[Commlist] CfP: Humour and Conflict in the Global South

33rd Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies
July 3-7, 2023, University of Boston, USA

*Call for papers: Humour and Conflict in the Global South*

Humour is traditionally associated with conflictive situations, whether 
the subjugation of someone (superiority), the frustration of an 
expectation (incongruity), or the discharge of an aggressive and/or 
antisocial energy (relief). In these approaches, conflict is primarily 
considered as an element that causes or enables comic enjoyment. Humour 
has also been understood as something that is not actually threatening 
but only has the "flavor of being threatening" (Veatch, 1998, p. 175) 
and therefore ceases to be personally attacking. Recent debates question 
this kind of understanding and emphasise the "dangerous" consequences of 
humour and comedy in contemporary times (Berlant & Ngai, 2017), 
especially when politically instrumentalized (Weaver, 2021; Nagle, 2017) 
or when used to mock minority populations (Perez, 2022; Davies & Ilott, 
2018). All these debates, however, have mostly relied on analyses of 
cultural texts produced in the Global North.

In the Global South, the relationship between humour and conflict is 
also reiterated and interrogated due to political polarisation and 
instability, culture wars, and rampant identity politics. Yet, these 
phenomena are intersected by historical, social, and political factors 
which are distinct from those mapped and discussed in the literature on 
the Global North. Divisions along the lines of class, race, caste, 
gender, sexuality, and religion continue to inform public discourse, 
economics, and politics of the South. As a tool, humour can be used to 
douse or exacerbate conflict. It can be a vehicle for education, 
misinformation, and sometimes even disinformation. It can be used to 
oppress, oppose, resist or just survive. In a context where politically 
divisive statements serve as punchlines for those in positions of power 
while humorists face jarring repercussions for their performances, it 
seems urgent to question and understand the bellicose potential of 
humour in the social and political contexts of historically marginalised 
regions of the world.

These regions are brought together here not because we understand them 
as a monolith, but because, even though they are a complex collection of 
peoples and nations across different continents, they share common 
historical, social, and political patterns of underrepresentation, 
exploitation, and marginalisation. These issues have been addressed by 
an emerging production of humour scholarship developed from and/or about 
the Global South (see Mpofu, 2021, Perera & Pathak, 2022 and Trindade 
2020). However, this production is currently dispersed, as it has not 
yet been articulated in a common research framework tailored around 
Global South contexts.

This panel aims to bring together researchers who are developing 
theoretical or empirical approaches to attend to the contemporary 
relationships between humour and conflict in the Global South. The panel 
will function as a privileged space to discuss the specificities of 
humour studies undertaken in peripheral countries, identify key research 
gaps, and propose pathways for further study. We invite scholars who use 
conflict (directly or indirectly) as an axis to understand humour in the 
Global South to present findings from ongoing/recently finished research 
projects.

Please submit a 250-word abstract along with a brief bio by *_24 Feb 
2023 _*to:
(diego.hoefel /at/ ufc.br) <mailto:(diego.hoefel /at/ ufc.br)>, 
(joao.capelotti /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(joao.capelotti /at/ gmail.com)> & 
(rujutadate /at/ protonmail.com) <mailto:(rujutadate /at/ protonmail.com)>
Notification of acceptance into panel proposal: 01 March 2023

*Organizers:* Diego Hoefel (UFC/Brazil), João Paulo Capelotti 
(UFPR/Brazil), Rujuta Date (SSLA/India)
ISHS 2023 Conference: 
https://combeyond.bu.edu/offering/international-society-of-humor-studies-conference-2023/ 
<https://combeyond.bu.edu/offering/international-society-of-humor-studies-conference-2023/>

*Note:* The terms Global North and Global South are not strictly 
geographical, rather they should be understood as nations, regions, or 
peoples that exist within certain power dynamics as created by the past 
(colonialism, imperialism) and maintained by the conditions of the 
present (globalisation, global capitalism).

*References*
Berlant, L. & Ngai, S. (2017). Comedy Has Issues. Critical Inquiry 43, 
pp. 233-249. doi: 10.1086/689666
Davies, H., & Ilott, S. (Eds.). (2019). Comedy and the Politics of 
Representation: Mocking the Weak. Palgrave Macmillan.
Mpofu, S. (Ed.). (2021). The politics of laughter in the Social Media 
Age: Perspectives from the global south. Springer International 
Publishing AG.
Nagle, A. (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and 
Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Zero Books.
Perera, S., & Pathak, D. N. (Eds.). (2022). Humour and the Performance 
of Power in South Asia: Anxiety, Laughter and Politics in Unstable 
Times. Routledge.
Perez, R. (2022). The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White 
Supremacy. Stanford University Press.
Trindade, L. V. (2020). No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance 
in Brazilian Social Media. Vernon Press.
Veatch, T., (1998). A Theory of Humor. Humor, pp. 161-215. doi: 
10.1515/humr.1998.11.2.161
Weaver, S. (2021). Images of Populism and Anti-Populism in United 
Kingdom National Newspapers about Brexit. Brunel University

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