WNC Sept 2019 Dialogue

Pleasure Activism, Climate Chaos and Building the Irresistible “Yes”

Description:

“Ultimately, pleasure activism is us learning to make justice and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have on this planet” – adrienne maree brown

During this dialogue we want to push ourselves to tie the intelligence of the body to the actual shaping of our everyday realities, especially in the face of climate catastrophe. What does the sensation of pleasure have to teach us about how we can structure our societies, live into our relationships, and relate to non-human beings around us? As despair, fear and uncertainty close in, how does a radical reclaiming of the human right to deep satisfaction change our politics? How might people who materially benefit from oppression (eg. white) relate to the principles of pleasure activism differently than those impacted by oppression? How does pleasure activism encourage us to redefine our experience of pleasure as a collective feeling rather than an individual one? Are there any experiences from our current life that we can anchor to in order to start imagining what it looks like to live inside deeply just and collective pleasure?

PS: adrienne maree brown and Generative Somatics is hosting a webinar on Pleasure Activism right before this dialogue! Everyone is welcome to come over to our host’s house early and watch this webinar with our WNC community before we savor a beautiful meal and dive into the dialogue! Oh the joy!

Suggested Readings:

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Checkin

  • Connecting the dots between activism, experiencing the world we want to live in, remember actions against Iraq war, police trying to block things, but we were weaving. That is the world I want to live in.
  • Yes is predicated on a strong no. Thinking about boundaries and being rooted in paying attention to what is pleasurable. In climate stuff, easier to say no to buying things, flying, bc .. escapism is not feeling grounded, so saying no to support sustainable system.
  • Using astrology as an activist tool. Writing. Struggling with spiritual tools that feel in contradiction to adrienne maree brown. Ie restraint ad refraining from drugs, sex, etc, which feels confusing as a practice bc i see value in both this and what she is saying in pleasure activism. What it means to be a white person reading this book. Lizzo – paving the way for joy. Listening to a song, but knowing it’s not written for me. Logically, going back to combahee river collective, if Black queer women are free, everyone is. Thinking about climate celebrities. Greta vs others who are black/brown and not getting the same attention. Interested in those attentions. 
  • Dialogue right at everything I’m thinking about. Climate change, pleasure activism, economic collapse. Feeling down. 90* by ocean bay. Feeling grief. No summers last few years due to fires. Grief – is this the last summer? We don’t know what’s coming. Decentralization, alternative economies, collectivism, grounded in pleasure.
  • Doing racial justice work in school, trying to continue the work. Coming out of a relationship, haven’t thought about my own pleasure since then. Opening the door. 
  • Being able to be satisfied by the work as antidote to burnout. HOw to make the movement a place people want to be? Balancing pleasure and accountability.
  • Listening to Kendi – How to be an antiracist. 
  • Interested in satisfaction question. Sustainability and scale. Resonate with – it feels hard – I don’t feel a good practice in deep yes. What are we doing together. I still have shame-based ways of approaching people. Notice when my razor comes out. Intrinsic link with other movements.Getting my body right. adrienne maree brown (amb) – emanating that it is joyful – be a beacon of joy and it is deep and right. Doom isn’t drawing people in.
