This dissertation addresses the possibilities for humor to serve as political action. While humor has been studied since Aristotle, and many theories about its efficacy as a rhetorical form abound, most claim at best that humor produces a lesser effect than other, more serious forms of discourse. When audiences, institutions, contemporary scholars and even the comics themselves address humor, they tend to reify the theories of foundational scholars - theories that serve to circumscribe the place of humor as necessarily non-political and non-efficacious. Such modalities of humor span many theories, including intentional forms such as irony, parody and satire, spatializations such as the carnivalesque, effects based criteria such as pleasure and/or laughter (as opposed to pain and/or outrage). When taken up at an institutional level (whether by legal or economic institutions, or even by scholarly institutions), these pre-set modalities comprise sets of rules, or litige, that preempt the possibility for some of humor's most progressive functions. To reexamine humor, this project begins with the most marginalized of humorous forms, stand-up comedy. Beginning from a standpoint of critical rhetoric, routines by comics such as Lewis Black, Lenny Bruce, Dave Chappelle, Margaret Cho, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Michael Richards and Sarah Silverman are used to display the limitations of contemporary theories, as well as to point out the possibility for stand-up comedy to enact critique. The primary finding is that humorous techniques create a separation between the stated and the inferred, which provides possibilities for audience judgment that is prudential in the sense of operating without pre-set models. The possibility of prudential judgment enables humor to enact détournement, the detour, diversion, hijacking, corruption or misappropriation of the spectacle.

In this dissertation a comparative study is undertaken of an Afrikaans novel, Willem Anker’s Buys: ’n Grensroman (2014) and an American novel, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (1985). The study focuses on the nature and function of carnivalesque elements in the portrayal of violence in the two novels. The theory of the carnivalesque, as developed by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World (1984), serves as a broad theoretical point of departure, while Steven Frye’s article “Blood Meridian and the Poetics of Violence” (2013) serves more specifically as a theoretical approach for the investigation into the protrayal of violence in the two novels. Following on Frye’s view of the carnivalesque as an “aesthetic strategy”, reference is made to the views of Terry Eagleton, Kenneth Burke and Fredric Jameson who regard the text as a strategic reaction to a given situation or context. The novels are consequently approached with due consideration to the violent contexts in which they were written, namely America in the wake of the Vietnam War in the case of Blood Meridian and the violence-ridden postcolonial South Africa in Buys’s case. Connections between the carnivalesque and postcolonial discourse as well as between the carnivalesque and violence are explored. The aestheticisation of extreme violence in Blood Meridian and Buys through the utilisation of carnivalesque images coupled with poetic, richly imagistic language which involves the reader emotionally, is briefly demonstrated. Ethical reservations regarding the aestheticisation of violence in literature are explored, while the ethical value Kearney atrributes to a narrative approach to historical violence is also considered. This is followed by a comparative analysis of violent scenes in the two novels in which the grotesque body, carnivalesque clothing, the carnivalesque blending of the kitchen with the battlefield and carnivalesque language occur. Finally the study concludes that the utilisation of carnivalesque imagery in scenes of violence in Blood Meridian and Buys is an aesthetic strategy whereby the reader’s experience of those historic atrocities are intensified as a result of being emotionally drawn to the events. This hightens the reader’s consciousness of the historical reality of moral transgression – a function performed by the original Medieval carnival – and calls attention to the fact that the violence demands an ethical response. / In hierdie verhandeling word ’n vergelykende studie onderneem van ’n Afrikaanse roman, Willem Anker se Buys: ’n Grensroman (2014), en ’n Amerikaanse roman, Cormac McCarthy se Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (1985). Die studie fokus op die aard en funksie van karnavaleske elemente in die uitbeelding van geweld in die twee romans. Die teorie van die karnavaleske, soos ontwikkel deur Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World (1984) dien as breë teoretiese vertrekpunt, terwyl Steven Frye se artikel “Blood Meridian and the Poetics of Violence” (2013) meer spesifiek as teoretiese invalshoek dien vir die ondersoek na die uitbeelding van geweld in die twee romans. Na aanleiding van Frye se beskouing van die karnavaleske as ’n “estetiese strategie” word daar ook aansluiting gevind by Terry Eagleton, Kenneth Burke en Fredric Jameson se sienings van die literêre teks as ’n strategiese reaksie op ’n gegewe situasie of konteks. Die romans word dus benader met inagneming van die gewelddadige kontekste waarbinne hulle gestalte gekry het, te wete Amerika in die nadraai van die Viëtnam-oorlog in die geval van Blood Meridian en die geweldgeteisterde postkoloniale Suid-Afrika in Buys se geval. Verbande word getrek tussen die karnavaleske en die postkoloniale diskoers, asook tussen die karnavaleske en geweld. Daar word kortliks aangetoon hoedat ekstreme geweld in Blood Meridian en Buys verestetiseer word deur karnavaleske beelde wat gepaard gaan met poëtiese, beeldryke taalgebruik wat die leser emosioneel betrek. Daar word stilgestaan by etiese voorbehoude oor die verestetisering van geweld in literatuur, terwyl die etiese waarde wat Kearney heg aan ’n narratiewe benadering tot historiese geweld ook onder die loep kom. Dit word gevolg deur ’n vergelykende ontleding van geweldstonele in die twee romans waarin die groteske liggaam, karnavaleske kleredrag, die karnavaleske vermenging van die kombuis en die slagveld en karnavaleske taalgebruik voorkom. Ten slotte word tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat die aanwending van karnavaleske beelde in geweldstonele in Blood Meridian en Buys ’n estetiese strategie is waardeur die leser se ervaring van daardie geweldsvergrype in die verlede geïntensiveer word deurdat hy emosioneel daarby betrek word. Dit verhoog die leser se bewustheid van die historiese werklikheid van morele transgressie – ’n rol wat ook deur die oorspronklike karnaval in die Middeleeue vertolk is – en maak ’n appèl op die leser dat die geweldsvergrype ’n etiese respons vereis. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns / Afrikaans / MA / Unrestricted

