Political Parody and the Politics of Ambivalence

In: Annual review of anthropology, Volume 47, Issue 1, p. 201-216

Abstract

This article offers insight into the meanings of the unprecedented political potential of humor in the early twenty-first century by discussing three parodic forms of contemporary political humor: carnivalesque politics, parodic reworkings of political discourses, and political protests and satirical activism. Revealing how political parody both produces ambiguity and hinges on it, the article proposes a shift in attention from its effects and capacity to promote or hinder a political change, and from the domination versus resistance binary, toward ambivalent political subjectivities that unfold in the production and consumption of political parody. The ambiguity of political parody, its reflexivity, and its capacity to build or reconfigure affective communities are workings of political humor that enable individuals to embrace their own involvement and vulnerability and the ambiguous and unpredictable moral consequences of their complex positioning as an authentic and potentially productive form of engaging with political reality.