  • I hate pleasure activism (PA) – I’m a miser and hate everything. Feel complicated about the book. Webinar was phenomenal. Staci Haines said – to experience pleasure activism, requires ability to connect with others, which comes after an opening. Amb – in order t feel love you have to be able to feel. I have grief and rage. Love and connection feels far away. I feel sadness and overwhelm bc I feel like I can never have that. Want to hear – sometimes you don;t feel pleasure and you just feel trauma response and that’s what it is for some people. Conditions of satisfaction. Do I have any? Am I capable of feeling satisfied? Shit not being enough is draining, don’t want to compromise on my conditions.
  • As a white person, how do we orient around pleasure activism? amb talks of centering black and brown pleasure. Friend discussing how pleasure and focus on self-care is worst thing that’s happening – not tearing shit down. Movement shadow dynamics aren’t present in movements in global south. How do we draw from those movements what pleasure activism looks like? LOVE + RIGOR. Not a contradiction in my body or in the movement.
  • Feeling nervous/rusty. Not enoughness feels draining. Holding PA with whiteness and not enoughness. Perfectionism training as a white person. Something about celebrating wins. With white folks? Hard think about doing this with group of white folks. Learning to love other white folks, in our mess. Pleasure as a parent has been profound. Animal, nature of bodies. Irresistable yes so clear in our toddler. Don’t know what to say about looking forward in a next generation way, terrified.
  • Consideration of intersection of gender and race, hamster wheel of questions and conflicts of antiracism work. Turned inwards in my orgs to do work rather than outwards. 
  • This is the rest of our lives. New normals will disappear. How are we changing psychologically, physically, our relationships to seasons. Strange time to be alive. Psychologically indigestible headlines, videos of animals are comfort food of apocolypse as these animals are dying. Fascination with animal videos and what that speaks to in humans. Mourning and grief. How are we feeling. Easier to say things when we know someone is dying. We’re all dying. Most people around me are breaking down in major ways – degenerative conditions, stress conditions, mental breakdowns, etc. Long time environmental activists feeling deep despair. Too many of the spaces I’m in are joyless. Trust, kindness, play too absent. Heartbreak over contradictions.
  • Interested in this idea of PA. Feel nervous but safe in a room of people grappling with these things. PA – draws me, but wary of self-interested pleasure that doesn’t care about its impact. Pleasure as food. Makes us whole rather than fill a hole. Requires embodiment, presence, courage. How does true pleasure hold a space for true trauma. If talking about pleasure on a collective level, what about it as a movement, a constant. Want a movement guided by people living in their bodies. 
  • PA seems to be a sustainability practice. Feeling weight on my body, I want to keep listening. Join me in a collective sigh? amb: Who told you it was okay to have pleasure and who told you it wasn’t? Thinking about ancestors. Liminal place as mixed race person – can identify but on the outside of it. Listening to white people talk about how to relate to PA. I think about how white culture has limitations to pleasure. Particular programming that polices pleasure. Grad school – practice of balance – read article and then do physical practice or moment of celebration. 
  • Connected to language – “I was liberated into the movement..” Becoming in touch with parts of myself that were hiding, which is no longer in service. Parts of me that can be celebrated. Feeling restless. Feeling in depths. Orienting through hope – hope as future oriented. But future is really uncertain, makes it feel like a bypassing. My spiritual nature is helping me ground in to the movement. Teaching coming to me is how am I creating safety – others cannot provide that, others can model it. Harmonize whats in me and harmonize with what is in others. Feel myself in a trauma state and tenderness that gets scared. Mycelial networks are connecting and – fruiting body pops up when conditions are right. 