Establishing a decisive nexus between gender, laughter, and media, this article not only critically discusses the often contradictorily defined concepts of humour, the comic, and laughter but also introduces to the most important theories in these fields with reference to Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Baudelaire, Sigmund Freud, Mikhail Bakhtin, Helmuth Plessner, Anton C. Zijderveld, Judith Butler, Bernhard Greiner, Hans Robert Jauß, Peter L. Berger, and others. Basic concepts such as the “significantly comic” versus the “absolutely comic” or the “comedy of denigration and exclusion” versus the “comedy of valorization and inclusion” are interrogated and the link between comedy, citationality, performativity as well as parody is established. Moreover, this article explores the sociological, psychoanalytical, bodily and theological dimensions to laughter and questions notions such as the carnivalesque and the grotesque. It is argued that the liberating potential of “full laughter” can be understood as the return of the body, of the repressed, and of the Other, and that if it is precisely this ‘other realm’ which ultimately makes laughter possible, laughter simultaneously is humankind’s best means of dealing with it.

This essay aims to explore the identities of a selection of female characters in Earl Lovelace’s novel Salt. My research questions are the following: How are the selected characters’ hybrid identities constructed? What role do different circumstances play in the formation of the characters’ identities? How do polyphony, mimicry and the carnivalesque affect their identities? Although the examined women are assumed to conform to similar gender norms, I argue that there is no common female role in Salt. This is demonstrated by the characters’ hybrid identities, which combine divergent characteristics. The method used in the analysis is close reading formulated by Greenham. My analysis reveals that the concept of carnivalesque influences the identities of all the examined characters. It results in a performative, creative power that makes the women discover and redefine their selves. However, it occurs in different ways for each character. Moreover, the characters’ identities are highly polyphonic and complex, with contrastive traits completing each other. To a lesser extent, the analysed women’s identities show traits of postcolonial mimicry, which may be seen as a repetitive and imitative attitude.

This thesis is an exploration of affect theory and emotional rhetoric in the 2016 Presidential Election, and specifically in Donald Trump’s candidacy, first through a series of rhetorical readings of Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail and after his election. The first section of this thesis focuses on Donald Trump and the various rhetorical spaces he uses to reach his supporters through affectual means. Next, I will apply affect theory to Trump’s political rhetoric in order to illustrate how affect is intrinsic to his rhetoric and how he communicates to his audience. I find that utilizing texts by cultural rhetoric critics, namely those which discuss affect theory and the culture of emotion such as Sara Ahmed’s The Cultural Politics of Emotion, and culture and rhetorical spaces in Julie Lindquist’s A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working Class Bar, allows us to better understand the underlying cultural impetuses which created the conditions for Donald Trump’s presidency. In the third section, I examine how these theoretical frameworks provide an understanding of how fake news contributed to the current American climate of a post-truth media culture. And in the final section, I explore how satirical rhetoric is employed both as a defense against and as a rhetorical utility for Donald Trump, namely in his use of carnivalesque techniques and rhetoric to appeal to his voter’s sense of rebellion against and cynicism toward the political establishment. In doing so, I argue that Trump’s use of affect, particularly in his targeted approach to appeal to his base’s existential, socio-economic, and racial fears, was essential to his success in the 2016 Presidential election. / Master of Arts

