The arts of refusal: tragic unreconciliation,pariah humour,and haunting laughter

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates Hannah Arendt’s writings on tragic unreconciliation and pariah humour as offering creative strategies for confronting the deadening of emotion that enables people to become reconciled to what they should refuse or resist. She offers a distinctive contribution to debates on reconciliation and justice, I suggest, by articulating a tragic approach to unreconciliation. Yet Arendt recognised that tragic accounts of violence can reinforce denial and resignation. In writings on the ‘hidden tradition’ of the ‘Jew as pariah,’ Arendt suggests that humour can be an important response to tragic accounts of political violence and a strategy for awakening an emotional response in those who cannot perceive tragedies to which they have become reconciled. As arts of refusal, tragic unreconciliation and pariah humour invoke and subvert the tragic imagination to reveal possibilities for solidarity, responsibility, and transformation that challenge problematic forms of reconciliation – reconciliation to one’s role as a participant in, or bystander to abuse, reconciliation as self-abnegating assimilation, and reconciliation as compromise, scapegoating, or denial.     

Ridicule,gender hegemony,and the disciplinary function of mainstream gender humour

ABSTRACT

This paper foregrounds the disciplinary power of ridicule, as a form or aspect of humour, vis-à-vis gender norms. While much theoretical and empirical research in gender studies recognizes the punitive function of gendered humour and/or ridicule, this function is given no theoretical significance. To resolve this tension, I integrate social psychologist Michael Billig's theory of ridicule as a universal reinforcer of the social order, along with the notion of gender order (as a particular type of social order) as outlined in masculinities theorist Raewyn Connell's gender hierarchy model. I contend that as a form of mainstream gender humour, ridicule serves as a tool for policing the gender order and creating self-regulating gendered subjects. The argument enables a rereading of mainstream gender humour, especially when it deploys ridicule to target non-hegemonic gendered subjectivities, practices, and performances. Such apparently banal humour, as I illustrate with examples of contemporary Anglo-American mainstream gender humour, speaks to and protects the fundamental elements of the gender order of the society and culture in which the humour circulates. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the main argument for pro-gender democracy research and activism.     

The clown's carnival in the hospital: a semiotic analysis of the medical clown's performance

The medical clown's multimodal performance in the hospital takes place within its rigid space. A clown in a hospital is a paradox. “Medical clowning” is a metaphor taken from two seemingly unrelated fields of meaning, juxtaposing what is medical, scientific, serious and logical with clowning, emotions, carnival spirit and humour. The clown addresses barriers erected by illness, pain, alienation and distress with a continuous flexible performance of humour and fantasy tailored to changing conditions and circumstances. A clown, by definition, threatens the public order and seemingly has no place in the hospital paradigm. The current article compares medical clowns to carnival clowns, examines the medical clown's flexible performance, illustrates it with case studies, presents a semiotic analysis of the clown's journey through the hospital and examines the significance of the performance on the ideological level.     

Estimation of the post-mortem interval: Effect of storage conditions on the determination of vitreous humour [K+]

Obtaining a reliable estimate of the post-mortem interval (PMI) has been a long-running challenge in forensic medicine. Several more or less successful techniques for making such estimates have been developed, but in recent years important advances have been made thanks to the detailed study of the relationship between the PMI and the analytes - in particular K⁺ - of the vitreous humour (VH). The extraction and pre-treatment of VH samples has been standardized, the influence of certain environmental factors on analytical results has been quantified, and some of the circumstances under which techniques become unreliable have been identified. The present work examines how the conditions to which VH samples are subject in routine practice may alter the results of their analysis. Exposure to light and ambient temperature was found to alter the values returned in determinations of VH [K⁺], [Na⁺] and [Cl^-], while exposure to several freezing/thawing cycles (even with final heating) led to no significant modifications in determinations of VH [K⁺] and [Na⁺]. It is recommended that if analysis has to be delayed, VH should be frozen for storage in a refrigerator before bringing to room temperature for processing. It is also recommended that samples not be exposed to ambient light and temperature.     

‘Let them entertain themselves’: the fall of the Mubarak regime seen through Egyptian political cartoons

This article examines the issues underlying the downfall of the Mubarak regime from the perspective of Egyptian cartoonists. A total of 2734 political cartoons published in five leading newspapers between January 2010 and February 2011 are analyzed. Because they form a significant part of the cultural context within which these cartoons are created, popular political jokes are also referenced. The study identifies political stagnation, domestic issues and corruption as the three most significant issues that paved the road to the fall of Mubarak.     

