Pleasure After Trauma: Navigating Joy and Complexity

Explore the complexities of experiencing pleasure after trauma in this keynote presentation by Carla Moore for the Cultivating Joy and Collective Restoration Conference. Delve into how trauma complicates otherwise liberatory spaces like Carnival, Dancehall, and Queer culture due to their focus on the body, sexiness, and joy. Examine the tendency to minimize pleasure and joy out of a sense of insecurity, and consider potential responses to this realization. Learn about the conference's focus on how Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities cultivate individual and collective pleasure, healing, and liberation as both resilience mechanisms and celebrations. Gain insights into how these communities are actualizing better futures on their own terms, especially during times of crisis. Understand the organizers' aim to center pleasure, healing, and liberation in public health discourse, challenging damage-based frameworks and expanding narratives of historically oppressed peoples.