Abstract
The aim of this paper is to reconceive safety as a form of relation embedded in particular ways of speaking, listening and thinking. Moving away from safety as a relation that is achieved once and for all and afterwards remains safe avoids some of the disappointments of discourses of safety that seem to promise once a risk is taken or a gap is bridged that thereafter relations among people will be easier and calmer. This bumpier version of safety suggests that humor creates the kind of instabilities in discourse that act, perhaps ironically, as an invitation to enjoy the difficulties of communicating complex and challenging ideas. Humor, then, creates a kind of safe space, not devoid of dramatic shifts or emotional response, but organized around those shifts as experiences that are moments apart from conflict. I explore the use of humor as a form of serious play in social justice classrooms, examining the strategies of indirect teaching, contradictory lessons, and jolting pleasure that more traditional pedagogical approaches are less able to create. I see in humor a complex form of address and interaction that plays on the multiple possibilities within an utterance or concept and by reminding classroom communities of those possibilities. Humor can erupt from shared moments and disjunctive understandings and can as easily be mobilized by teachers as by students. By reopening the possibilities of concepts and relations, humor shatters simplistic readings by literally playing out what might be said and what could be tried but often manages to combine a sense of safety via shared laughter with its disruptions.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Blackpeopleloveus.com, n.d., accessed 7 July 2010. The site’s authors, Chelsea and Jonah Peretti are not credited on the site. See Lola Ogunnaike, “Black-White Harmony: Are You Kidding Me?”, nytimes.com, 17 Nov. 2002, www.contagiousmedia.org/press/bplu/bplu-nyt.htm for an account of their work. For a more detailed discussion of this website and other antiracist humor, see Mayo (2009).
Laughter, humor, and jokes are not all the same, of course, but much writing on humor keeps the three concepts closely tied together and so will this essay.
Freud (1960), 121.
See Morreall (1983), Freud and Bergson have or summarize similar characterizations.
John Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously, 60.
John Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously, 39.
Plato (1993), 83 (388 e). Even if the laughter portrays shows “unquenchable laughter” of the gods at Hephaestus, the key issue is control and relatedly hierarchy (389 a).
Hobbes (1946), part 1, ch. 6, p. 36.
Bergson (2007), 12.
Bergson, Laughter, 17.
Bergson, Laughter, 17.
Bergson, Laughter, 26.
Fanon (1967), 112.
Fanon, Black Skin, 112.
Fanon, Black Skins, 114.
Bergson, Laughter, 26.
Freud (1960), 205.
Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 207.
Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 160.
Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 146.
For instance in his discussion of condensation, a series of wordplays, he notes that the technique “has to take the trouble to search out the one word which covers the two thoughts. Indeed, it must often first transform one of the thoughts into an unusual form which will provide a basis for its combination with the second thought” (49).
Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 109.
Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 106–107.
Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 143.
Bourdieu (1993), 73–74.
Bourdieu, Sociology in Question, 73.
Ortner (1996), 12.
Ortner, Making Gender, 13, 15.
Ortner, Making Gender, 18.
Ortner, Making Gender, 20.
Bourdieu (1980), 55.
Clifford Geertz quoted in Bhabha (1994), 59.
Moton (1939), 8–9.
Moton, What the Negro Thinks, 12.
References
Bergson, H. (2007). Laughter: An essay on the meaning of the comic. Champaign, IL: Book Jungle.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. (1980). The logic of practice, (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question. London: Sage Publications.
Cowan, W. T. (2001). Plantation comic modes. Humor, 14(1), 1–24.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1940). Dusk of dawn. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press.
Freud, S. (1960). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious, (J. Strachey, Trans. and Ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.
Ganter, G. (2003). ‘He made us laugh some’: Frederick douglass’s humor. African American Review, 37(4), 535–554.
Gates, H. L. (1988). The signifying monkey: A theory of African-American literary criticisms. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gordon, D. B. (1998). Humor in African American discourse: Speaking of oppression. Journal of Black Studies, 29(2), 254–276.
Hobbes, T. (1946). Leviathan, or the matter, forme and power of a commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Jenkins, R. (1994). Subversive laughter: The liberating power of comedy. New York: Free Press.
Lockyer, S., & Pickering, M. (Eds.). (2005). Beyond a joke: The limits of humor. New York: Palgrave.
Lott, E. (1993). Love and theft: Blackface minstrelsy and the American working class. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mayo, C. (2009). Being in on the Joke: Pedagogy, race, humor. In R. Glass (Ed.), Philosophy of education (pp. 244–252). Urbana, Ill: Philosophy of Education Society.
Morreall, J. (1983). Taking laughter seriously. Albany: SUNY Press.
Moton, R. R. (1939). What the negro thinks. NY: Doubleday.
Oring, E. (1992). Jokes and their relations. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
Ortner, S. B. (1996). Making gender: The politics and erotics of culture. Boston: Beacon Press.
Plato (1993). Republic, (R. Waterfield, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sterling, P. (Ed.). (1965). Laughing on the outside: The intelligent white reader’s guide to negro tales and humor. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The author Cris Mayo is on leave until Aug. 2010.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mayo, C. Incongruity and Provisional Safety: Thinking Through Humor. Stud Philos Educ 29, 509–521 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-010-9195-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-010-9195-6