Contribution short abstract:

For the Sámi, humor and laughter are central means of communication. They actively participate to share the community's multiple narratives and the knowledge they carry. They can also be a creative way of responding to colonialist state ideologies and hegemonic categories that impact Sámi autonomy.

Contribution long abstract:

How does laughter and humor expressed in Sámi oral traditions enable the Sámi to know and reinterpret theirs relationships to the land and to its inhabitants, and engage with the contemporary world as Sámi? For many young Sámi, the practices of Sámi narratives and yoiks (Sámi way of singing) is a precious source of meaning and personality at a time when industrial pressure on the Arctic territory is increasing and climate change is darkening the horizon.

The Sámi are dealing with modernity in an creative and pragmatic way, in the spirit of Sámi traditions, in order to pursue and renew their territorialities, defend theirs cultural identities and decolonize social imaginaries. Laughter and humor play a significant role in such processes by stimulating social interactions in the community, carrying the collective memory and knowledge and expressing counter-narratives to colonialism and hegemonic categories impacting Sámi autonomy.

Based on a 14-month ethnographic research in Dálvvadis (Jokkmokk), a village located in the Swedish part of the Sábme, the Sámi homeland, I aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of humor and laughter in indigenous studies and in anthropology. Present in everyday life and in cultural performances of Sámi participants, humor and laughter carry social and political meanings and constitute creative means of communication that shape the Sámi's most current practical and cosmological fields.

Contribution short abstract:

In this paper I will discuss how stand-up comedians can challenge hegemonic discourses in society with their performances. By mixing humor with seriousness, stand-up comedians can evoke various affects among the audience members and make them reflect on what they have laughed at.

Contribution long abstract:

The stand-up comedian is often compared with the medieval court jester, who could reveal inconvenient truths and was allowed to mock those in power positions without getting punished. Researchers also often compare stand-up comedians with anthropologists, since they both examine various norms and discourses in society. By pointing out the absurdities in our everyday life, stand-up comedy can offer new and alternative perspectives on societal issues.

In this paper I will discuss how stand-up comedians construct counterhegemonic positions in their performances in order to challenge and unwrite hegemonic discourses in society. For example, Swedish (stand-up) comedians Bianca Kronlöf and Mia Skäringer position themselves as feminists in order to criticize patriarchal discourses and norms, while Australian stand-up comedian Hannah Gadsby joke about, and at the same time criticize, heteronormativity and homophobia from a lesbian/queer perspective.

Kronlöf, Skäringer and Gadsby have in common that their performances consist of both humoristic and serious parts. With inspiration from Chantal Mouffe, I mean that stand-up comedy's ability to switch between emotional states has the potential to evoke different affects among the audience members, which can inspire them to take part in counterhegemonic struggles. By switching between humor and seriousness, the audience members may not only laugh but also feel anger and shame over prevailing norms and discourses. In this way, stand-up comedy can appeal to a variety of emotions and also make us reflect on what it is we've laughed at.

Contribution short abstract:

To return or not to return the colonial loots from the West to the rest? Trevor Noah and James Acaster, in their Netflix stand-up specials, have made us see through the museum world, in which the right and wrong equates the black and white, literally (?!).

Contribution long abstract:

The return of colonial collections from the West to their countries of origin has sparked heated debates among museum professionals and academics since 2002. Not only was the concept of universal museum proposed by ICOM, but the theories and practices of digital repatriation or decolonising museums have also been discussed by prominent scholars.

Nevertheless, this demand from the rest to the West remained largely unheard in Western media, until 28 November 2017, when the French president Emmanuel Macron shocked the world for triggering a restitution movement that would include other former colonial powers like Germany, Belgium, the UK and the US.

As culture is designed to cover conflicts of interest and museum be a centerstage for heritage diplomacy, one might ask: what motivated this reverse cultural diplomacy or museum play of the West, particularly with African audiences in mind? The unspoken answer seems to be the rise of China, with its Belt and Road Initiative began to extend into Africa alongside Southeast and Central Asia in 2012.

