Comic Strips and “the Crisis”: Postcolonial Laughter and Coping With Everyday Life in Zimbabwe

Willems, Wendy

doi:10.1080/15405702.2011.562099

Cited by 42 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Interestingly, popular art including music and comedy has emerged as an alternative way of critiquing the state and its excesses, especially corruption and economic mismanagement. Although comedic humour and popular youth music is less susceptible to brutality, it has not been immune to surveillance and policing (Willems 2011;Källstig 2021).…”

Section: Creative Subversive Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Youth-Led Social Movements and Peacebuilding in Africa

Bangura¹

2022

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This book critically examines and analyses the active role played by youthled social movements in pushing for change and promoting peacebuilding in Africa, and their long-term impacts on society.Africa's history is characterised by youth movements. The continent's youth populations played pivotal roles in the campaign against colonialism and, ever since independence, Africa's youth have been at the centre of social mobilisation. Most recently, social media has contributed significantly to a further rise in youth-led social movements. However, the impact of youth voices is often marginalised by patriarchal and gerontocratic approaches to governance, denying them the place, voice, and recognition that they deserve. Drawing on empirical evidence from across the continent, this book analyses the drivers and long-term impacts of youth-led social movements on politics in African societies, especially in the area of peacebuilding. Additionally, the book draws attention to the innovative ways in which young people continue to seek to re-engineer social spaces and challenge contexts that deny them their voice, place, recognition, and identity. This book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of social movement studies, youth studies, peace and conflict studies, history, political sciences, social justice, and African studies.

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Section: Creative Subversive Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Youth-Led Social Movements and Peacebuilding in Africa

Bangura¹

2022

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“…The light critique of the meme aligns with what Hartley (2010) calls "silly citizenship"-the propulsion of "comedy, send-ups and spoofs to the centre of the political process" (p. 241). But as Willems (2011) has pointed out in the context of political cartoons in Zimbabwe, such humorous artefacts don"t always offer direct political resistance, but sometimes play a "self-reflexive role in which those subject to power reflect on their own powerlessness and lack of agency" (p. 128). This self-reflexivity is key to the light critique of the meme.…”

Section: Conclusion: In Praise Of Light Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

The conquest of the world as meme: memetic visuality and political humor in critiques of the hindu right wing in India

Baishya

2021

Media, Culture & Society

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With the rise of internet-based digital participatory cultures in India, social networks have become sites of volatile political discourse. As in other countries such as Brazil, China and Russia, this has led to the concurrent eruption of memes in India’s political landscape. This paper examines humorous politicized memes that are deployed to critique the Hindu right-wing in India. Through an examination of the formal nature of the meme and its connection to other visual forms such as the caricature, the visual joke and the graphic novel, I demonstrate how seemingly frivolous objects can hold potential for serious discourse. Employing a mix of visual and textual analysis, as well as a survey of virally circulating memes on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, I forward the concept of “memetic visuality”—a mode of imagining the world and the political community through a series of intertextual connections. I argue that social media communication has led to the eruption of a memetic mode of engaging with political culture in India, in which virally fueled parody and satire infuses seemingly non-memetic objects with meme-like characteristics. In doing so, memetic political discourse in India becomes part of a larger global language of online political discourse.

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“…The crisis rhetoric literature has examined communication strategies like apologia, instruction, and differentiation (Hoffman and Ford ) . Within this tradition, humor has been seen as a tool for negotiating economic crises, coping with stress, repairing one's image, and as a method often employed by underserved populations—but the slippery nature of humor can also create its own problems in public affairs (Achter ; Compton ; Kuipers ; Maxwell ; Waisanen ; Willems ). As another crisis device, I find that enthymematic joking can address political demands and pressures that threaten a president's image or standing.…”

Section: Crises Enthymemes and Joking Rhetoricmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comedian‐in‐Chief: Presidential Jokes as Enthymematic Crisis Rhetoric

Waisanen

2015

Pres Stud Q

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To understand how jokes have functioned as part of U.S. presidents' strategic communication, this project examined every available White House Correspondents' Dinner (WHCD) speech over the last century, documenting various presidents' approaches to humor. I argue that the ability to talk about difficult or taboo subjects through jokes' deeply enthymematic ways of communicating has offered presidents expanded rhetorical spaces during crises, providing insights into why they started using humor with such routine frequency. Working with multiple factors shaping the modern presidency, presidents have used the elastic and inventive nature of enthymematic joking in attempts to move pressing issues outside immediate lines of criticism. The use of jokes in presidential communication is charted through three periods of WHCD. Several implications are drawn from this analysis, including the risks of humor as a rhetorical strategy.

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Comic Strips and “the Crisis”: Postcolonial Laughter and Coping With Everyday Life in Zimbabwe

Cited by 42 publications

References 39 publications

Youth-Led Social Movements and Peacebuilding in Africa

Youth-Led Social Movements and Peacebuilding in Africa

The conquest of the world as meme: memetic visuality and political humor in critiques of the hindu right wing in India

Comedian‐in‐Chief: Presidential Jokes as Enthymematic Crisis Rhetoric

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