Programme
Funny Racial Contempt: On the emotional power of humour in social and racial alienation and alignment, past and present
Vandenhove Pavilion, UGent, 30 November 2023, 18.00-19.00.
Raúl Pérez, University of La Verne
Over the past two centuries, humour has played a central role in reinforcing and mobilising racist ideology and power under the guise of entertainment. Drawing on critical humour studies, affect theory and the sociology of racialised emotions, this talk will focus on how humour can function as a mechanism that simultaneously produces group identity, pleasure and solidarity on the one hand, and social and racial dehumanisation, alienation and even violence on the other.
Historical and contemporary cases in the US will be highlighted, with a focus on the global dimensions of this phenomenon, including within entertainment, police culture, politics and right-wing extremist contexts.
Raúl Pérez is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of La Verne in Southern California. His first book, The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy (Stanford University Press), received the Mary Douglas Book Prize 2023 from the American Sociological Association, and was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Book Award 2022 from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. His research also appears in several academic journals, including American Behavioral Scientist, Discourse and Society, Ethnicities, and Sociological Perspectives, and has been featured in several media outlets, including The Washington Post, TIME, and NBC.
Affective polarisation of humour: How Finnish and Dutch humour scandals mark - and possibly widen - social divisions.
Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal en Letteren, 30 Nov 2023
Giselinde Kuipers, KU Leuven
In this paper we explore the relationship between humour and affective polarisation, the growing tendency to see political divisions in affective terms, with strong positive feelings towards one's preferred political party or preference, and negative feelings towards the opposing political side. Humour is a mode of communication that can evoke strong positive emotions (laughter, amusement) and negative ones (outrage, shock) and that can draw sharp boundaries between groups and social categories. Thus, both politicians and other political actors, such as activists, commentators and satirists, have often used humour to 'spice up' political statements and to organise and rally political publics and 'counter-publics'.
Political humour sometimes gives rise to 'humour scandals': public controversies over the use of humour that, according to some, have gone too far, during which social and political divisions become very evident. In this paper, we draw on a new database of Dutch and Finnish humour scandals between 1990 and 2023 to analyse how these humour scandals reflect or reinforce affective polarisation.
We show that humour scandals increase over time in both countries, which we see as a result (among other things) of increasing political polarisation due to the rise of populist parties in this period. In the following, we focus on two specific humour scandals from the 2010s to assess whether and how these scandals may reflect and reinforce affective polarisation among broader publics. We analyse a Dutch scandal about racist humour directed at black politician Sylvana Simons in 2016; and a Finnish scandal about politician Juha Mäenpää's controversial speech about asylum seekers in 2019. In addition, this keynote is an opportunity to showcase our new approach to analysing humour scandals, using a methodology and conceptualisation that allows us to compare such scandals across countries and over time.
Giselinde Kuipers is Professor at the Centre for Sociological Research at KU Leuven, Belgium, and author of Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2006/2015). She is a cultural and comparative sociologist and studies the social shaping of cultural standards in today's increasingly globalised spheres and societies. For example: what do people consider beautiful or ugly, funny or not funny, morally correct or unacceptable? These standards are socially learned: they vary greatly from one society or social group to another. At the same time, they are often deeply felt. They therefore have important social consequences, for example for social inequality, identity, cohesion or conflict.
Context, intentions and accountability: The joker in the public eye
Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal en Letteren, 29 November 2023
Chi-Hé Elder, University of East Anglia, and Eleni Kapogianni, University of Kent
What is "offensive humour"? To what extent can we claim that we are "only joking" when someone is offended by a joke? When offensive messages are presented through humour, to what extent can a speaker claim plausible deniability of having intended to offend, or even of holding derogatory attitudes that their humour may reveal?
The mode of presentation - whether face-to-face, via social media or in a comic performance - will present the prankster with different interactive practices and challenges. In this talk, we will examine Jimmy Carr's "holocaust joke" as a case study to analyse the full life cycle of jokes: from their live performance, through their entry into the public sphere and their becoming an object of controversy, to subsequent negotiation and debate.
We examine questions of the prankster's alleged 'intent', while considering the extent to which the comedian can be held responsible for the offence a joke may cause. We will also consider how the public persona of the joker may influence the acceptability of offensive jokes, including the extent to which plausible deniability is offered, or how public reaction may inform public opinion.
Chi-Hé Elder is Associate Professor of Linguistics in the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. Her research interests are in the field of pragmatics, with a focus on the negotiation of the meaning of utterances in social interaction, and she is currently working on the topic of misunderstanding and humour.