This thesis argues that a Bakhtinian dialogic approach holds possibilities for reconceptualising and re-enacting teacher–child dialogue interactions in early years education. It accepts education as open-ended, with children as active participants and frames teacher–child dialogues as unique encounters, which can go beyond children’s neoliberal enculturation in the world. Neoliberal discourses have exerted an important influence on early years education, emphasising universal “best evidence” strategies and narrowly defined learning “outcomes” which can lead to technicist approaches to teaching and learning. The study explores the dialogic interactions between children aged from 3½ to 5 years and their teachers in two early childhood settings. In a dialogic methodological approach, two of the teachers and myself as a researcher critically engaged in collaborative discussions of selected video recordings of the teacher–child interactions. A Bakhtinian concept of moral answerability applies to the collaborative dialogic approach between teachers and researcher. It goes beyond teaching as a technical approach with universal strategies, to provide guidance for teachers in the unique lived experiences with their students. A dialogic reflexivity, which is employed both pedagogically and as a methodological approach in the study, is aligned with Bakhtin’s philosophy of praxis in everyday life experiences. A second Bakhtinian notion of polyphony explains how each person accesses multiple voices in response, which are shaped simultaneously by unique previous experiences and the encounter itself. In educational dialogue, polyphony can open up a view of dialogue as open-ended and providing different possibilities; it can allow for more meaningful responses by students and more respectful listening from teachers. Furthermore, young children’s carnivalesque utterances are viewed as challenging authoritative, monologic discourses when analysed through a Bakhtinian lens. For Bakhtin, subjectivity is not only shaped in and through dialogue; it also in turn shapes present and future dialogue. Dialogue is therefore inevitably intertwined with subjectivity. Findings show that teaching in early childhood settings involves a complex mix of both monologic and dialogic acts. Dialogic processes can provide alternative understandings of children and teachers as agentic and unfinalised. At times, children were engaged in carnivalesque acts, resisting authoritative teaching through their play, chanting and non-verbal communication, thereby making visible the institutionalisation of children and teachers in early childhood settings. It is suggested that children who are active participants in their education need to be given opportunities for carnivalesque responses. Furthermore, when early childhood teachers have opportunities to critically reflect on children’s utterances in a collaborative dialogue with colleagues, they can gain a more complex understanding of teacher–child dialogue, enabling them to answer morally to the children in their care. Ongoing dialogic encounters with the teachers provided multiple perspectives of the data, resulting in changes to their teaching practices and routines. The findings of the study hold important implications for teaching and for in-service and pre-service teacher education. I suggest that respectful dialogic approaches between teachers and researchers hold pedagogical and methodological potential and, when used thoughtfully, can counteract neoliberal, technicist interventions. In relation to both pre-service and in-service teacher education, the study speaks to the importance of teachers being equipped to engage in open-ended dialogue with children and collaborative dialogues with peers. Drawing on Bakhtin’s concept of moral answerability, this thesis is an utterance asking for an active response not only in everyday teacher-child dialogues, but also in the ongoing, open-ended dialogue about early childhood education and, in particular, teacher–child dialogue. It leaves unfinalised not only children and adults, but also the subject of teacher- child dialogue. There is no first utterance and no last word; Bakhtinian dialogue views both children and adults as becoming.

This dissertation examines fifteen films produced in seven political eras from 1926 thru 2008 in Soviet / Post-Soviet Russia. Its aim is to determine if the cinematic presence of Bakhtin’s ten signifiers of the carnivalesque (parody, death, grotesque display, satirical humor, billingsgate, metaphor, fearlessness, madness, the mask, and the interior infinite) increase in their significance with the historical progression from a totalitarian State (e.g., USSR under Stalin) to a federal semi-residential constitutional republic (e.g., The Russian Federation under Yeltsin - Putin). In this study, the carnivalesque signifiers act as a gauge of dialogism, the presence of which is indicative of some cinematic freedom of expression. The implication being, that in totalitarian States, a progressive relaxation of censorship in cinema (and conversely, an increase in cinematic freedom of expression) is indicative of a move towards a more representative form of governance, (e.g., the collapse of the totalitarian State). The fifteen films analyzed in this study include: Battleship Potemkin (1925), End of St. Petersburg (1927), Chapaev (1934), Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1946, released in 1958), Spring on Zarechnaya Street (1956), The Cranes are Flying (1957), Stalker (1979), Siberiade (1979), The Legend of Suram Fortress (1984), Repentance (1984, released in 1987), Cold Summer of 1953 (1987), Little Vera (1988), Burnt by the Sun (1994), House of Fools (2002) and Russian Ark (2002). All fifteen films were produced in the Soviet/Post-Soviet space and directed by Russian filmmakers; hence, the films portray a distinctly Russian perspective on reality. These films emphasize various carnivalesque features including the reversal of conventional hierarchies, usually promoting the disprivileged masses to the top, thus turning them into heroes at the expense of traditional power structures.

