#ethics para joder

[a-queer-seminarian]

Hope(lessness)

More Light Presbyterians, which is the LGBTQA+ justice organization for the PC(USA) denomination, will be posting a short reflection video each Sunday of Advent. This first week of Advent centers around hope — but what do we do when hope seems hard to muster?

Video transcript:

This first Week of Advent centers around hope. I don’t know about you, but I struggle with hope — especially after horrific, hateful events like the shooting at Club Q in Colorado.

Thus I was relieved to learn a few years back that when I do experience hopelessness, I don’t need to shove that feeling aside or pretend it’s not happening. It is not sinful, or a failure of faith, to feel hopeless...

I learned this from Miguel de la Torre’s book Embracing Hopelessness, which argues that hopelessness can be a “desperation rooted in hope denied” where we have nothing left to lose and therefore we are freed to do whatever it takes to achieve justice.

When things feel hopeless, when achieving justice seems impossible, de la Torre recommends an ethics para joder — the Spanish F word — an ethics that “screws with the screwers.” Basically, if we can do nothing else against unjust systems, we can become a massive thorn in their side.

A person who embraces this ethics of joder “constantly disrupts the established norm, shouts from the mountaintop what is supposed to be kept silent, and audaciously refuses to stay in [their] assigned place…” Doesn’t that sound quite a bit like Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection?

This Advent, will you join me in pondering how we might mess with the powerful who maintain this mess we’re all in? And as we learn to live with the kind of hopelessness that is an urgent desperation, our hope against hope can be in the God who entered the world as an infant to teach us queer, subversive ways of achieving justice and peace for all.

[a-queer-seminarian]

Esperando esperanza no es para los pobres los jodidos debe aprender a joder a los joderones!

...

Waiting for hope is not for the poor those who are screwed must learn how to screw with the screwers!

- Miguel A. De La Torre in Embracing Hopelessness

[a-queer-seminarian]

“To joder is an act of love toward oppressors, designed to force them to live up to their rhetoric in the hopes of confronting their complicity with oppressive structures so as to lead them toward their own salvation.

Oppressors are also victims of structures designed to privilege them yet rob them of what it means to be human. To joder is thus far a nonviolent survival strategy based on love designed to liberate the abused from death-dealing social structures that deny their humanity, and the abusers whose own humanity is lost through their complicity with these same structures.”

- Miguel A. De La Torre in Embracing Hopelessness

[a-queer-seminarian]

“An ethics para joder is a liberative praxis by which we learn to transform society for the better, even though the ultimate utopian goal may never be realized. Nonetheless, we strive forward not because we hope to succeed (because we don’t) or because we cling to a biblical belief that a promise was offered; we move toward justice because we have no other choice if we wish to define ourselves as humans. We strive forward because in the crucible of struggle, we construct our identity and define our purpose in life. And even if you still want to insist on the existence of some utopian hope, then maybe, just maybe, it may only be found when one takes a stand and says ‘f*ck it.’

...In 2012, I was invited to Tuscon to present the concept of an ethics para joder to several of the humanitarian groups working on the border. Useful to some was a conversation moving away from repeating past praxis simply because these were the liberative actions always undertaken. Ethics para joder, according to Fife who attended the discussion, ‘freed us to imagine new possibilities.’ ...For decades, he explained, they have been fighting for justice, and most have lost hope in succeeding. Many resonated with the explanation about the oppressiveness of hope. When they tried to develop praxis, some were trapped with having to construct actions leading to a specific end goal.

When they accepted the hopelessness of the situation, they were emboldened to simply f*ck with the system, subverting the prevailing oppressive structures. ‘Screwing with structures of oppression is our calling,’ said Fife. ‘We engage in jodiendo as we prepare and wait for the movement for justice to take off. Hopelessness frees us to imagine creative ways to struggle for this justice.’

- Miguel A. De La Torre in Embracing Hopelessness

[a-queer-seminarian]

“Joder is Spanish for ‘f*ck it.’ A politer translation is ‘to screw with’ -- not ‘to screw,’ but to ‘screw with,’ a crucial difference in semantics.

Coining a term to describe an ethical practice already occurring among the marginalized implies that this methodology of jodiendo already exists. ...An ethics para joder is an ethics that f*cks with the prevailing power structures. An ethics para joder fosters an effective response to the consequences of Eurocentric globalization, the oppressive normativity of social structures, and the pain of the domestication of communities of color.

A joderon is one who strategically becomes a royal pain in the ass, purposely causes trouble, constantly disrupts the established norm, shouts from the mountaintop what is supposed to be kept silent, and audaciously refuses to stay in his or her [or their] assigned place.

To joder is to create instability, upsetting the prevailing Panopticon social order designed to maintain the law and order of the privileged. Instability could lead some within the dominant culture to share in the hopelessness of overcoming the global neoconservative and neoliberal forces, creating an opportunity for change. Yes, a liberative ethics para joder is frightening to those accustomed to their power and privilege, because hopelessness signals lack of control. ...

To joder refuses to play by the rules established by those who provide a space for orderly dissent that pacifies the need to vent for the marginalized but is designed not to change the power relationships within the existing social structures. ...Joderones provide a moral justification for the employment of deception as a means of self-preservation for those who face overwhelming odds against surviving. Political and social change requires going beyond the rules created by the dominant culture, moving beyond what is expected, pushing beyond universalized experiences.

History demonstrates the futility of simply denouncing unjust social structures. Those whom the structures privilege will never willingly abdicate what they consider to be their birthright. The joderon as trickster creates opportunities unavailable as long as established tables remain stable. F*cking with oppressive structures that undergird exceptionalism might lead to new possibilities. If the prevailing history that justifies the dominant social order...exists to legitimize and normalize the privileges of the few at the expense of many, then joderones become tricksters who lie to reveal truth. They lie, cheat, joke, and deceive to unmask deeper truths obscured by the dominant culture’s moralists.

Such liberative praxis may be dismissed as immoral by the dominant culture; still, tricksters remain ethical, operating in a realm beyond good and evil, beyond what society defines as right or wrong. Joderones are consummate survivors, servings as exemplars for the disenfranchised in need of surviving the reality of disenfranchisement.

Disrupting the equilibrium of the dominant culture creates compromising situations for those in power, revealing their weaknesses, exposing what they prefer to remain hidden, and removing their artificial masks of superiority.”

- Miguel A. De La Torre in Embracing Hopelessness