Developing a rhetorical analysis of racist humour: examining anti-black jokes on the Internet

Racist humour is frequently the subject of media and public debate in relation to issues of offence and acceptability. Despite this, little has been done to analyse it or its relationship to other forms of racism. I argue that an analysis of racist humour needs to account for the rhetorical structures of humour – to consider humour as a rhetorical device similar to metaphor or metonym – that has a persuasive potential. Using jokes from four US websites, the rhetorical aspects of humour are unpacked through the use of rhetorical discourse analysis and semiotic theories of humour. I then identify an important effect of racist humour. Zygmunt Bauman's ideas on the problem of ambivalence for dichotomous discourse and category formation are employed to argue that racist humour expresses racist dichotomies and has the potential, among others, to “hide” the ambivalence to which such dichotomies are prone. The article then considers the meaning and ambivalence of less severe racist joking.     

From Freud to funny music in films: The case of Blazing Saddles

Abstract

This article contends that music creates comedy in film in two significant ways: first, by ‘setting us up’ and confirming our understanding of purely musical, cinematic musical, and cultural musical codes in the symbolic order of film, only to play with or subvert our established responses to such codes thereafter; and second, by a reliance on age-old rhetorico-musical techniques associated with musical comedy. An analysis of selected scenes from the film Blazing Saddles, directed by Mel Brooks and released by Warner Brothers in 1974, follows, wherein such techniques of musical comedy are shown to be evident. By way of reflecting on these techniques, some thought is given to Sigmund Freud's understanding of the continuum of humour involving play, jest and jokes, within the context of his notion of the principle of economy in psychical expenditure. Accordingly, the author concludes that the political discourse of Blazing Saddles is effective precisely because it is clothed in humour.     

Spinoza Now

Abstract

This discussion of Infinitely Demanding explores the terms of the paradox with which Critchley is centrally concerned: how an ethico-politics can at once begin in disappointment and yet allow for engagement, the infinite renewal of commitment and optimism. Placing this in critical relation to the paradox Rorty meets with his account of the "private ironist and public liberal" in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, I argue that Critchley's ethico-politics invokes the possibility of a non-ironical categorical imperative, at the meeting point of finitude and the infinite and at the heart of what is also a political space of intersubjectivity. I examine the logic of humour and of commitment within the Kantian frame thus suggested, arguing for their relevance to certain aspects of anarcho-activism, but also for their limitations in desperate circumstances, posing the risk that Critchley's preferred politics falls back into liberal complacency.     

Magnesium, potassium, sodium and calcium in post-mortem vitreous humour from humans

Levels of magnesium, potassium, sodium and calcium in post-mortem vitreous humour from human controls, fire fatalities and drowning victims have been determined. The effects of time-related internal changes, external environmental parameters and different causes of death are evaluated. Despite the positive correlation and marked increase of potassium and, to a lesser extent, of magnesium and calcium with the length of the post-mortem interval, individual biological variability severely limits the usefulness of predictions of post-mortem interval based on electrolyte metal data. At best, there is only a 2/3 chance of a prediction being within 12 h of the true value. Vitreous humour metal concentrations are affected by external influences, such as the elevated temperatures of fires which increase the rate of release of intracellular magnesium and potassium. In cases where drowning is suspected, establishment or exclusion of this cause of death is not possible on the basis of vitreous humour electrolyte metal data because of possible post-immersion diffusion across the permeable membrane of the eyeball. It appears, however, that magnesium in salt-water cases and sodium in fresh-water cases are related, albeit erratically, to the length of the immersion period.     

Dominion Cartoon Satire as Trench Culture Narratives: Complaints,Endurance and Stoicism

Abstract

Although Dominion soldiers’ Great War field publications are relatively well known, the way troops created cartoon multi-panel formats in some of them has been neglected as a record of satirical social observation. Visual narrative humour provides a ‘bottom-up’ perspective for journalistic observations that in many cases capture the spirit of the army in terms of stoicism, buoyed by a culture of internal complaints. Troop concerns expressed in the early comic strips of Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and British were similar. They shared a collective editorial purpose of morale boosting among the ranks through the use of everyday narratives that elevated the anti-heroism of the citizen soldier, portrayed as a transnational everyman in the service of empire. The regenerative value of disparagement humour provided a redefinition of courage as the very act of endurance on the Western Front.