Drafts to a confessional letter from a killjoy to a fellow killjoy

Drafts to a confessional letter from a killjoy XKto a fellow killjoy

#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.

This sensitivity I have coined above in draft two doesn’t seem to me as a killjoy practice, because I never really kill the joy. This makes me think about where the killjoy-act is actually located and how it is directed. I have to start over once again. I need to reflect on the ontology of the killjoy. Enhance-joy: raves in Berlin and ‘why don’t you dance naked?’ Enhance-joy: being somewhere else as being silent (or the comfortability of seclusion)

The question I pose to myself: If I’m surrounded only by my queer-trans friends what joy and who’s joy should I kill?

There are two fundamental aspects to the practice of the feminist killjoy: diversity and difference. If a human is surrounded by people just like her it’s probably very hard for that human to kill any joy. Hence, as a killjoy, I need to surround myself with people who are different from me and whom I don’t agree with – who’s joy I can kill and who can kill my joy. I also need to have in mind, or at least reflect upon, who’s joy I want to kill or whom I wouldn’t mind killing my own joy. These two aspects are likewise important in order to create social and relational situations where we can kill each other’s joys in constructive ways. From this, I can draw a conception of two steps or parts in the feministic killjoy practice: 1) The feminist killjoy – as the one who kills the joy – needs to intermingle with the straights, the whites, and the middle and upper classes, in order to kill their joy. 2) Likewise important but sadly quite often forgotten, is that the feminist killjoy entails being someone who makes it possible for others to kill their joy. And, if the most politically correct call out practice is directed upwards in power, it is essential for the feminist killjoy to intermingle with people who are ‘lower’ in the socio-political hierarchy. If you’re middle class you should intermingle with the working class, if you’re healthsome you should intermingle with the sick etc.

Draft three: The feminist killjoy

Killjoy: As if joy never ever existed Killjoy: The joy that was never yours Killjoy: The contentments over what is, and the nostalgia over what could have been.

The feminist killjoy presupposes: 1) That there is a joy to be killed or ruined… which presupposes a difference in the perception of what joy is, should be, or can be… which presupposes an active difference in political, ideological, philosophical, and/or religious ideas and perceptions… in other words: A present potential for conflicts arising from a plurality of ideas and beliefs. 2) The feminist killjoy, obviously needs to be feminist… which means that the killjoy-act always has a direction. The feminist killjoy-act is directed towards patriarchy, white supremacy, hetero-cis-normativity etc. (A human can kill joy by saying many inappropriate things, and the term ‘feminist killjoy’ surely doesn’t include all of them.)

And now my head starts running wild! I think about the importance of agonistic pluralism… and if the killjoy is a reaction with, or a reaction against, the idea of agonistic pluralism, as a fundamental to democracy. I think about Chantal Mouffe. I think about what’s the opposite of killjoy – is there a silent-joy? – is there an enhance-joy?

Draft four: The killjoy practice

Enhance-joy: party… (the ‘if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution’ idea)

Is the killjoy a new phenomenon, or is the killjoy just someone thinking and reflecting independently? This makes me think of all the grand and outspoken philosophers through time.

Killjoy is a fashionable (gamer-like) name for an independent person. They have always existed, everywhere, everywhere. I think about the uncompromised thinkers; people such as Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt (Arendt certainly killed a lot of people’s joy by coining the term ‘banality of evil’ in her essay book Eichmann in Jerusalem). The independent thinker would say their ideas and thoughts out loud, at a party or a dinner, without paying any pivoting attention to the contentment of other people. Though I certainly believe that the independent thinker always reflects on when to speak and not to speak, and what is the ‘right thing’ to do in a specific situation. With this in mind I can coin three qualities or traits that the killjoy of today, as well as of yesterday, would need: 1) The virtue of bravery, or just an uncompromising sense towards one’s own convictions and thoughts; 2) ‘Know thyself’ – a highly developed self-perception and self-knowledge; 3) Attention or ability to attentively reside in the world and in oneself – a trait which I believe presupposes the first two.

What’s the relevance of Socrates’ philosophy of maieutics, the critical dialogue and the methods of Elenchus when it comes to the practice of the killjoy?

