Politics Of Humor Research Articles

Politics of humour in extremis: Cabaret and propaganda in the Netherlands during the Second World War

This article examines politicized humour in totalitarian regimes by conducting an analysis of the radio programme ‘Zondagmiddagcabaret van Paulus de Ruiter’ (‘Sunday Afternoon Cabaret by Paulus de Ruiter’), which was aired between 1941 and 1943 in the Netherlands under German occupation. The radio programme in the occupied Netherlands is exceptional in that it was explicitly designed as a ‘political cabaret’, whereas propaganda in Nazi Germany generally aimed to indirectly influence the audience through so-called light entertainment. The focus on dramaturgies of humorous strategies and on Althusser’s concept of interpellation allows for a distinction of different scenes of interpellation as staged by the ‘Sunday Afternoon Cabaret’. Even though the study of National Socialist programmes can be distressing for both the researcher and the reader, the aim is to analyse the workings of humour without necessarily characterizing humorous strategies in terms of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but instead paying attention to the way humour works on socio-political imaginaries. During the first period of the broadcast, the ambivalent character of humour aimed at shifting ideological frames, to redefine socio-political imaginaries. Later on, the performed dramaturgy of humour redefined the scene of interpellation as a scene of exclusive racial national identity, even before the German National Socialist authorities started to implement measures for the persecution and annihilation of Jewish citizens in the Netherlands at the beginning of 1942.

No more jokes: Comic complexity, Adult Swim and a political aesthetic model of humour

For such a complex cultural form, the politics of humour have historically been understood in highly reductive terms: either as an abstract political function (e.g. carnival or ridicule) or as a simple formal flourish that can be pressed into the service of any cause. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams and Jacques Rancière, I argue instead for a ‘political aesthetic’ model that grasps humour as a cultural formation, the politics of which cannot be determined in advance or in the abstract but only understood in relation to the political, economic and social elements of a wider conjuncture. This political aesthetic approach will be illustrated through a case study of the historical development of the internationally distributed Adult Swim programming block: an example of how shifts in economic and technological context can lead to shifts in the political meaning of a persistent comic aesthetic. At the forefront of an emergent comic formation in the early 2000s, Adult Swim’s once niche comic aesthetic now informs dominant models of online humour in ways that threaten to mitigate, or even reverse, the critical cultural politics of its earlier iterations.

The Politics of Humor, from Dry to Wet

The Politics of Humor, from Dry to Wet

The Politics of Humor, From Dry to Wet

The Politics of Humor, From Dry to Wet

Neda Genova in Conversation with Mijke van der Drift: A Conversation on Transfeminism as Anti-Colonial Politics

For this piece we were provoked by an anti-trans moment that took place during the School of Politics and Critique in September 2020. Instead of engaging in a mere “rebuttal” of anti-trans discourse and its reductive, exclusionary claims, with this text we aim to open up a space of exchange and learning that takes the form of a feminist conversation. We discuss the historical and political entrenchment of colonial, capitalist and anti-trans projects to emphasise why a solid trans politics will always hold an anti-colonial agenda to the fore. Critically appraising some unfortunate intellectual and political impasses—as the capturing of feminist politics in schemata of biological determinism or the complicity of white bourgeois feminism in anti-Blackness and colonial exploitation—we shed light on the emancipatory potential of radical transfeminism. The conversation draws on lessons from the writings and practice of many engaged in formulating the stakes of black feminist, anti-colonial and trans politics of solidarity, thus actualizing the insight that we never think or act in isolation from one another. Author(s): Neda Genova and Mijke van der Drift Title (English): Neda Genova in Conversation with Mijke van der Drift: A Conversation on Transfeminism as Anti-Colonial Politics Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 102-108 Page Count: 7 Citation (English): Neda Genova and Mijke van der Drift, “Neda Genova in Conversation with Mijke van der Drift: A Conversation on Transfeminism as Anti-Colonial Politics,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 102-108. Author Biographies Mijke van der Drift, Royal College of Art/University of Cambridge Philosopher and educator Mijke van der Drift works on ethics as a focal point in a multi-disciplinary research about social transformation. Van der Drift is tutor at the Royal College of Art, London and the Royal Academy of Art, the Hague. They are a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge in 2020-21, as part of the Revolutionary Papers project, in collaboration with the London School of Economics and the University of the Western Cape. In addition, van der Drift is currently working on their book Non normative Ethics: The Dynamics of Trans Formation. They obtained a Ph.D. from Goldsmiths, University of London. Their current project focuses on multilogical ethics and generosity, and is provisionally titled The Logic of Loss in Bonding. The book chapter “Radical Transfeminism: Trans as Anti-Static Ethics Escaping Neoliberal Encapsulation” co-written with Nat Raha is recently published in New Feminist Studies: Twenty-first-century Critical Interventions, ed. Jennifer Cooke, with Cambridge University Press. Neda Genova, London Bank University/Goldsmiths Neda Genova teaches at Goldsmiths University of London and London South Bank University and holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths. Her research is situated at the intersection of post-communist studies and media and cultural theory. She is interested in feminist and postcolonial theory, the politics of humour and laughter and post-communist digital culture. She is a member of the editorial collective of the Bulgarian-language activist-academic magazine dVERSIA (dВЕРСИЯ)