To date, only 28 pieces have been returned from France to Africa, and most African and Asian masterpieces remained unaltered in Western museums. While researchers and museum stakeholders contemplate the need for new laws, further studies of provenance and repair of culture, Trevor Noah and James Acaster, in their Netflix stand-up specials, have made us see through the museum world, in which the right and wrong equates the black and white, literally (?!).

Contribution short abstract:

The paper attempts to look at the entanglement of unwriting, humour, hegemony and oral narratives against the backdrop of the complex called Teyyam and the oral narratives related to it, Totam of North Malabar, Kerala, India.

Contribution long abstract:

The paper tends to take up the task of unwriting in light of the complex called Teyyam and the oral narratives related to it, totam. Teyyam is a cyclical, cultural and ritual complex of North Malabar of Kerala nestled in the southwest of India. The complex, intricate to the socio-cultural milieu of the region, known for its lore and looms critique the societal hegemonies grappling with power dynamics, identity and agency. A diverse and artistic intervention, the complex involves apotheosis and unwrites to call for understandings of inclusion, blurring boundaries on various levels. The complex unwrites through humour and transformation, literally and figuratively more-than-human, even in perspectives. Drawing on theoretical considerations spanning across disciplines, the entanglement of unwriting, humour, hegemony and oral narratives would be looked into.

Contribution short abstract:

Stand-up comedy necessitates common sense in order to be intelligible. In Slovenia this entails Yugoslav past, which is actively forgotten, disputed, revised and reclaimed. This paper traces unwriting of this active forgetting of the common past and animosity in comedians’ performances.

Contribution long abstract:

In my ongoing research I chart how comedians have for the past two decades developed stand-up comedy within the existing Slovenian nation state. This widely popular genre's pronounced local characteristics are most notably language use, spatial configurations and peculiar political economy in the sphere of Slovenian cultural production. During my ethnographic fieldwork I observed the necessity of yet another crucial prerequisite for its functioning: common knowledge of participants in the interaction of stand-up comedy. To grasp existing commonalities, I employ Gramsci's notion of senso comune, a complex of historical sedimentation of world outlooks and positionings of the subject. Stand-up performances produce and reproduce its own infrastructural conditions, senso comune included. In Slovenia it is conditioned by and contextualized by Yugoslavia; material and symbolic presencing of the ruptured past. Namely, radical rupture with the previous system and dissolution of the socialist state is accompanied by the active concealment, revisionism or reclamation of the lived past in Yugoslavia. Yet this burdened and conflictual past has a potential to be unwritten in the social suspension of humorous discourse. This paper attempts to show how this is most prominently discernable in material of comedians who cannot avoid the Yugoslav part – migrants, war refugees and descendants of those who migrated to Slovenia from other republics within the previous state. Shared spaces, languages, memories and persisting artefacts from the past are accentuated in performed material not to consolidate ethnic identities and animosities but to unwrite them and leave room for something different to arise.

Contribution short abstract:

A small group of comedians has set out to challenge established satirical news shows with a radio programme of their own. With this presentation, interweaving a performative comedic newscast with an anthropological analysis, I examine their process from within.

Contribution long abstract:

News satire has become a widespread phenomenon worldwide. Modelled in American and English television programmes, hundreds of versions are broadcasted in dozens of countries.

In Guadalajara, a small group of humourists with experience in the local stand-up comedy circuit, have created a novel satirical radio news show. Their project is inspired not only by their comedic temperament, but also as a critique of existing programmes at national and local levels.

As an anthropologist, I have collaborated with the team following their efforts and attending their performances. In their show, my role is that of the European correspondent. As stand-up comedians, two of them have specialised in presenting satirical news bulletins in open-mic sessions. This has allowed them to train their writing skills and measure the responses to their takes on headlines. While they often trivialise serious issues, they do so with a clear sense of social critique.

In my view, their exercise seeks not merely comedic relief, but also a reflexive one. I interpret their effort as trying to break with a journalistic/entertainment model formed during decades of censored news and media at the hands of a single party regime. Because that model continues to produce feeble journalism where opinions and derision overpower analyses, it has in turn influenced the existing satirical news shows, which are clearly partisan and appear to be more propaganda than satire.

With this presentation, I interweave my own performance of satirical news with my analyses of the serious business of headline humour in Guadalajara.