In the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson the city and culture of 19th century New Orleans figures prominently, and is a major character affecting the lives of her protagonists. While race, class, and gender are among the focuses of many scholars the eccentricity and cultural history of the most exotic American city, and its impact on Dunbar-Nelson’s writing is unmistakable. This essay will discuss how the diverse cultural environment of New Orleans in the 19th century allowed Alice Dunbar Nelson to create narratives which allowed her short stories to speak to the shifting identities of women and the social uncertainty of African Americans in the Jim Crow south. A consideration of New Orleans’ cultural history is important when reading Dunbar-Nelson’s work, whose significance has often been disregarded because of what some considered its lack of racial markers.

The aim of this dissertation is to trace the function of parody in the context of Salman Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realistic fiction. The magical realism of Rushdie&rsquo / s fiction presents a complex Third World experience which constitutes an alternative to, and challenges the Eurocentrism of western culture. The form and content of Rushdie&rsquo / s novels are so intense and rich that the whole body of his work comes to the fore, not as an outcome of the two clashing civilisations, that is East and West, but rather as an immense medley of the two cultures. While &ldquo / writing back to the empire&rdquo / , Rushdie draws on innumerable sources ranging from such grand narratives as Genesis, Iliad, Ramayana, A Thousand and One Nights, Hindu, Persian, Greek, and Norse mythologies, and local cultural traditions, to modern politics mingling fiction and reality in a broad historical perspective, so that his work becomes a synthesis of East and West, an international aesthetic plane where diversities express themselves freely. The dissertation focuses particularly on Rushdie&rsquo / s Midnight&rsquo / s Children, The Moor&rsquo / s Last Sigh,and Shalimar The Clown. / it contains an introductory chapter, a theory chapter, including two subchapters, a development chapter with three subchapters which analyse the above mentioned three novels, and a conclusion chapter. The introductory chapter presents an overview of the issues to be investigated in the subsequent chapters. The theory chapter deals with the concepts of colonialism, nationalism, and the past and the present of postcolonial literary theory with reference to its leading theorists, such as M. Foucault, E. Said, H. Bhabha, and other recent critics / this chapter also introduces magical realism by reference to a number of current definitions and approaches. The following three subchapters, which focus on the analyses of the three novels, explore how parody functions both thematically and structurally in relation to Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realism. The concluding chapter demonstrates that Rushdie&rsquo / s work creates an unrestrained plane of an international culture where multiple visions and diversities can find a room to assert themselves.

This thesis analyzes William Golding&rsquo / s Rites of Passage using a detailed examination of the Bakhtinian concepts of heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque to investigate the points of mutual illumination and confirmation between Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas and Golding&rsquo / s novel. Therefore the method of analysis is divided between a close study of Rites of Passage and an equally close examination of Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas. The Bakhtinian concepts studied in this thesis are central to his idea of language and theory of the novel and their analysis in Rites of Passage reveals that while these concepts shed light on the stylistic, structural and thematic complexities of the novel, the novel also verifies the working of these concepts in practice. Moreover, the results of the analysis indicate two main points in which Golding&rsquo / s novel and Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas confirm and illuminate each other. The first point is related to Bakhtin&rsquo / s celebration of the novel genre for its capacity to include diverse elements, a celebration that find its counterpart in Golding&rsquo / s novel due to the novel&rsquo / s heteroglot nature, polyphonic structure and inclusion of the carnivalesque. The second point is related to Bakhtin&rsquo / s notion of dialogism which emerges as a relational property common to his mentioned concepts. As this thesis shows, Golding&rsquo / s Rites of Passage is a dialogic novel in this regard, with its foregrounding of dialogic relations between heteroglot languages, characters&rsquo / voices and social classes. This thesis ends with a discussion indicating postmodern aspects of Bakhtin&rsquo / s ideas and Golding&rsquo / s novel, which include intertextuality, the problematization of truth, and the blurring of boundaries between opposites.