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Contribution short abstract:

The paper attempts to move beyond the logocentric understanding and definitions of humour by interrogating body as a site of production of humour. Through performances of kothis in India, it shows how humour produced through body leads to a form of commoning.

Contribution long abstract:

The genealogy of humour tells us that origin of the term humour lies in medicine. Humour represented bodily liquids which thereby; determined the mood and temperament of a person. The physical and psychological interaction in the body was believed to influence human thoughts. In order to understand this process, there was a significant focus on linguistics. As humour walked through the lanes of philosophy and social science, the contours of understanding it became the verbal and the comical. Therefore, most studies on humour are preoccupied with understanding jokes because they have an empirically approachable verbal structure with laughter as a measure of humour. A move away from this preoccupation takes us towards the question of body. The performance of kothis in India opens up avenues of locating the body of/in humour. Kothis can be loosely understood as a subset of transgender population in India. Much like other transgender populations, there is a lot of stigma attached to the kothi identity. They are invited to weddings, birthdays and other celebrations to dance, entertain, and bless people. The performance of kothis urges to go beyond the logocentric preoccupation of humour and perhaps turn back to body albeit, not in terms of medical science. I argue that the dance by kothis opens up multiple avenues to understand humour and make space for the non-verbal in humour. Through humour and thereby; through the body, kothis also produce spaces of commoning for and with cis gendered people, however fleetingly, who are often discriminatory towards kothis.