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theses

The strategy of joy analyzes comparatively some of the artistic collectives that used “joy” as a political emotion to deal with the repression and trauma deployed during the dictatorships and post-dictatorships in Spain and Argentina (1973-1989). My focus departs from the literature about the period that is centered on pain, melancholy and trauma, as well as from criticism coming from cultural studies that has marginalized the artistic expressions of the Buenos Aires Under and the Spanish Movidas, considering them “frivolous” and “hedonistic.” My perspective recognizes sorrow as a point of departure that enabled the emergence of cultural and political collectives in which the main unifying force has been joy. The key concept in my work is a reformulation of the notion of “strategy of joy,” retrospectively defined in the year 2000 by the Argentinian artist Roberto Jacoby. Jacoby defines it as “an attempt at a change of mood” through the occupation of “intermittent and diffuse territories.” In my conceptualization it is a change in emotional habitus through a set of pedagogical and performative appropriations. In a dialog with Jacoby along with a spectrum of social, cultural and political theorists, I study how an emotion like joy became a strategy, and trace its diverse manifestations in theater, performance, pop music, video-clips, film, television, printed media and chronicles. The artists I include within the strategy of joy got involved in the production of new behaviors, emotional habitus and spaces, modifying political identities, and constituting a local political collective and a minor transnationalism that cannot be inscribed within the binary model of cultural practices that involve a majority and a resistance (Lionnet y Shih 2). Through the concept of minor transnationalism I challenge the traditional dominant models of geo-spatial relations and I examine, instead, the links between margins. Argentina and Spain become an interesting case study to analyze lateral connections among marginal groups, between countries that share a transnational moment and a space structured by uneven power relationships.

ETD_5141

doi:10.7282/T3H70CVX

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Valaria Garrote

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.