Eleni Kapogianni is a Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of Cultures and Languages at the University of Kent, UK. Her main research interests lie in the fields of pragmatics and discourse analysis, with a special focus on nonliteral language, especially verbal irony and humour.
Public round table with current humour practitioners (De Krook, 29 Nov. 2023, 17:30-19:00)
Shazia Mirza< is an award-winning British comedian and writer from Birmingham, England. She has appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes in the United States. Her television appearances include The Jonathan Ross Show,Would I Lie to You?, QI, The Late Late Show, and Graham Norton Show, and she was the star of Celebrity The Island-Bear Grylls. His latest show, Coconut, was nominated for a Channel 4 National Comedy Award. His previous show, The Kardashians Made Me Do It, a satire of ISIS, was a bestseller across the UK, USA, Sweden, Ireland and Paris. She has toured the world and this year was included in The Telegraph's list of the 50 funniest comedians of the 21st century.
Annie Julia Wyman holds a PhD in English literature from Harvard. She is the creator of the Netflix series The Chair and wrote two episodes of the five-time Emmy-nominated Welcome To Chippendales. She is currently co-executive producing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, the first comedy in the Game of Thrones franchise.
Mike Gillis is the editor-in-chief of The Onion. He has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Tricycle, ClickHole, and the Supreme Court (in the form of a recent amicus brief in defence of parody and free speech).
Tjeerd Royaards is an award-winning editorial cartoonist from Amsterdam. He has been working as a cartoonist since 2005, since he obtained a Master's degree in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He has worked for the Dutch newspaper NRC and currently works for the Dutch newspaper Trouw. Internationally, his work has been published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde and many others. Tjeerd is editor-in-chief of Cartoon Movement, a global platform for editorial cartoons and comics journalism. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Cartoonists Rights Network International and is a member of Cartooning for Peace.
Speakers and presentations
Royal Academy of the Dutch Language and Literature, 29-30 Nov 2023
When aporetic satire backfires: Chappelle's transgender jokes gone wrong
Massih Zekavat, U Groningen
This presentation analyses the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle's transgender jokes in his Netflix specials, Sticks & Stones (2019) and The Closer (2021). Plot Chapelle uses aporetic satire, sudden shifts in perspective and an aloof, insensitive character to undermine the status quo. His aim is to confront his audience and manage their responses, encourage ambiguity, shock them into asking difficult questions and encourage them to reconsider their prejudices.
The backlash that the premiere of these programmes provoked is evidence of their failure, which was largely due to Chappelle's brand of humour, the ambiguity of his character's moral stance and his inability to recognise intersectionality in the defence of justice;
Massih Zekavat is a researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Language and Cognition, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her work Satire, Humour and Environmental Crises was published by Routledge in 2023.
The role of humour in the fight against conspiracy theories: A case study of an Estonian conspiracy debunking group on Facebook
Anastasiya Astapova and Maili Pilt, U Tartu
Our presentation focuses on popular ideas on how to use humour to combat conspiracy theories along with grassroots attempts. Our case study focuses on an Estonian-language Facebook group, "Victory of Light! Continuation", which emerged in the midst of the pandemic. This group exemplifies social media activism, bringing together people dedicated to fighting disinformation by denouncing and trolling those who spread it. Our presentation is based on online fieldwork and an interview with the group's founder, and explores how the group's members have used humour to fight Covid-related disinformation and to debunk fake news about the Ukrainian war.
Anastasiya Astapova is Associate Professor of Folkloristics at the University of Tartu and a member of the Young Estonian Academy of Sciences. She has published numerous works on humour in authoritarianism, as well as on migration, ethnic integration and conspiracy theories, including a monograph Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State (Rowman and Littlefield 2021), a co-edited book Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends and a co-edited Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries (both with Routledge in 2020 and 2021) volumes. Astapova is principal investigator of the Estonian Science Foundation project "COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: Contents, Channels, and Target Groups".
Maili Pilt is a folklorist, is finishing her PhD at the University of Tartu and is a member of the Estonian Society for Digital Humanities. Pilt's research focuses on women's online communities' narrative practices of conception, pregnancy, IVF and childbirth. She is interested in methodological issues in online ethnographic research. She has published on research ethics, reflexivity and methods for collecting and analysing digital narratives. She has also taught the courses "Internet Folklore" and "Online Ethnography: Data Collection, Research Ethics and Data Analysis" at the University of Tartu.
"Are we no longer allowed to laugh at anything?": A multi-method analysis of humorous polemics in the Flemish written press from 1995 to 2022.
Anke Lion, UGent
This presentation offers a systematic longitudinal overview of the "humour polemics" in the Flemish press from 1995 to 2022.
