[Commlist] CFP: Internet, Humor, and Nation in Latin/x America

*Internet, Humor, and Nation in Latin/x America*, coedited by Héctor 
Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Poblete

The internet is both a medium, the latest in a long line of previous 
mass media, and a space of trans-individuation and collective 
co-creation. As a media channel and a format, it tends to privilege 
certain forms, lengths, affects. As a commons, it is nurtured by all 
participants and shapes their affects and subjectivities in ways that 
have deep cultural, economic, political consequences inside and outside 
the nation. As a relatively de-territorialized space, it interacts in 
myriad ways with the forms of cultural and political territorialization 
of the nation. Finally, as a communicational infrastructure, the 
internet is tied in more classical ways to the geopolitics of 
information production and circulation.

Humor, on the other hand,is often based on mechanisms of superiority, 
relief, or incongruity. As theorized by Simon Critchley, for 
example,ethnic humor in a national context is an instance of 
superiority-based humor. It functions like “a secret code” that is 
shared by all those who belong to the /ethnos/ and it produces a context 
and community-based /ethos/ of superiority. This superiority is 
expressed in two ways: first, foreigners do not share /our/ sense of 
humor or simply lack a sense of humor. Secondly, foreigners are 
themselves funny and worth laughing at. Thus, humor plays a key role in 
the signaling of boundaries of identity—who stands inside or outside 
significant creative spaces. With the nature of the internet and humor 
in mind, we are seeking contributions for a volume provisionally titled 
/Internet, Humor, and Nation in Latin/x America/*.*

We ask: if what we described above is the case in a nation-based 
context, how does the internet alter, confirm, heighten, or deflate the 
dynamics of humor? If internet-based humor is a relief, what is it a 
relief of or from? What are the syntactics and semantics specific to 
internet humor? What is the specific logic of internet-based humor? In 
the internet context, what is incongruous? When it comes to humor, what 
relationships does the audiovisual aspect of the internet enter into 
with its written side? What kinds of humor go viral and which don’t, and 
why? What role does humor itself play in the affective and economic 
structure of the internet?

We are seeking original articles for an edited collection on the role of 
internet humor in the definition of cultural, economic, political, and 
social national and transnational processes and critiques. Within this 
context, recent precedents on the topic of humor in modern media are 
Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan Morris’s /Laughing Matters: Humor and 
American Politics in the Media Age /(Routledge, 2008), which examines 
the role of humor in US politics—along with David Thorne’s /The Internet 
is a Playground/ (Penguin, 2011), exemplifying a performative 
disposition—and articles like Luis Loya García’s “Latino Humor in 
Comparative Perspective.” In the spirit ofCualca (AR), País de Boludos 
(AR), Greg News (BR), Porta dos Fundos (BR), Actualidad Panamericana 
(CO), La Pulla (CO), Upsocl (CL), ElDeforma (MX), El Pulso de la 
República (MX), Gente Como Uno (PE), or Remezcla (US), we hope to 
contribute to the study of the interaction among humor, nation, and the 
internet. While much work to date in this field has focused on 
satire—see Paul Alonso’s /Satiric TV in the Americas/ (Oxford, 2018), 
which discusses the impact of streaming—we are interested in all types 
of internet-based humor practices (cutting across formats and media).

The volume aims at exploring, from a multi and interdisciplinary open 
perspective, the diverse ways in which cyber-humor is created, produced, 
consumed, used, circulated, reproduced, reacted to. On the whole, we are 
interested in the significance of cyber-discourses and cyber-narratives 
in the context of local, national, regional, transnational, and global 
cultural production, commercial ventures, material culture, audiences, 
education, government policy, and community practices.

Potential contributors should send a 500 to 1,000 word abstract, a short 
bio & bibliography, and complete contact information to Héctor Fernández 
L’Hoeste ((fernandez /at/ gsu.edu) <mailto:(fernandez /at/ gsu.edu)>) and Juan Poblete 
((jpoblete /at/ ucsc.edu) <mailto:(jpoblete /at/ ucsc.edu)>).

