To experience joy: musings on endarkened feminisms, friendship, and scholarship¹

Abstract

Joy can be defined as a feeling of happiness, well-being, success, or delight (Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/joy, 2014). It can also be seen as the source or cause of such delight. However, according to Alice Walker, there is another articulation of joy from an endarkened feminist perspective that speaks to feminist struggles within and against our varied oppressions: ‘Resistance is the secret of joy’ (p. 279). It is from and through Walker’s definition of joy that this paper arises. Written in prose form (what I refer to as ‘musings’), this essay focuses on the possibilities of affirmation, contestation, and expansion in our scholarship when informed by friendship as endarkened feminist praxis. Resisting invisibilities, this piece argues for the power and usefulness of friendship as both principled practice and experience of mutuality, visibility, and shared partnership that bears witness to and embodies joy as a fruitful space of endarkened feminist cultural production and healing.

KEYWORDS:

• Joy
• Black feminism
• scholarship
• resistance
• friendship

Notes on contributor

Cynthia B. Dillard is the Mary Frances Early Professor in Teacher Education at the University of Georgia. Her research interests include Black/Endarkened feminisms in education, critical cultural pedagogies in teacher education, and spirituality in education. Correspondence to Cynthia B. Dillard, University of Georgia, Department of Educational Theory and Practice, 630 Aderhold Hall, 110 Carlton Street, Athens, GA 30602. Email: [email protected].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Notes

1 This paper is a revised version of a talk given at the Patti Lather Festschrift “Putting the Work to Work” at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, May 31, 2014.

2 This prose-poem previously appeared in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education in 2000.

3 While I omitted the final paragraph of the original talk in this article, I include it here, in honor of my dear friend-friend, Patti Lather:

“I stand today bearing witness to the joy of being seen, heard, respected and made fuller. I stand today in the light of a friend-friend of more than 20 years. I stand – I believe we all stand – taller in our lives and work both for and with one another. Patti Lather, you have and continue to be a true gift to me. It’s not that my colleague blues are over: But I have sung them in a sweeter key over these decades because of the joy we created together. We saw, we listened, we respected and we are fuller because of it. I am grateful for and blessed by you, as are the many who are here to celebrate your life and your work today. Your inspiration opened a space of joy that pushed me to create dangerously and for that, I love you. Thank you for being my friend-friend.”