​­traumatic growth and, 221; PTSD and, 213; self-​­making and, 54; winners and, 234 transgression: affect theory and, 24–25; anger and, 49–54; Bakhtin and, 106, 147; body and, 110; carnival and, 101; combat joy and, 147; empirical psychology and, 30–32; extraordinary affect and, 25–28; Hurricane Katrina and, 244n1; impact of joy and, 35–36; inherent types of, 101; Izard and, 32–34; jouissance and, 36–39, 42–45; Lacan’s four discourses and, 39–42; Lorde and, 46–50; Lorde’s erotics and, 46, 48–49; martyrdom and, 181; muscular celebration of, 241n9; norms and, 156; pleasure principle and, 149; Rodríguez and, 111–14; sinister joy and, 56–58, 150; social erotics and, 54–55, 111; tristitia and, 29–30. See also sinister joy transitional justice, 14–15 trauma: clowning and, 118; elision of joy and, 12; extraordinary affect and, 28; polyvictimization and, 207; Sachs on, 94;

Index 287 transcendence and, 221; transformation into joy of, 247n4; voice therapy and, 193; winners and, 20, 232–34. See also post-​­traumatic growth; post-​­traumatic stress disorder; victimization tristitia (dejection, sorrow), 29–30 Truman, Harry S., 80 Trump, Donald, 141 Tunisia, 182–85; martyrdom and, 20, 171 Turner, Edith and Victor, 34, 104–5. See also communitas Tutu, Desmond, 15 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 117 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 22, 242n3 university, discourse of the, 41–42 “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” (Lorde), 13, 47 Vajrayana tradition, 230 Vaneigem, Raoul, 105 Viano, Maurizio, 90–91 vicarious post-​­traumatic growth (VPTG), 233 victimization: Holocaust memoirs and, 17; othering and, 158; polyvictimization and, 207–10; PTSD and, 210–13; silencing and, 216–18; sinister joy and, 58; triumph and, 175; winners and, 20, 201–6. See also persecution Vietnam War, 115, 146, 148; guilt and, 245n2; post-​­traumatic growth and, 220

violence, multiple forms of, 207–10 voice, 178; pain, language and, 247n8; trauma and, 193 Voltaire (François-​­Marie Arouet), 77, 242n4, 242n10 Walzer, Michael, 98 Wannsee Conference (1942), 137–38 Waste, Joan, 178, 239n5 Weber, Max, 155, 243n15 Wedgwood, Josiah, 203–4 Weimer, Adrian Chastain, 182 Wheel Weapon mind training, 230–31 White, Rawlins, 176–77 White supremacy, 144 “Who Said It Was Simple” (Lorde), 51–52 Wiesel, Elie, 81–82, 214 Wiesenthal, Simon, 92, 241n2 Williams, Robin, 85 Wilson, Scott, 44, 241n9 winners, 20, 201–6, 232–37 Wood, Amy Louise, 144 Young, Allan, 211–12 Young, Andrew, 96–97 Yousafzai, Malala, 219 Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Lorde), 112 Zevnik, Andreja, 106 Zimbardo, Philip, 142, 149 Zoellner, Tom, 80

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In my study of joy and human rights I have come to appreciate my thoughtful and generous interlocutors even more. The initial ideas for the project were hatched out of a series of conversations with Devorah Wainer, an innovative human rights scholar and activist at the University of Sydney. Todd Landman, a ­world-​­class human rights scholar and an esteemed magician, set a model for the importance of maintaining balance in human rights work and for enjoying the good times. I am so honored that Semere Kesete agreed to write the Fore­ word for this volume. His story is one of strength, endurance, and joy and is a worthy example for human rights workers and survivors around the globe. Brooke Elise Axtell and Jany Deng have taught me so much about joy, growth, and activism, and I’m honored that they have contributed this book’s final words. Rhona Smith, Ted Baird, Adele Clarke, Rod Ferguson, Meg Lota Brown, Valerie Miller, Susan Stryker, Michael Stancliff, and Eithne Luibheid offered encouragement when it was most needed. Leonard Hammer read the entire manuscript and offered insightful suggestions and joyful conversations. Other colleagues at the University of Arizona, have taught me a great deal about affect and emotions theoretically, in the classroom, and in university life. Numerous scholars and activists offered insightful suggestions and en­ couragement including Amy Bartholemew, Marla Conrad, Sol Neely, Randy LeBlanc, Jonathan Faulkner, Todd Myers, Inken Heldt, and Anita Weiss. This work was in part inspired by the camaraderie of many human rights practi­ tioners, including a special group of social justice and human rights students, who took their salsa dancing as seriously as their studies, though I wish their selections for movie nights had not been so grave. A group of activists fighting for human rights in Eritrea surrounding Libby Walker, who always seemed to keep humor and joy close amid tragedy, set a wonderful example of love and kindness. It has been a joy and a great learning experience to work with The Lost Boys Center for Leadership and Development in Phoenix, ably led by

290 Acknowledgments

Kuol Awan. The courageous and thoughtful folks at the Sex Workers Outreach Project in Tucson inspired me with their activism and fellowship. Many thanks to a young nun at Tyburn Convent in London who provided an infor­ mative and, dare I say, enjoyable tour of the relics from the Catholic martyrs of the Restoration in England. Alan Regenstreif served as a trusted guide as I wallowed through Lacanian theory, though Lacan’s writings still trigger my migraines. Two anonymous reviews for the University of Pennsylvania Press provided excellent commentary on my draft manuscript and suggested a number of improvements and other sources for me to consider. Peter Agree, editor in chief at Penn, showed great faith in this work at an early stage and deftly guided it to completion. I owe my greatest thanks to my life partner Monica J. Casper for support­ ing this work since its inception. For years, Monica has questioned the ­one-​ s­idedness of human rights; that of dwelling on abuses, the fetishization of victimization and victims, and the dour demeanor of some human rights workers, including me. She has been a wonderful wellspring of joy: a joyful Tigger to my often soggy and sad Eeyore. Finally, to all those whose inspirational stories I relate here, thank you for setting such indelible examples of how to live (and die) in such distressful circumstances. Thank you all. I remain solely at fault to the extent that this joy does not translate into the written text.