Draft six: Socrates

SOCRATES SAID the endpoint of every philosophical discussion Even though there is a resemblance between the Socratic method, or the maieutics, and the practice of the killjoy, they’re not the same. The Socratic method focuses on the other, it pivots around the other part (not yourself) in a conversation. With this method you try to approach the other person’s thinking as sincerely as you can, no matter what you think or believe yourself. Hence, you may ask yourself: What if what the other person says is true? With this approach you try to challenge what the other person has said as if it was true, and as if you would like to deepen and enrich their arguments and thinking. This way the flaws of what the other person has said will arise, and the untruth in their previous statement will become clear to them. This will come as an insight from themselves rather than as a disconnected statement about wrongness inflicted upon them. In relation to the socratic method, at least as I have pictured it here, the killjoy seems rather self-absorbed, more concerned about stating truistic truths and opinions – such as TRANSWOMEN ARE WOMEN or WE ARE HERE WE ARE QUEER GET USED TO IT – than genuinely trying to change and challenge the actual thinking of the other person.

By comparing the killjoy practice and the socratic method, some aspects of the killjoy practice become clear; silencing, political ignorance, and potential oppressive privilege at the part of the killjoy. It seems more than fine for the killjoy just to teach the other truistic truths, opinions, and statements without really changing their underlying structures of thinking. It seems as if the killjoy is content with a world of silent fascists – an invisible fascist – which I would say is a much more dangerous fascist. A truly precarious subject would never afford to make the mistake of teaching fascists how to be invisible. This makes me doubt that the killjoy practice is an egalitarian practice for the truly precarious. After all, aren’t many of us feminist killjoys just educated, middle class people using one or several precarious aspects of our identity (such as myself using my transgender identity), as a tool for reenforcing our power and position in relation to other people? And, isn’t this a sort of ‘internal fascism’ that we all have hidden somewhere within? An ‘internal fascist’ the socratic method tries to teach how to think and, by doing so, to unfascist every part of us?

Is my portrait of the killjoy in this draft just a misconception based on a set of rightwing influenced myths? I do believe it is possible for people to misuse aspects of their identi-

ties in corruptive ways. And I do believe that power structures reside both on a structural level (concerning identities, backgrounds and experiences) and on an individual level – that everyone no matter who they are and what they think can potentially oppress others. This misuse of precarious identities can be very obviously seen as an oppressive act – it can have an ‘oppressive aesthetic’–, but most of the time it is quite dubious and difficult to spot, dressed in an ‘egalitarian aesthetic’.

With this said, I can turn to a critical clarification of my statement above: There is no opposition between the socratic method and the killjoy practice, as I made it seem. The socratic method is concerned with thinking processes whilst the killjoy is concerned with infectious political statements dropped in social situations as unchallenged truths. The killjoy-act is nothing else than a way of resistance towards these infectious political statements. It’s more than possible, even recommended I would say, to try to combine the killjoy practice with the socratic method. Some statements, though, are so infectious that they’re not possible to deal with or unpack with the socratic method (unless you are one of these genius, feminist philosophers) and only then is when you turn to the practice of the killjoy.

Can the socratic method and the killjoy-act be integrated with each other? Can they intersect in one unity? And if so, is this ethically desirable?

Draft seven: The Socratic Killjoy

The socratic killjoy is never liked (when the killjoy is liked it’s not a killjoy anymore). The socratic killjoy makes everyone feel awkward… fascists as well as feminists. Socratic killjoying is a more or less conscious performance of always thinking and stating the opposite (enacting a sort of childish defiance). It takes responsibility for the existence of agonistic plurality and, in situations where there is a lack of certain perspectives, it enacts them (taking the role of the parasitic being, or the irritating fly). The socratic killjoy pulls off the best possible arguments for fascism amongst feminists – improving and nuancing their feminism. The socratic killjoy corrupts and turns fascist arguments into socialistic proofs amongst fascists – turning them into the most radical of anarchists.

I should kill all of my friends’ joy – answering my question in draft four about who’s joy I should kill if I’m surrounded by my queer-trans friends. I should enact the role of an anti-feministi-anti-queer killjoy. For instance, if my friends would talk about heterosexuality as a straight path, and illustrate this with a picture of a well walked path in a landscape (Ahmed 205), my responsibility then as a socratic killjoy would be stating that queerness is as much a straight path as heterosexuality is. That what is considered to be queer is actually just another version of straightness. That all the rainbows, unicorns, glitter; all the leather, latex, and mustaches are just creations of an alternative straightness, and that they create an imagined collective, forcing people to resign their own aesthetic preferences and abilities to think by themselves, in order to be part of this collective. I would say that the true queer is dressed very boring, more grey and conventional than exhuberant and original. I would say that only loneliness is properly queer. I would say to all the self-appointed queers (myself included) that the true queer is the person about whom we think (without admitting it to ourselves) ‘What a depressive looser!’ The true queer is the grey and lonely person, who no one wants to be with.