Coda

The coda considers what role joy might play in our political futures. It reads the social media presence of U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), of New York’s fourteenth congressional district, to explore how her use of silliness is a foundational part of her political efficacy. Silliness is defined here as a self-conscious deployment of lightheartedness to refuse discourses of propriety used to infantilize and humiliate working-class Latinas. AOC’s social media engages with silliness in the form of high femme self-stylings that appeal to un-seriousness to point out political absurdity. This coda postulates how silliness can be part of not just interpersonal and communal survival, but also institutional change during the continuous moments of crisis that characterize neoliberal capitalism.