The study presents a historical perspective on the changes in cultural sensitivity in Flemish society and the evolution of media coverage of such events. All articles were subjected to quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The quantitative mapping shows how the number of humorous articles and polemics increased exponentially.
In all 'outlier' cases (those with high-level coverage) there was talk of offensive 'ethnic humour' directed at ethno-religious groups. Qualitative content analysis showed that, firstly, the relationship between 'humour and Islam' is a recurring trope throughout the database and often serves a narrative of 'culture wars'. Secondly, debates on 'wokennes' are being co-opted by mainstream conservative politics, as illustrated by the anti-Semitic polemics of the Aalst Carnival. Finally, the print media actively promote the idea that comedy is threatened by wokeness through editorial choices and clickbait journalism.
Anke Lion obtained her Master's degree in Communication Studies at Ghent University, graduating with the highest distinction in 2017. As of October 2018, Anke worked as a PhD scholar of the Flanders Research Foundation (FWO) at the Department of Communication Studies at Ghent University. Her research project "Just kidding? - A qualitative research into the sociocultural role and meanings of mediated humour controversies in Flanders", under the supervision of Prof. Frederik Dhaenens and Prof. Daniel Biltereyst, explores sociocultural tensions about humour and identity in Flanders. She is currently a member of the Centre for Film and Media Studies (CIMS) and works as an assistant at the Bachelor of Social Sciences (UGent-VUB).
Community of laughter or community laughter: Islam in French stand-up comedy?
Jeanne Gaillard, U Strasbourg
The French context is particularly interesting for understanding the issue of religious conflict in the public sphere, especially in relation to humour. Like a magnifying glass, humour can exaggerate the features of an alleged incompatibility between Islam and the Western norm in order to provoke laughter.
The potential of humour for sociability and transgression is of particular interest here. Using the example of Islam as a theme for French comedians, my presentation will show that the current stand-up format creates intimacy and interaction between comedian and audience, which can lead to conflict resolution, depending on the legitimacy of the joker dealing with the sacred.
Jeanne Gaillard is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Strasbourg at the SAGE Laboratory (Societies, Actors and Governance in Europe, UMR 7363). She completed her Master's thesis at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 2020 on the religiosity of Christian students in Lyon and Berlin. After graduating, she completed two research internships on the sociology of Islam. Her doctoral thesis uses the sociology of Islam to explore humour studies by focusing on Islam as a subject for stand-up comedians in France and Germany.
Mediating humour in US politics: How rival media respond to AOC and Trump
Beer Prakken, U Groningen
Following Trump's election, it seems that more US politicians began to employ humour to strategically deflect criticism for controversial and transgressive comments.
In this presentation, I will examine the responses of conservative and liberal media and Twitter influencers to controversial humorous comments made by politicians, focusing on cases involving Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump in May 2019.
In analysing these scandals through pragmatic ambiguity and benign violation theory, I identify three common argumentative strategies: 1) denying the playfulness of the joke, 2) ridiculing the joke, and 3) criticising the morality of the joke. Surprisingly, these strategies transcend political leanings, with the third - criticising the joke - being the most effective in addressing sensitive issues;
Beer Prakken is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen interested in the intersections of play, humour and politics. He completed his BA in History and MA in Philosophy and History, focusing on American Southern history and the role of play in Trumpism and the American right. He is currently enrolled in an interdisciplinary PhD programme. His thesis aims to analyse the use of humour and play by politicians and the ethics surrounding it. Prakken is particularly interested in studying the concept of dark play and trolling on the American right.
On not spotting the difference: conflict and political parody on Twitter
Paul Martin, U Bristol
This article argues that conflict and misinterpretation play a crucial role in the success of satirical parody accounts online. These accounts depend on users recognising ironies between levels of meaning, but can also be mistaken for actual political accounts.
Through interviews with the accounts' creators and analysis of user interaction with them, I show how the tension between conflict and cohesion determines the functioning of satirical parody in digital media, as these accounts must appear to be credible characters while at the same time distorting or exaggerating honest political discourse for comedic effect. Political parody on Twitter walks a tightrope between reinforcing social division and challenging it.
Paul Martin is Professor of Classics and Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol. Although his background is in satire and comedy in ancient Greek literature, Paul has extended his research through interdisciplinary approaches to humour. His main project is a book-length commentary on the fragmentary Greek comedians, but he also has a forthcoming work on the function of humour in ancient and modern comedy, and is co-editing a special issue of the journal Humour with Nicole Graham.
