Though our focus is African literatures, we do not aim to propose a definition of “African” humor. Similar objectives have been attempted since Aristotle. Some studies are “genetic” like Freud’s, others more focused on social aspects, like Bakhtin’s. It seems, however, that no study is definitive. Furthermore, with humor being undeniably subjective, the more prominent theories tend to be contradictory. This is, however, a plus: our panel will not be restricted by one theory, but is instead free to focus on different analyses. Given the richness of the topic and the linguistic diversity of the texts, the panel is composed of four speakers. Together, we will present material from Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone Africa. We will discuss the relationship between children and laughter, the persistence of the trickster ethos, the potential for hilarity dwelling in multilingualism, and the ambivalence of the human body.
Many studies have approached humor from its opposition to the “serious.” Mark Deggan will therefore begin our discussion with Lusophone postcolonial fictions in “Laugh ’Til You Survive.” In Southern Africa, Portuguese rule and the subsequent civil wars promote focus on the absurd, while exploring strife around issues of race and métissage. If the Angolan example is especially mired in the culture of miscigenação, authors continue to erect scenarios around the risible but human need to move past social and ethnic divisions. Mark focuses on the mestiço writer Ondjaki, who is both comical in his fiction, and wry on the absurdist urge to creative blindspots within Angolan culture. Ondjaki’s lighthearted novel, Bom dia camaradas, constructs its lyrical “normality” around a group of Luandan schoolchildren at the high point of Revolutionary neurosis. Ondjaki’s boy narrator makes innocent sense out of the draconian orderings of the city, animating a kind of mestiço carnivalesque around the children’s bond with Cuban teacher-comrades. Mark will argue that through the humor of his color-blind cast, Ondjaki lampoons Angola’s national crisis, while performing the freedom of spirit it will need to heal its past. Yet, laughter in this text is not just a means of humanist survival or ethnic mash-up in a surreal city: in this Africa, to laugh is the true revolution.
Much of African literature takes its inspiration from ancient forms, including the oral folktale. In “Lagos-Trickster Hustlers,” James Hodapp will show that the transformation of the traditional trickster trope into a modern-day hustler has proven particularly apropos in Lagos, where extreme wealth is in close proximity to poverty. He will discuss Saro-Wiwa’s Basi and Company and Igoni Barrett’s Blackass. He invites us to consider the protagonists as incarnations of Kuru, Eshu, or Ananse. The trickster is often outside structures of power and influence, but usually intent on entering them. However, he is fated to be an outsider who offers humorous critiques of the hypocrisies of those structures. This presentation will examine two such outsiders trying to break in through absurd approaches: Saro-Wiwa’s extremely popular Basi, and Barrett’s Furo. Basi concocts farcical schemes, while Furo has an absurd scheme foisted onto him. By scrutinizing the trickster-hustler in the context of Lagos, James proposes to track its genealogy while pondering on the techniques that serve as literary socio-economic commentary.
Adwoa Opoku-Agyemang will build on the link between tricksters, humor, and language. Specifically, she will scrutinize interpreters in colonial and post-colonial West Africa. Her texts will include Hampaté Bâ’s L’Etrange destin de Wangrin and Kofi Kinaata’s poetic “The Crusade.” She will ask what happens when language barriers oblige both the powerful and the disenfranchised to trust in a multilingual but unreliable comic character to keep the communication chain alive. Through their convoluted plots, comic interpreters question whether agency is necessarily restricted to an interventionist function in hierarchical contexts. Rather, the humor they generate may speak to the ethos of the trickster, whose schemes often hurt or harm depending on his whims. Adwoa will look at how placing the otherwise serious business of interpreting into the hands of an untrustworthy comedian can make nonsense of the usual assumptions of fidelity, transparency and competence. She will also look at how notions of invisibility and subordination take on specific meanings in a hierarchical context.
In “Auto-derision and its Carnivalesque Ambivalence,” Sonali Ravi will continue with humor in Francophone literature. Addressing Mabanckou’s Verre cassé, she will examine auto-derision as a prevalent form of humor. Using Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque, Sonali will discuss how self-derisive humor functions through tropes of the excreting human body reminiscent of medieval folk comedy. She posits that Mabanckou depicts the suffering of the black body as a function of practical, lower-order bodily realities. She will also show that such humor, carnivalizing the drudgery of the body’s existence, is highly ambivalent. It destructs and expels, even as it regenerates and empowers. Furthermore, while degrading the black self and body, this humor paradoxically liberates: the self-abasing expression of suffering in carnival idiom frees Mabanckou’s eccentric protagonists. Sonali will then reflect upon this ambivalence, as suffering black bodies are freed from the chains of conventions precisely as their transgressions situate them at society’s margins.
Comic writing portrays incongruities between sociocultural conventions and human nature while testifying to “physical vitality [and] delight in life.” Though African literatures have often been treated as quite serious business, this panel is confident that laughter is a vital, multifunctional and prominent feature of those literatures. It is constantly present in the different techniques we will touch upon, as well as in a certain unbridled pleasure that manifests itself, seemingly just because it can. Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang will be the presider. We hope to encourage another lively exchange, and to share laughs with our audience. Kwabena will therefore ensure that each presentation is limited to 10 minutes, so as to allow a 15-minute discussion.