Play like a Feminist. by Shira Chess

Author:Shira Chess [Chess, Shira]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: MIT Press

The Lulz of Medusa

The physical act of laughter is the ultimate tool of playful protest. It does not require props, screens, or any affiliated costs. Laughter has the ability to disrupt the status quo, extricating stifling hypocrisies. It is always available, regardless of your position of power. It works as an antiseptic and is clarifying. It is personal. Laughter has been used and mobilized by those in the past, and needs to reclaim its role in the protestations of the future. Laughter is a striking tool of resistance. If deployed properly, we can giggle, guffaw, chuckle, and snicker toward resistance and advancement.

But how do we laugh in the face of the terrible things that happen—things that strike us so deeply that we are immobilized with fear? In these moments, our first response to protest is often one of anger and deliberate, obstinate resistance. How, then, do we add laughter to this resistance? When overwhelmed with sadness over the things we wish to protest, how do we locate the presence of mind to laugh without diminishing or undercutting our topic? When I set out to write this section of this chapter, it was October 27, 2018. I was in a hotel room in Vancouver, three hours behind my usual time. I had woken early to write, and the news erupted that eleven people had been murdered by a gunman in a Pittsburgh synagogue. In the face of this, how do I laugh? I put the chapter down for weeks, assuming the answer would come with distance; after all, this shooting was just one of many. In 2019 alone, the United States of America had 417 mass shootings. How do I laugh?

I laugh because laughter is power. Elizabeth Krefting refers to “charged humor”: a form of disruptive laughter meant to reimagine communities and use comedy to “foment social change.”29 Krefting observes that in this way, laughter is an inroad toward social justice. Similarly, Joseph Boskin writes about the power of comedy to disrupt the momentary zeitgeist.30 But he also suggests that political humor is often deployed ineffectively, and that rather than focusing on institutions, it tends to be directed at individuals.31 In other words, the target of derisive laughter should not be the politician who makes a public misstep but instead the political system that put that politician in power. This lack of institutional focus makes our laughter less effective as a weapon.

Nevertheless, laughter has been and can be weaponized. Charged humor, in addition to being a kind of communal glue, is personal and intimate. We can laugh in a crowded theater, to great satisfaction, but we can also laugh alone and unheard by others. Laughter can be deployed by the disenfranchised to reclaim their sense of the absurd world we live in while remaining a binding substance that can fortify relationships. We need more laughter.

Earlier I cited Ahmed’s words in Living a Feminist Life, where she wrote that “feminist laughter can lighten our loads.” Others before Ahmed suggested the use of laughter to reconsider how it can offset power.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.