Unspeakable Joy: On Loving Blackness as a Practice of Joy

• In Event: You Can’t Steal My Joy! Practices and Possibilities for Black Joy in Urban Education

Abstract

One might understand Harriet Jacobs’ withdrawal to the crawlspace as a radical act of giving and withholding. Antebellum politics and, so too, the afterlife of slavery legitimate carceral logics to monitor the space, time, energy, and movement of Black life and living. Here, Jacobs’ Black presence in the anti-Black social sphere was already in violation such that withholding was essential for survival. However, there was the occasion for joy in the activity of withholding (wholly or partially). Jacobs’ joy, while unspeakable, was motivated by love, recognizable in the "noises," desire for, and imaging of her children. This manuscript thinks with Jacobs; I am concerned with the otherwise worlds, which is to say, productions of Black joy that Black people aestheticize while in the crawlspace, understood here as schooling. I pursue an affective approximation by considering how loving Blackness might reveal itself as joy. Broadly, I ask, where schooling functions as a site of carceral logic that, generally, cannot love that which is Black, how might loving Blackness constitute joy? More specifically, I attend to the affective register, asking what is heard, felt, and seen from the position of confinement? In this proposed manuscript, I give focused attention to Black students' images through Campt's future real conditional approach to meditate on the possibilities of Black joy. I conclude with recommendations for educators and practitioners to create environments that afford opportunities for Black students to affirm the affective capacities of Black joy as a present way of being to direct Black futures.

Author

• Wilson Kwamogi Okello, Pennsylvania State University