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- Convenors:
-
Mirco Göpfert
(Goethe University Frankfurt)
Sümeyra Güneş (Boston University)
Morten Nielsen (National Museum of Denmark)
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- Chair:
-
Cassis Kilian
(Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
- Discussants:
-
Prateek Prateek
Raul Acosta Garcia (Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main)
- Format:
- Panel+Workshop
Short Abstract:
Humour offers a unique lens for unwriting dominant narratives and revealing hidden knowledge. We invite anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnologists to use comedic performances or creative papers to explore how laughter, absurdity, and satire can unwrite established ways of thinking.
Long Abstract:
This panel-and-workshop explores humour as an inspiring and performative method of unwriting dominant narratives in both political and academic contexts. Humour opens up new spaces for understanding the world by unmaking established ways of knowing. Satire, stand-up, and political memes blur the lines between play and earnestness, allowing for the playful dismantling of fixed ideas and offering fresh perspectives.
Let’s explore humour as an active process of unwriting – not just dismantling existing structures but creating space for new, often unexpected, ways of knowing. How do comedic forms such as stand-up or parody engage with the messiness of lived experience, offering insights that are felt and experienced rather than purely intellectualized? By invoking laughter, comedians unwrite the formal structures of knowledge, leaving room for embodied, relational, and spontaneous ways of understanding.
This combination of panel and open mic brings together scholarly reflection with performative engagement. Participants can present papers on humorous unwriting or take the open-mic stage to share personal, comedic interpretations of their work and experiences. The session offers an opportunity to experiment with humour’s capacity to unsettle assumptions and invite new forms of knowledge-making.
This session invites a cross-disciplinary exchange among anthropology, ethnology, folklore, media studies, performance, curating and creative arts to explore humour as an unwriting practice that reshapes the boundaries of what we know and how we come to know it. Email ckilian(at)em.uni-frankfurt.de by May 15 to get a spot at the open mic. Please suggest all other contributions via the usual channel.
This Panel+Workshop has so far received 2 contribution proposal(s).
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