Joking Through Hardship: Humor and Truth-Telling among Displaced Timbuktians

Abstract

Abstract:This article argues that one way in which internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees from Timbuktu, Mali, negotiated and made sense of the occupation of northern Mali in 2012 and the hardships of displacement was through joking. A genre of unofficial communication, joking asserted local truths and produced counternarratives. Sharing in this humorous reproduction helped to alleviate some of the anxieties of displacement and strengthen interpersonal relationships. The result was a communitas that reproduced the local Timbuktian community in exile.

Romeand theRomains: laughter on the border between Kinshasa and Brazzaville

“…Mitchell (1956) demonstrated how the Kalela dance transformed such joking relationships between kin into relationships between strangers in an urban environment where erstwhile enemies had to unite against their European employers. More recent literature has expanded these observations to analyse humour as a way of examining outsider–insider relationships (for example, Rasmussen 1993; Hernann 2016) and as a way of deflating social tensions and managing conflicts (for example, de Jong 2005; Davidheiser 2006). Humour has also been analysed as a manner of confronting tensions around sensitive subjects such as gender (Wiley 2014; Crawford 2003), death and generational conflict (Drucker-Brown 1982) or illness and sexuality (Black 2012), or as enabling ‘resistance’ to power (for example, MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga 2000: 160; Wrong 2002: 134; Comaroff 1985; Scott 1985).…”

“…However, while I characterize irony as more ‘indirect’ while joking is more ‘direct’, it is the intersection of diverse aspects of a speech act – including the role of the audience (Wiley 2014; Pype 2015; Hernann 2016) – that results in an evaluation that deems it either a direct or an indirect challenge, either as an insult or a joke (Irvine 1992: 129). The metacommunicative signals between participants that carry the message ‘this is play’ denote a separate dimension of reality whose logic is different from the conventional logic of being earnest in what Gregory Bateson (1987 [1972]) referred to as the ‘play’ frame.…”

“…Both forms of humour created communitas (Carty and Musharbash 2008: 212; Turner 1969), a way of including and excluding people as a social group (cf. Apte 1985; Basso 1979; Hernann 2016). The ironic references turned an essentially public space into one belonging uniquely to those in the know, jibing jokes turned strangers into people with a shared understanding – a community of disabled Romains – so long as the laughter was shared.…”

“…The space of the border was thus a significant place for this wordplay to take place, particular yet public; joking in a public space gives words weight through the presence of an audience, which is what makes jokes sting even when they are expressed in a playful manner (Wiley 2014; Hernann 2016). For the handicapés , the border as a setting that accommodated their ‘otherness’ (Schmidt 1996) gave them a place to joke as well as intensified the performativity of the speech act of doing so.…”

Outside Timbuktu's divine cover: The negotiation of privacy among displaced Timbuktians

“…Children would either study or play with one another. Meanwhile, most would also gather to drink strong green tea, talk, and joke (Hernann ).…”