Questions about the ethical and political boundaries of comedy, satire, or irony have inspired widespread anxiety in recent years, as with the 2015 shootings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, or the so called 'locker-room banter' that defined Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign. What, then, can a turn to humour offer International Relations?
Drawing on literature across International Relations, literary theory, cultural studies and sociology, Alister Wedderburn argues that humour plays an underappreciated role in the making and unmaking of political subjectivities. The book recovers a historical understanding of humour as a way of making a claim to political subjectivity in the face of its denial. This function, Wedderburn argues, is embodied by the ambiguous figure of the parasite, a stock character of Greek comic drama. The book interrogates three separate sites where political actors have used humour 'parasitically' in order to make political claims and demands. In so doing, it not only outlines humour's political potential and limitations, but also demonstrates how everyday practices can draw from, feed into, interrupt, and potentially transform global-political relations.
Representing the first monograph-length study on the politics of humour within International Relations, this book makes a timely contribution to debates about the politics of humour, subjectivity and everyday life.

eBook - ePub
Humour, subjectivity and world politics
Everyday articulations of identity at the limits of order
- 202 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Humour, subjectivity and world politics
Everyday articulations of identity at the limits of order
About this book
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: taking humour seriously
- Part I: Humour, subjectivity and world politics
- Part II: Parasitic politics
- Conclusion: parasitic politics and world politics
- Bibliography
- Index
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Yes, you can access Humour, subjectivity and world politics by Alister Wedderburn in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Literary Criticism Theory. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.