Reading Day 7
Drafts to a confessional letter from a killjoy to a fellow killjoyXK #essay, #fragments, #queer, #feminism, #new-wave-of-queer, #queer-critical, #callin/callout
Draft one: The problem with the killjoy Where is the line between being unnecessarily insensitive, and being true to the sake of the killjoy? The idea of being a killjoy is to say ‘the truth’ when something ‘false’ is said. The problem that I stumble upon as a killjoy is the fact that no one is perfect. None of my friends are perfect. I’m not perfect. Am I, as a killjoy, always obliged to call out my friends, and, by that, making them uncomfortable, when they’re doing or saying something wrong or inappropriate? In theory, yes seems the very right answer, but in practice I feel that the line between this YES! and insensitive rudeness is very fine. Maybe the question of the practice of a killjoy is not a choice between bravery and rudeness. Rather, it seems to be a question of strategy to me. When is the killjoy-act useful? This takes me to the problem with grandparents… Let me restart my letter. Draft two: Grandparents Grandparents. We all have them (or have had them). Who are they and how to deal with them? Meeting grandparents might be, for some of us, like taking a few steps back in time; and for some of us it will, as well, be taking a few steps down in class. I’m thinking about the recurrent discussion in social media about when to call out or when to call in someone. Can a killjoy
call in rather than call out? Can a killjoy be strategically sensitive to the relational delicacy that connects the killjoy, as an individual, to the people the killjoy loves? I’m thinking about my own grandparents, who don’t really know the appropriate language: White working class people saying racist things not necessarily out of a racist conviction but out of the education and culture they have received. An education and culture not owned by themselves but directed towards them. How should aspects of class change the strategy of the calling out practice of the killjoy? For instance, if during dinner my grandmother would refer to the Swedish pastry ‘oatmeal chocolate balls’ with the very inappropriate, but still quite common name, n-word ball, should I, as a killjoy, call her out there and then? It would certainly kill her joy, but I don’t believe it would have the desired political and structural impact. I would just make her feel stupid, as most parts of the society and every man in it have made her feel during her whole life. A society that has told her to shut up and do the dishes as a good, ‘stupid’, working class woman (even more as a working class woman from one of the finno-ugric ethnic and linguistic minorities, native to the north of Sweden). I sincerely believe that it would be better for me, as a killjoy, to remain silent in that situation and, rather afterwards, delicately insinuate a private conversation with my grandmother (tete-atete so to speak) and talk to her about the issue with using the n-word.
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