Joyride

Abstract How might we think with joy? What might focusing on joy in an anti-black world teach us about collective action and relational feeling? What if relational, antiracist critiques were framed by mutual investments in joy's flourishing? In this introduction, coeditors John Brooks and Jonathan Leal probe these questions through a dialectical exploration of radical ecstasy that refutes the rigidities of traditional methods, forms, and categories, animating joy as an analytic and aspiration. Written as a joyride, structured like a playlist unfolding in real time, built from the spirit of the peel-out and the U-turn, “Joyride” weaves through black popular music, photography, visual art, and live performance to survey conditions of joyous possibility and co-investment under racial capitalism and, in effect, to contextualize this issue's offerings: articles, conversations, soundtracks, playlists, reflections. By turning to generative euphoria, to arts of provocation, and to expressions of improvisatory freedom, the pieces introduced in this essay celebrate joy's affective reach, all while demonstrating its conceptual power.