*Deadline for abstracts: May 1, 2020*

*Notification of accepted abstracts by May 15, 2020*

*Deadline for complete selected essays: November 1, 2020*

*Language of submission: English*

*Style: MLA*

/Contributors of selected essays must secure permission to reproduce any 
images./

*Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste *(Ph.D., Stony Brook University, 1996) is 
professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he 
teaches cultural studies. He is the author of /Narrativas de 
representación urbana/ (Peter Lang, 1998) and /Lalo Alcaraz: Political 
Cartooning in the Latino Community/ (University of Mississippi Press, 
2017), and editor of /Rockin’ Las Americas/ (with Deborah Pacini 
Hernández and Eric Zolov, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 
/Redrawing the Nation/ (with Juan Poblete, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 
/Cumbia!/ (with Pablo Vila, Duke University Press, 2013), /Sports and 
Nationalism in Latin/o America/ (with Robert McKee Irwin and Juan 
Poblete, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and /Sound, Image, and National 
Imaginary in the Construction of Latin/o American Identities/ (with 
Pablo Vila, Lexington Books, 2018). His articles on media and cultural 
theory have appeared in /Hispania/, /Chasqui/, /National 
Identities/,/Objeto Visual/, /Revista de Estudios Colombianos, //Revista 
Iberoamericana/, /Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios sobre la 
Historieta/ (Cuba), /Cenizas/ (Mexico), and /Film Quarterly/, among 
others. In addition, he has published work in /Imagination Beyond 
Nation/ (Pittsburgh, 1998), /Imagining Our Americas/ (Duke, 2007), and 
/Cultures of the City/ (Pittsburgh, 2010), among others. He is editor of 
two academic series: with Pablo Vila, he edits the Music, Culture, and 
Identity in Latin America series for Lexington Books; and with Juan 
Carlos Rodríguez, he publishes Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture 
in Latin/o America for the University of Florida Press. In 2018, 
together with Robert McKee Irwin and Juan Poblete, he published the 
Spanish translation of /Sports and Nationalism in Latin/o America/, 
titled/Deportes y nacionalismo en América Latina /(Cuarto Propio). He’s 
currently completing the translation of the forthcoming /Travels to the 
Land of Oblivion: Modernity and Colombian Identity in the Work of Carlos 
Vives and La Provincia /(Lexington Books) and, together with Juan Carlos 
Rodríguez, an edited volume titled/Digital Humanities in Latin America/ 
(University of Florida Press). He’s also working on a coming monograph 
titled /Vicious /Muñequitos/: Memory, Nation, and Violence in Latin/x 
American Comics/.

*Juan Poblete*, Professor of Latin/o American Literature and Cultural 
Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. Author of /La Escritura 
de Pedro Lemebel como proyecto cultural y político/, (Santiago: Cuarto 
Propio, 2019); /Hacia una historia de la lectura y la pedagogía 
literaria en América Latina/, (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2019); and 
/Literatura chilena del siglo XIX: entre públicos lectores y figuras 
autoriales/  (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2003 and 2018); editor of 
/Critical Latin American and Latino Studies/ (University of Minnesota 
Press, 2003) and /New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and 
Power/ (Routledge, 2017); and co-editor of /Piracy and Intellectual 
Property in Latin America: Rethinking Creativity and the Common Good/ 
(Routledge, 2020), /Precarity and Belonging://Labor, Migration, and 
Noncitizenship/(Rutgers University Press, 2020), /Andrés Bello/ (with 
Beatriz Gonzalez-Stephan, IILI, 2009),/ Redrawing The Nation: National 
Identities in Latin/o American Comics /(with Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste, 
Palgrave, 2009), /Desdén al infortunio: Sujeto, comunicación y público 
en la narrativa de Pedro Lemebel/ (with Fernando Blanco, Santiago: 
Cuarto Propio, 2010), /Sports and Nationalism in Latin America /(with 
Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Robert McKee-Irwin, Palgrave, 2015), and 
/Humor in Latin American Cinema/(with Juana Suárez, Palgrave, 2015).


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