When Politics Were Fun: Recovering a History of Humour in U.S. Feminism (original) (raw)
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Humorwork, Feminist Philosophy, and Unstable Politics
2019
This dissertation examines humor as a situated practice of reappropriation and transformation undertaken by a subject within a social world. I bring together insights from humor studies, philosophy of humor, and feminist philosophy (especially feminist continental philosophy) to introduce the concept of humorwork as an unstable political practice of reappropriating and transforming existing images, speech, and situations. I argue that humorwork is an unstable politics because the practice of reappropriation and transformation often exceeds the intentions of the subject practicing humor, taking on a continued life beyond the humorist's intentions. By focusing on the practice of humor, the subject who produces it, their social and political world, the affects circulated through political humor, and the politics of popular and scholarly discourse about humor, I push against a reductive, depoliticized concept of humor and the trivializing gesture of "it's just a joke." Instead, I argue that humorists are responsible and connected to (if not always blameable) for the social and political life of their humorwork, despite the unstable and unpredictable uptake of humor against a humorist's intentions.
Introduction: "Toward a Feminist Politics of Comedy and History"
Feminist Media Histories, 2017
This journal issue is dedicated to the vibrant feminist media histories of comedy that we have seen, time and again, vanish right before our eyes. The ability to laugh in the face of crisis and in the wake of ruins is, after all, the premise of why we commit to archival research: to make visible the forgotten histories of feminist social struggle and of women's cultural authorship, not just in their own right, but against the recurrence of their political obstruction and historical annihilation. This comedy issue follows from that momentous project. Our goal is not to supplement the archive that we already know to be important, but to challenge the ways in which—as feminist historians with our eyes toward the basis of all future progress in the unrealized potentials of the past—we come to know anything at all. These are and have always been the epistemological stakes of feminist archival labor, which we hereby unleash onto the feminist and comedic crises of the present historical moment.
Reinvigorating the Traditions of Second-Wave Radical Feminism: Humor and Satire as Political Work
Women's Reproductive Health, 2019
This is a commentary on Gloria Steinem's (1978) "If Men Could Menstruate," which is reprinted in this issue. Here I situate Steinem's essay in the context of other second-wave feminists (e.g., W.I.T.C.H., Flo Kennedy, Valerie Solanas) who used satire as a weapon against the patriarchy in their fight for radical social change. Although today we recognize that some men do menstruate, Steinem's humorous approach remains relevant today, and I discuss ways to use her work in teaching courses on feminism and social justice.
Feminist Philosophy of Humor (Author Preprint)
Philosophy Compass, 2022
Over the past decades humor studies has formed an unprecedented interdisciplinary consolidation, connected with a consolidation in philosophy of humor scholarship. In this essay I focus specifically on feminist philosophy of humor as an area of study that highlights relationships between humor, language, subjectivity, power, embodiment, instability, affect, and resistance, introducing several of its key themes while mapping out tensions that can be productive for further research. I first cover feminist theories of humor as instability and then move to feminist theories of humor as generative of social relationships. Though I diagnose several tensions between these approaches that require further elaboration and discussion, I conclude that feminist philosophy of humor is a crucial area of humor research that focuses on systematic oppression, political engagement, embodiment, and affective ties.
28 times feminist joke lists were real AF: Feminist humour and the politics of joke lists
Feminist Media Studies, 2019
Despite the pervasive visibility of joke lists in online popular culture, the latter remains a surprisingly neglected site of scholarly inquiry. Feminist joke lists represent the concerted efforts of online content producers to curate a wide range of feminist humour—content that is expressly feminist in political orientation and/or sympathetic to highlighting feminist issues and sensibilities. These lists offer a compelling point of departure for interrogating the uses, limitations, and possibilities of joke lists for feminist communities of practice and how this cultural form enacts or inscribes feminist politics online. In this essay, I theorize the political significance of feminist joke lists through an examination of 20 distinct lists featuring over 350 jokes spanning a six-year period (2013–2019). Through an examination of general curated feminist joke lists, as well as humour lists produced in the wake of the 2017 and 2018 Women’s Marches, I argue that these broader activities contribute to the visibility and validation of feminist humour, the sharpening of feminist critique, and the solidarity of feminist communities.
Laughing against Patriarchy: Humor, Silence, and Feminist Resistance
One of the major concerns of Feminist Theory is the way in which women's ability to speak gets silenced, both in relation to sexist situations and to the way in which discourse itself is constructed. Some examples include Catherine MacKinnon's concern about the systematic silence of sexual harassment, 1 Deirdre Davis' concern about silencing through street harassment, 2 and Luce Irigaray's 3 and Monique Wittig's 4 concerns about the silence caused by the construction of discourse itself. Humor often reinforces silence, trivializing climates of sexism 5 and the act of pointing out the existence of patriarchal structures in society. 6 However, it also has been gestured to as a means of breaking silence and as coinciding with the self-articulation of women on their own terms. 7 What is the difference between silencing humor and humor that breaks silence? And what would it look like for humor to serve as a practice of feminist resistance? In this essay, I will argue ...
Oppression, Subversive Humor, and Unstable Politics
The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, 2023
This essay argues that humor can be used as an unstable weapon against oppressive language and concepts. Drawing from radical feminist Marilyn Frye, I discuss the difficulty of challenging systematic oppression from within and explore the capabilities of humor for this task. This requires expanding Cynthia Willett's and Julie Willett's approach to fumerism beyond affect to fully examine the work of humor in manipulating language, concepts, and imagery. For this expansion, I bring in research on feminist linguistics alongside other philosophers of political humor to consider the connection between humor and world-making. I then link this with feminist world-breaking through Monique Wittig's analysis of war machines and Trojan horses against heteropatriarchal language. Finally, I draw out the instability of humor as a war machine by investigating a bit where comedian Patti Harrison disguised herself as an official corporate brand platform to challenge the compulsory commodification of LGBTQ rights.
Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, 2016
Introduction to special issue on "Humorous Disruptions" Considering the rise of feminist humour studies and the contemporary popularity of comedic feminist web series which have crossed over to television—such as that of Issa Rae, whose current HBO show Insecure (2016 -) follows in the wake of her popular web series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl (2011-2013), as well as Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s Broad City (2009-2011) (2014 -) —this specially themed issue enters into an important conversation about the historical humorous interventions of women and feminists in film and visual media, and contextualizes more recent projects in contemporary cultural debates. Following Jo Anna Isaak’s declaration that women’s laughter can indeed be revolutionary (Isaak 1996), the field of feminist humour studies has defended humour’s status as an often overlooked form of feminist intervention, with all of its complex manifestations through irony, parody, play, and the carnivalesque. We would extend this one step further, to argue for feminist humour’s potential as a disruptive technology, transforming the ways in which scholars and practitioners communicate feminist ideas and disrupt cultural economies of humour. Such scholarship draws attention to the ways in which understandings of the term “feminist” can be complicated and change over time, between bodies of theory, and through different forms of media and comedy. Thus, for film and moving image studies, this question of the “usefulness” or “timeliness” of feminist humour provides avenues for considering how the determination of who and what can be funny, as well as the construction of alternate networks for the development and circulation of creative content, are inherently political.