Queer and Decolonial Joy as Acts of Resistance

In this digital residency in collaboration with Érudit, researcher, author and curator Renata Azevedo Moreira explores the concept of “decolonial joy”, highlighting its transformative and activist power for marginalized communities. She links joy to healing, liberation and solidarity, with joy fueling social change and fostering hope, self-determination and the creation of alternative futures.

Go deeper.
Do not be afraid to disturb this surface,
to set its limpidity in motion.
Be like the wind that shakes these trees.1 1  - Henry Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. S. Elden and G. Moore (London: Continuum, [1994] 2004).

I have been thinking about the transformative power of joy and its derivatives—pleasure, happiness, hope—for quite some time now. In previous texts, I have explored what I named “critical pleasure,” which stems from a queer understanding of joy that does not oppose it to pain or suffering but focuses instead on the critical role that pleasure may play in profound aesthetic experiences.² 2 - Additya Aggarwal, Elida Schogt, and Fan Wu (Eds.), Imagining Futures of Experimental Media (Toronto: Pleasure Dome, National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition, and Oddside Arts, 2023). In what has been a pivotal contribution to these reflections, I have recently confronted my own transitory identity during an extended stay in my homeland, Brazil, after many years in Canada. The contrasts between being an immigrant Latina in North America and a White Brazilian back home catapulted me into questions of privilege, territorial contexts, and of course, coloniality.