Joyce Carol Oates on Twitter: Is Nothing ‘Joyous’ in ISIS?
IN FOCUS, 30 Nov 2015
Daniel Victornov – International New York Times
Joyce Carol Oates in 2010. She is known to ponder on Twitter why people do what they do. Credit Vincent Kessler/Reuters
23 Nov 2015 – Joyce Carol Oates, the author of more than 50 books, faced a spirited backlash on Twitter after she posed a question Sunday about whether anything is “celebratory & joyous” within the Islamic State.
All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive?
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) November 22, 2015
It appeared to many Twitter users as a callous question, apparently searching for the positive in a group known for brutal rape, beheadings, terrorist attacks and other atrocities.
Within minutes, she had followed up with three related thoughts:
Cultures seem to swing between extremes of Puritanism & permissiveness; rigid order & disorder; control & "freedom."
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) November 22, 2015
What is clear is that human beings can't live for long–do not care to reproduce–without meaning in their lives.
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) November 22, 2015
Tragic that "meaning" can be virtually anything–someone will believe it & die for it.
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) November 22, 2015
But it was the first tweet that attracted widespread attention, and in many cases mockery.
@JoyceCarolOates " other than THAT Mrs Lincoln, didn't you enjoy the play?! "
— Howard Roark (@shortwave8669) November 22, 2015
@JoyceCarolOates how would you describe the joyousness of the SS in Auschwitz? Are their ecstasies of great interest?
— Red Kahina (@RedKahina) November 23, 2015
Others tried to wrestle with the question.
https://twitter.com/CalebHowe/status/668842054848352256?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
@JoyceCarolOates They celebrate death and rejoice at the murder of anyone who doesn't.
— Mikhail Iossel (@Mikhail_Iossel) November 22, 2015
And some expressed disappointment in Ms. Oates for asking it.
Seek help @joycecaroloates ISIS rapes little girls, chops off the heads of people, and burns people alive. Pretty sure there is no upside.
— Kathleen (@katnandu) November 22, 2015
In an email, Ms. Oates said she posted to Twitter several times on the subject after reading coverage in The New York Times about the treatment of women in the Islamic State.
“Based on that piece, I wondered how is it possible that human beings would choose to live such grim, narrow lives, driven by the harshest sort of fanaticism and continually under the scrutiny of religious police, without any sort of happiness or fellow feeling?” she wrote. “It is a choice that bewilders many of us, I would think — not just me.”
Randy Souther, who has written about Ms. Oates for 20 years and started a scholarly journal focused on her work, Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies, said he believed the focus on one of her four tweets missed important context. She is prone to separating her thoughts into several tweets, and she is often searching for explanations of why people do what they do, he said.
“She’s trying to figure out what is it about an organization like ISIS, or a terrorist organization, that can draw people in and keep people in,” Mr. Souther said. “There must be something more than just evil, there must be somewhere in there something we don’t see.”
Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist, was among those to weigh in on her question. “If you don’t recognize that for at least some of the Islamic State’s young volunteers there is a feeling of joy and celebration involved in joining up, then you’re a very long way from understanding the caliphate’s remarkable appeal,” he wrote.
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Katie Rogers contributed reporting.
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