Paper short abstract:

From critically analysis of conversations around selected humorous videos and memes of political campaigns in Nigeria, this paper argues that, more than fostering resistance, humour functions in the political space as agency of desensitization.

Paper long abstract:

The 2023 campaigns in Nigeria to elect the next set of political office holders have made the social media a space of intriguing humour. Numerous videos of candidates' gaffes and memes of various social significance are often extracted from campaign rallies and circulated in the social media space by candidates and their supporters to demarket their opponents. This is not new. From Patience Jonathan, former First Lady to President Muhammadu Buhari and Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike down to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the current presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), humour has attained an important status as a weapon of political (de)marketing and resistance. Drawing on data from the social media presentations and representations of the campaign goofs and gaffes of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, I carry out a phenomenologico-existentialist analysis of the use of adaptive humour in electoral demarketing of political aspirants. My study purposively selects tik tok videos and memes of this aspirant and viewers’ reactions to them. I critically analyse the conversations around these videos and memes and argue that adaptive humour has the regressive political function of enabling individuals, politicians and their supporters alike, to cope with everyday stress and also build up resilience in the difficult times of electioneering. Thus, more than fostering resistance, humour functions in the political space as agency of desensitization. Beyond this, I further suggest that while sustaining its ludic function, political humour enables informed electorates to scrutinise aspirants dispassionately.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the role of women in different comedic realms across Africa. We argue that women’s agency in humor production has always been present but with the rise of social media, it is also becoming more visible thereby transforming gendered agency in popular culture.

Paper long abstract:

Despite the recent African comedy boom, women have been largely absent from this discussion. Historically, formal comedy scenes have largely been a man’s game (not just in Africa but globally as well), with female joke telling being relegated to female dominated spaces, such as market and domestic settings. In more formal joking spaces, female attendance to stand-up events is often quite substantial, often “creating” or generating the laughter desired by the comedian. They also tend to prominently feature within jokes. This paper, therefore, highlights ways African humour traditions have historically kept femininity out (pertaining to person) and in (in relation to their issues), thereby retaining women as the butt rather than the weavers of the joke. In recent years though, social media spaces have provided new spaces for female production of laughter. We argue that women have always enacted humorous agency, despite their invisibility in formal comedic spaces. They are central to the jokes and the laughter of the industry. However, their own humour is becoming increasingly visible. With the rise of social media, women have been able to bypass male gatekeepers and create humorous content on their own accord. They are performed in private spaces, but then circulated publicly in what we refer to as the “public not public.” This creates an interesting paradox in that women are still largely performing privately, but with a public audience. Social media has therefore, allowed for the enactment of a new type of gender agency – that of humour.

Paper short abstract:

In Africa, there is the Nairobi Hope Theatre, which has taken on the mission of education for sustainable development and contributes to it with its productions. It uses the means of political satire and adapts the tradition of Greek satyr plays and Aristotelian comedy for their concern.

Paper long abstract:

In 2015 the 70th General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and formulated the 17 Global Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the World Program on Education for Sustainable Development; the prehistory to this is older and started already in 1972. To achieve the goals the countries programs for education for sustainable development are to be launched by the member states; in Germany, for example, this coordinated by the German UNESCO in cooperation with different institutions at federal and state level.

In Africa, there is the Nairobi Hope Theatre, which has taken on the mission of education for sustainable development and contributes to it with its productions. It uses the means of political satire on the one hand and adapts the tradition of Greek satyr plays and Aristotelian comedy on the other. It uses, I argue, political humour in these forms to both tell the story of sustainability to a wider in and outside of Africa in the form of drama, and to educate young people entering the ensemble about it so that they can make their own contribution to sustainable development education.

By analyzing selected plays, my paper will demonstrate that productions of the Nairobi Hope Theatres are in the tradition of the Greek satyr play, and that the humour initiated in them follows a narrative and structure that is suitable for providing political enlightenment as satire.