“A Catharsis for Anxieties”: Insights from Goffman on the Politics of Humour

ABSTRACT Sociologist Erving Goffman’s work has increasingly made an impact in International Relations. This paper consults Erving Goffman’s work and scholarly sensibility for insights into humour. Sociologists have begun to reconsider Goffman for such purposes, and I draw out three contributions from his studies for our special issue theme. First, Goffman’s dramaturgical approach proves useful for understanding the performative aspects of humour and how those might be drawn out in both “high politics” and everyday settings of international relations. Second, Goffman’s engagement of jokes and embarrassment proves useful for drawing out the power dynamics of humour. The third contribution of Goffman’s work is that it can also serve as a model for the vocational possibilities of humour for the social scientist. I conclude with several Goffmanian “venues” where scholars might and indeed do engage in tension-relieving humour, with the hope that those might be reinforced, protected, and enlivened in the years to come.

Playing with Antagonists: The Politics of Humor in Israeli‐Palestinian Market Encounters

AbstractThis article identifies playful antagonism as a defining mode of rare Israeli‐Palestinian encounters in Israeli settlement businesses. It is based on ethnographic work primarily in an Israeli settlement supermarket where the lowest‐paid workers are mostly occupied Palestinians. This playful antagonism characterizes heated Israeli‐Palestinian political exchanges as well as Palestinian workers’ mockery of their settler bosses and customers, through gestures and jokes alike. These practices navigate an incongruity between the high‐stakes antagonisms of Israeli settler‐colonization and the banality of the workplace. Rather than preventing more “serious” antagonism, this playful antagonism is itself serious, enacting and contesting existential struggles over settler‐colonization, in a context saturated with suspicion and risk to Palestinian livelihoods. Thus, rather than framing humor as standing outside of or transcending political domination and antagonism, this article frames humor as a way of enacting these forms of settler‐native politics. It thus stages a fresh conversation between the recent literature on settler colonialism in Palestine, which has understandably focused on Israeli domination but ignored Israeli‐Palestinian contact and humor, and the literature on humor, which has often ignored scaled‐up forms of power and domination. The article thus contributes to a political anthropology of humor as intertwined with power and domination.

Of Beggars and Buddhas: The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand. By Katherine A. Bowie. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017. Pp. xvi+357, 20 illustrations. $64.96 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsOf Beggars and Buddhas: The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand. By Katherine A. Bowie. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017. Pp. xvi+357, 20 illustrations. $64.96 (cloth).Naomi AppletonNaomi AppletonUniversity of Edinburgh Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 58, Number 2November 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/699262 Views: 73Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

Recognition, or the lack of it, is a central concern in International Relations. However, how states cope with international misrecognition has so far not been thoroughly explored in International Relations scholarship. To address this, the article presents a theoretical framework for understanding international misrecognition by drawing on discursive and psychoanalytical theories of collective identity formation and humour studies. The article conceptualises international misrecognition as a gap between the dominant narrative of a national Self and the way in which this national Self is reflected in the ‘mirror’ of the international Other. We argue that humour offers an important way of coping with misrecognition by ridiculing and thereby downplaying international criticism. The significance for international relations is illustrated through an analysis of the public diplomacy campaign ‘Presenting Israel’, which, through parodying video clips, mobilised ordinary Israeli citizens to engage in peer-to-peer public diplomacy when travelling abroad. Public diplomacy campaigns are commonly seen by scholars and practitioners as attempts to improve the nation’s image and smoothen or normalise international Self–Other relations. However, after analysing the discursive and visual components of the campaign — which parodied how European media portrayed Israel as primitive, violent and exotic — this article observes that in the context of international misrecognition, such coping attempts can actually contribute to further international estrangement.

All joking aside: American humor and its discontents

In this examination of stand-up comedy, Rebecca Krefting establishes a new genre of comedic production, and charts its pathways from production to consumption. Some jokes are tears in the fabric of our beliefs-they challenge myths about how fair and democratic our society is and the behaviors and practices we enact to maintain those fictions. Jokes loaded with vitriol and delivered with verve, charged humor compels audiences to action, artfully summoning political critique. Since the institutionalization of stand-up comedy as a distinct cultural form, stand-up comics have leveraged charged humor to reveal social, political, and economic stratifications. All Joking Aside offers a history of charged comedy from the mid-twentieth century to the early aughts, highlighting dozens of talented comics from Dick Gregory and Robin Tyler to Micia Mosely and Hari Kondabolu. The popularity of charged humor has waxed and waned over the past sixty years. Indeed, the history of charged humor is a tale of intrigue and subversion featuring dive bars, public remonstrations, fickle audiences, movie stars turned politicians, commercial airlines, emergent technologies, neoliberal mind-sets, and a cavalcade of comic misfits with an ax to grind. Along the way, Krefting explores the fault lines in the modern economy of humor, why men are perceived to be funnier than women, the perplexing popularity of modern-day minstrelsy, and the way identities are packaged and sold in the marketplace. Appealing to anyone interested in the politics of humor and generating implications for the study of any form of popular entertainment, this history reflects on why we make the choices we do and the collective power of our consumptive practices. Readers will be delighted by the broad array of comic talent spotlighted in this book, and for those interested in comedy with substance, it will offer an alternative punchline.

Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria

Touted by its publishers as the “most prestigious lifestyle and luxury magazine in Syria,”1 the January 2011 issue of Happynings enjoined readers to accessorize with camouflage: “From combat cool to aviatrix chic, military style took fall runways by storm. We show how to pledge allegiance to the season’s hottest trend and work army accents into every look.”2 A music video by Husayn al-Dik, the brother of a regionally famous crooner, echoed this aesthetic imperative with performers dressed in black-andgray fatigues, matching hats, and lace-up boots dancing to his sexually suggestive tune “Natir Bint al-Madraseh” (Waiting for the School Girl).3

The Politics of Humor: Max Cohnheim's Columbia (1863–1873), A German Newspaper in the Nation's Capital

�� ��� When a new German newspaper was launched in Washington, D.C. in 1863, the German-speaking community must have thought it barely worth a second glance. Too many previous attempts at permanently establishing a press organ for the German population in the nation’s capital had failed, too many dailies and weeklies had come and gone, to make this new Columbia seem the proverbial exception to the rule. 1 Max Cohnheim, the editor of this new weekly paper, was very much aware of the difficulties he would face in trying to convince potential subscribers to invest in what seemed to them a doomed venture. Instead of the usual editorial address to the readers and mission statement in the first issue of the Columbia, readers found “Washingtoner Plaudereien” (“Washington Conversations”), an imagined conversation between the editor and several German citizens of Washington: “Yet another new newspaper! I’m sure that’ll be around for a long time!” Says one; “what,” says the other, “he is bold enough to start a new paper here in Washington City, where so many unfortunate attempts have already been made!”— Never mind! Calm down, gentlemen! Buy our paper, or don’t buy it. Just as you will not succeed in halting the course of the Earth, you won’t stop us from sending our “Columbia” out into the world, “trotz alledem und alledem,” as Freiligrath says. 2

War, memory, and the politics of humor: the Canard enchaine and World War I

War, memory, and the politics of humor: the Canard enchaine and World War I

J. W. G. Henderson, Writing down Rome: Satire, Comedy and Other Offences in Latin Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. xvii + 374. ISBN 0-19-815077-6. £48.00.

In a series of controversial essays, this book examines the Roman penchant for denigration, and in particular self-denigration, at the expense of Roman culture. Comedy in Republican Rome radically transformed both itself and the culture from which it sprang: in Poenulus, Plautus laughed at Roman depreciation of Carthage; in Adelphoe, Terence turned on his audience in provocation. The comic Roman poets played with self-mockery: in Eclogue III, Virgil tests his audience's security in judging peasant unpleasantness; in Odes III.22, Horace sends up his own pious rusticity down on the farm. In the second half of the book, Roman verse satire is the subject: the genre of male bragging mocks its own masculine aggression. The great Latin satirists make fun of making fun: Horace, Satires I.9, shows up the politics of humour, unmanned by his own good manners; Persius nails his own weaknesses in fortifying himself against the world; Juvenal, Satire 1, loathes the literary scene he bids to dominate. The book shows a vital ingredient of Roman poetry to be an energetic surge of urbane banter directed towards Roman culure.

The Politics of Humor: The Berlin Wall in Jokes and Graffiti

On August 13, 1961 the first rolls of barbed wire were stretched across the demarcation line dividing the sectors of the Soviet and Western allies in Berlin. Over a quarter of a century later and greatly fortified, the Wall is one of the most prominent structures in the landscape of the two Berlins. Its prominence, however, is perceived and experienced differently by East and West Berliners. The Wall in West defines and frames the physical landscape. Colorful and approachable for most of its approximate 100 miles, it provides Sunday strollers and tourists with a unique walking route along the borders of the city. Scattered along its length are various look-out towers for those interested in seeing the other Berlin and memorials marking where people lost their lives attempting to escape to the West. The prominence that the Wall enjoys in the physical however, is largely supported by the media and tourist industry. It obscures the fact that the Wall has more or less disappeared in the cognitive landscape, i.e., in the socio-political consciousness of the average West Berliner. With the exception of special events and holidays, when West politicians evoke the Wall as symbol, it has become everyday. And in becoming everyday, it has been more or less forgotten. Reflective of a widely shared sentiment