Open dialogue

  • Conditions of satisfaction – being able to feel held by the earth, how critical thinking/theory are about not feeling satisfied, feeling restless, those can live together. Deep rest and restlessness. Deep contentment is bad for capitalism. Marketing is about you need more. Bad for business to feel good. Dissonance – kind to humans, cruel to systems. What is it for us here in the center of empire to feel satisfied. Grotesque.
  • Invoking Marie Kondo. Thinking about clear out the noise – then your desires can be seen against the blankness. You haven’t been able to see what you have bc it’s been crowded. You have what you need. Need to put an end to never enoughness. Not just things, but conditions to our humanity.
  • Never enoughness and too muchness
  • These require time. Not just the act of pulling things apart/downsizing. About time you take. Bhagavad gita – myth of battle that we are all experiencing. Taking the time spiritually to not be reactive. In activist community, we’re reactive bc we have to be. 
  • Left Roots leader: Stop doing random shit. WE’re all posting on social media, most things we do are not with clarity of purpose and understanding of impact and intention.
  • Goenka – people dig a lot of 10’ holes. This and that. Ego can take over and derail when its forging ahead. Do whatever is popping up in front of us. We don’t learn how to follow our hearts. 
  • How to account for impulse for spiritual bypass? Also don’t shame people for how long it takes them to wake up. Teach by example. Teach by example. 
  • Appreciated Stacy Haines reflecting on gs strategy and reflection on priorities of state repression and climate crisis. Acting effectively. Efficiently. Can get reactive and get inspired, but not strategic. If it’s just haphazard then how do we know how to act and participate? 
  • If you don’t have a vision, any direction will get you there. Yearning for coordinated strategy. Global perspectives class – taught lessons on global hunger in the cafeteria. We get really amplified about our individual relevance. But how do I participate in systemic change. 
  • Trap of individualism. How do you hold the tension between whiteness – sense of proportionality. Overly inflated sense of self – feel deflated quickly. Leveraging, inspiration to keep going. 
  • Joanna Macy – Ecological self – helpful in orienting to larger sense of self. Accounts for individualism as construct.
  • Shifting of focus from individual to collective. Yes, we can do environmentally conscious actions. Practicing using our voices more. Feeling futility in our movements. So we hold back. Work in Global south – struck by level of deep interconnectedness that makes movements national and international. Agroecology – USA just left out of the conversation. Finally starting here. Music, singing, cultural organizing – not a practice, just intrinsic. Born into movement. Organize your life around it. Integration of joy and pleasure into the movement. 
  • Back to basics around organizing. Tornado that spirals out. Mobilizations and tactics to bring more people in. There is no end to it. Point is sustained practice of self-governance. France – workers know they need to go out. Believe that you can’t engineer moments. Groundwork and infrastructure laid but requires spark. We haven’t laid the foundation to make the most of moments.
  • Non hierarchical movement work is hard here. 
  • Building power of self governance
  • Are there places where you do see effective collective focus and action happening right now that feels purposeful and potentially effective?
  • How do you know if you are doing the right thing if there is no strategy?  You know because it feels good in your body; 
  • If you are in movement spaces and you have inherited trauma that you haven’t healed, if you are constantly reacting to your trauma you are leaking into the movement in ways that may be causing harm. Not in a disposable way, but how do we pull ourselves out when we need to heal, or ongoing healing.
  • Most people that come into this space know what it means to suffer or can tap into collective suffering; until you can find a way to be in perpetual process of healing there will be harm
  • We are always leaking, always being traumatized, how can we do the work anyways
  • This culture is not super supportive of healing trauma. 
  • Joyful Militancy – a sense of an increase in capacity, not about feeling happy. A politicized framework. 
  • Growth vs fixed mindset. 
  • Holding breadth of human experience. Windows of human experience. Increasing capacity is strengthening. 
  • Nature is us. How do we not be cut off from nature. Trying to dismantle systems, even within myself, but there are systems within the systems. 
  • Default mechanism in my mind is “you suck” – you are the thing that keeps me stuck. Crafty and genius. Worth seeing clearly. Satisfaction can come in small ways. Everyday activism.
  • Honor the miniscule. Want both the political joy but also the delight. My marathon – book of delights helps me keep going. Moments of delight. Where our mind rests. My sustainability. Building my brain – reinforce. Delight is nutritive. 
  •  White supremacy teaches us that truth is in your brain. Fun is bad. Watching kids being outside, confidence grows. Using my body is powerful. Experiencing my body more. That is pleasure for me. Connection and fun is effective. 

Closing/Commitments

  • Pleasure police – want to think about how I/we police pleasure
  • Connection of no and yes – Gabor Mate – when the body says no – stress/disease connection. A lot of people’s bodies are saying no. Sisyphian activist struggles. Dedicate life to creating spaces where both yes and no feel really good. Unsettling hope.
  • Appreciating being in group, easy to despair. Radical Joy for Hard Times by Trebbi Johnson – in a mode of hospice for the earth, be generous for that task.
  • Cynicism bring me joy. 
  • Delight – saw dying ocean. Feel responsibility keep brain awake and awareness alive – owe it to things that are dying bc of what my kind has wrought. 
  • Philosophy of living – this could all end one way or another – living to serve many possible futures. What we each bring individually. We all come from something different. Back to the both/and.
  • Vanissar Tarikali – you will unlock it
  • Living my values in this space, nature and sunny days give me pleasure. Don’t know where I’ll get when the sky changes.
  • Feel left with a rich set of questions, curious about where to put my action, satisfaction
  • amb – right relationship to earth is predicated to right relationship to self – discipline and rigor to cultivate that. My edge is collective pleasure.
  • Just came back from walking 250 mile hike – every moment was pure beauty and joy. Hard to come back. Thinking about those places. 
  • Deeply love being in my body. Appreciating the collective act of being in bodies in facilitating blockades/direct action. 
  • Joy/pleasure/love and rigor/discipline – neither without the other
  • This feels good. Tired of logic of “If we aren’t beating ourselves up, it’s not okay.”
  • Activism work that I’m involved in – appreciate space to reflect in space with majority light skinned people – working things out here and in multiracial spaces.