1st Edition

The Politics of Joking Anthropological Engagements

Edited By Jana Kopelent Rehak, Susanna Trnka Copyright 2019
    206 Pages
    by Routledge

    206 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book engages anthropologically with humor as political expression. It reveals how humor is in many instances central to human efforts to cope with political struggle and significant to understanding power dynamics in socio-political life. The chapters examine humor and joking activities across a diverse range of geographic areas and cultural contexts. The contributors consider humor as it is constituted in political anxiety, aggression and power, and when it becomes a tool to resist, repair, reconcile or make a moral claim. Collectively they demonstrate that humor can provide a powerful critique, a non-violent form of political protest and the space for restoration of human dignity.

     

    Introduction 

    Jana Kopelent Rehak

    1.You've Got to be Joking: Asserting the Analytical Value of Humor and Laughter in Contemporary Anthropology

    Yasmine Musharbasch and John Carty

    2. Disaster Humor in an Age of Truth-bending Politics

    Noelle Molé Liston

    3. "Joke" Elections: Satirical Activism and Political Opposition in Lithuania

    Neringa Klumbytė

    4.When the Fearful Becomes Funny: Joke-Work in the Midst of Violence

    Susanna Trnka

    5. Humor Against Forgetting: Joking in the Space of Death

    Jana Kopelent Rehak

    6. Chisasibi Cree Hunters and Missionaries: Humor as Evidence of Tension

    Fikret Berkes

    7. Mexican Speech Play: History and the Psychological Discourses of Power

    José E. Limón

    8. The Flesh of Joking Relationships: A Study of Quechua Sexual Farce

    Camille Riverti

    9. Trickster In The Mirror of Play and Anthropological Imagination

    Václav Soukup

    10. Trump's Two Bodies: The Trickster-Wrestler as a Political Type

    Morten Axel Pedersen

    11. "An Army of Comedy": Political Jokes and Tropic Ambiguity in the Trump Era

    Morten Nielson

    Afterword: Not All Fun and Games: The Force of Humor in Political Life 

    Susanna Trnka

    Biography

    Jana Kopelent Rehak is a Researcher in Anthropology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA and Lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.

    Susanna Trnka is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.