"Racism is not a joke": A Mexican scandal about discrimination and humour on social networks
Raúl Acosta, Goethe U Frankfurt
"I'm not going to apologise for a joke that offends," Chumel Torres said in a 2020 interview after a panel to discuss racism on social media to which he had been invited was cancelled. Torres is a comedian who often stirs controversy for his provocative humour. Some call him a racist, but he claims to be misunderstood. What the scandal revealed was a simmering tension around racism in Mexico.
At a time when humour in Mexico is growing exponentially, witticisms that reproduce stereotypes about skin colour remain popular. Tackling this trend has not been easy. A government body to tackle discrimination has achieved little. When such a panel was finally held, the convenor avoided debate and merely included participants who reproduced the mantra "racism is not a joke". In this article I analyse the political role of racism and outrage about it in a highly polarised context.
Raúl Acosta is a postdoctoral researcher at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main for the ERC-funded project "NoJoke: Humour as an Epistemic Practice of the Political Present" (2023-2027). He is an anthropologist and his sub-project is entitled "Who is laughing now? Decoloniality, thunderous laughter and mutual resentment in Mexican political comedy". He received his MA and PhD from Oxford University, and has extensively researched the tensions and collaboration between activists, civil society organisations and governments. She has conducted ethnographic research in Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
Comic innocence
Dick Zijp, Utrecht U
In recent years, humour has re-entered the public sphere as a serious and potentially explosive topic of debate, giving rise to social conflict and controversy. Paradoxically, however, humour is at the same time often (aggressively) defended as innocent and harmless. I propose the notion of "comic innocence" to make sense of this paradox. I draw on Dutch and American studies on racism, white innocence and racial ignorance, and test my theory through an analysis of responses in both legacy media and social networks to a serious opinion piece on humour, which sparked intense debate in the summer of 2021.
Dick Zijp is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He has a background in theatre studies, philosophy and cultural studies, and is specifically interested in (Dutch) cabaret, stand-up comedy, critical humour studies and the relationship between humour and political ideology. In early 2023 he defended his doctoral thesis on the politics and aesthetics of humour in Dutch cabaret (1966-2023). He enjoys participating in public debates, and also works as a freelance writer and comedy critic for the progressive weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer.
The Belarusian-Polish migration crisis: A view from both sides of the fence
Anastasiya Fiadotava and Władysław Chłopicki, Jagiellonian U, Kraków
The current migration crisis at the Polish-Belarusian and Lithuanian-Belarusian borders has led to restrictions at border crossings and the construction of walls separating Poland and Lithuania from Belarus. However, this same crisis has also provoked humorous reactions on the Internet. We analyse the aims of these humorous reactions and illustrate how humour highlights the gap between the activities and claims of the Belarusian and Polish authorities and the reality on the ground. We argue that Belarusian humour contextualises the migration crisis in the broader framework of the Belarusian political crisis rather than in the international political landscape, while Polish humour uses a wider range of local, regional and international political references.
Anastasiya Fiadotava is an assistant professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and a research fellow at the Folklore Department of the Estonian Literary Museum in Tartu, Estonia. She holds a PhD in Folklore from the University of Tartu. Her fields of interest include the use of humour in family communication, the dissemination of jokes and memes in mass and social media, and reflections of current political and social issues in humour;
Władysław Chłopicki is Professor of Linguistics and Translation at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. His academic interests include interdisciplinary research on humour in the context of cognitive linguistics, linguistic pragmatics, narratology and cultural studies (and, more recently, humour in the public sphere - humorinpublic.eu). He has published numerous articles on humour-related topics. He was President of the ISHS, a member of the Board of the journal Humour and founding editor of The European Journal of Humour Research and the Tertium Linguistic Journal.
False Affectivity: On affections based on misinterpretations of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons
Dennis Meyhoff Brink, University of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg Museums, Denmark
Since the terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015, many of its cartoons have circulated on social media and have been misinterpreted by its new global audience. This paper argues that the feelings of offence, outrage and anger provoked by the cartoons can be "false" when they are based on false interpretations. My paper proposes the concept of "false affectivity" to describe this phenomenon. While the Marxist concept of "false consciousness" describes a misperception of reality in general, "false affectivity" describes the collective affects that sometimes arise from misinterpretations of specific phenomena such as satirical cartoons.
Dennis Meyhoff Brink is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen and the Frederiksberg Museums in Denmark. He is also director of the interdisciplinary research group European Cultures of Laughter. His main field of research is English, German, French and Scandinavian satire from the Middle Ages to the present day. He has published articles on political and religious satire, pastoral power, censorship, demonology, enlightenment, modernity, affect theory and post-critical theory.
