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Joyce Carol Oates ISIS Comments Enrage Public: Can The Islamic State Be ‘Celebratory And Joyous’?

By Zachary Volkert
Published on: 15:20 PST, Nov 22, 2015

Joyce Carol Oates is the kind of novelist from whom one can expect timely commentary. Even her fiction has always been plugged into a deeper political reality. Recent comments questioning the morality of ISIS, however, stand to be one of Joyce Carol’s all-time most controversial.

ISIS Joyce Carol Oates comments
Joyce Carol Oates has always skirted controversy, sometimes with perceived misogyny and now for perceived sympathy for ISIS. (Photo by Schulz/Keystone/Getty Images)

On Sunday afternoon, Oates took to the social media platform Twitter to ask a philosophical question about Islamic extremist group ISIS that unleashed a flurry of rage for its insensitivity about the horrors that those living under the bloodthirsty group suffer.

With just this portion of Joyce Carol’s questioning isolated, it’s understandable that she found few supporters of her public statement. Separate from the rest of her idea, it seems especially callous and foolish — something many may still think when they read the full quote. Still, it’s important to consider Oates’ ISIS comment in its full context.

There’s no question that what Carol Oates promotes here is difficult. The writer is presenting the idea that all societies have a certain set of ideals that serve as their “meaning” or “motivation” for structuring and imposing limits on how their citizens will function as a whole. Oates’ tweets aren’t necessarily a statement to excuse the actions of ISIS, but rather wondering if the mere objective consideration of the group is worthless. For better or worse, Joyce Carol Oates got plenty of answers.

Most will dismiss Carol Oates’ tweet as pseudo-intellectual garbage at best and deeply offensive at worse. Still, it’s worth noting the role that an artist like herself fulfills in society. A writer known for jabbing at the public consciousness won’t stop doing so just because she’s likely to get a negative reaction.

It’s something Joyce Carol Oates has been doing long before social media existed, and that she will continue to do far into the future if she’s committed to her job. Though they were few and far between, a few commenters did answer Carol Oates’ ISIS comments beyond their initial gut reaction.

ISIS by Joyce Carol Oates
Even Joyce Carol Oates probably has no sympathy for ISIS, but that’s not the point of her comments anyway. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Is that to say that Joyce Carol Oates’ comments shouldn’t be criticized? Absolutely not. She approached an extremely sensitive, violent topic with a cold intellectualism that could easily be called reprehensible. If her ISIS comments make you hate her, then go ahead and hate her. She’s not Kim Kardashian. She’s not even Kanye West. She’s an intellectual whose job it is to ask difficult questions that aren’t being presented, no matter how tone deaf they might seem.

[Image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images]

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