User:Zuhui//Personal Reader/Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?

love the title of this book. though it was written 12 years ago, some of the topics like internet memes feels a bit old and outdated, I found some themes reassuring and inspiring.

Political action in the 21st century has moved beyond the manifesto. To achieve scale, it is deploying new strategies with viral properties and Darwinian survival skills.

Capitalist Realism

the term coined by British author Mark Fisher in 2009.
Fisher defines Capitalist Realism as a state where the capitalist system is accepted as the only viable economic and political system. This system forces even attempts to overcome the problems of capitalism to occur only within its framework, suppressing or rendering discussions of alternative systems impossible.

It's slogan:

 "There is no alternative" 

How it works:

Forcing the frame:
anyone trying to criticize or offer alternatives to capitalism has no choice but to use “capitalist language”. for example, "environmental movements often end up pushing for “eco-friendly products” that fit within the market system, letting capitalism absorb and benefit from these opposing ideas."

Deepning dependency on the system:
essential systems like education, healthcare, housing and etc become more and more tied to market logic, making people more reliant to the capitalist framework. Which makes it harder to imagine or transition to any alternative system or ideas.

Using "crisis" to stay in power:
issues like financial crisis, climate change, wars are framed as 'problems the capitalist system need to solve'. but in reality, they are often used to reinforce the system.

What it does:

Political helplessness:
poeple find it almost impossible to imagine any alternative system, end up believing they are stuck making 'less bad' choices within the current one. Which leads to political cynicism and disengagement.

Normalizing social inequality:
it strengthens the positions of wealthy and powerful, making inequality feel normal and harder to challenge.

Limits political framing:
encourages politicians to stick to 'reform' and 'improve' within the framework of capitalist realism instead seeking for true systematic change.

Organising-without-organisation

author explains the concept using the example of Anonymous

Anonymous as a “gateway,” as a focal point or gathering strategy for activities that exceed the individual scope as a focal point or gathering strategy for activities that exceed the individual scope and scale, is a manner of describing its significance as a form of organising-without-organisation.

Flexibility, Immediacy, Decentralization

• the power of digital networks
• quick reactions
• easy to join
• individual autonomy
• no leaders, no problem
• independent but connected
• global participation

the characteristics as such, allow groups like Anonymous to act fast, adapt to change, and stay resilient as an open-ended-in group.

Nonsense

by Susan Stewart

the category of “nonsense” is opposed to the category of “common sense making” through which what we think of as reality is established. By categorising something as “nonsense”, “the legitimacy and rationality of sense making was left uncontaminated, unthreatened.

all discourse bears reference to a commonly held world. The discourse of common sense refers to the ‘real world.’ The discourse of nonsense refers to ‘nothing.’ In other words, it refers to itself, even though it must manufacture this ‘nothing’ out of a system of differences from the everyday world – the common stuff of social life – in order to be recognised as ‘nothing.’

Self-referentiality

A concept used to understand how jokes or memes operate:
"Self-referential patterns are structures that refer to or point to themselves, often resulting in contradictions, circular logic, or ambiguous states."

...(Douglas) Hofstadter was convinced that memes looked a lot like self-referential patterns, which would render them not only survival-minded and selfish – but also fundamentally absurd. An example of such self-referentiality is the Epimenides Paradox. The Cretan thinker Epimenides stated that “All Cretans are liars.” The intricacies of this message, which says, “this statement is false,” were explored by Hofstadter in his seminal book, Gödel, Escher, Bach.

joke or meme can tap into a collective memory and transform the “outcome” of a commonly held starting point to different ends.

Play 놀이

Nonsense also involves an element of “Play"

Playing at fighting may be “not fighting,” but it is not fighting on a different level of abstraction from other kinds of not fighting such as kissing, skipping rope, buying groceries, or singing “Happy Birthday.” Play involves the manipulation of the conditions and contexts of messages and not simply a manipulation of the message itself. It is not, therefore, a shift within the domain of the everyday lifeworld: it is a shift to another domain of reality.

이제 중요한 질문은, 기존의 프레임이 제공하는 잘못된 선택지에 갇히느냐 아니면 넌센스를 통해 기존의 상식 체계를 해체하고, 기존 프레임에서 벗어나 새로운 담론과 행동의 공간으로 넘어가느냐이다.

Jokes

→ In 1969, Monty Python fantasised about a joke so funny it could kill; whoever heard it or read it would die laughing. “Joke warfare” would be the military deployment of jokes by opposing armies.

Jokes, like laughs, are contagious, even if their intention is deadly serious. Governments the world over are fortifying themselves against their own citizens, and most of all against their jokes. But jokes easily pass through the walls of the fortresses. The joke is an open-source weapon of the public.

Jokes are mobile; a joke catching on means it is forwarded. With online social media and mobile internet, jokes are no longer dependent on purely oral transmission, television, or print and paper. Such is their longevity and copying-fidelity that only the slightest remainder of a joke embedded in a new form can still carry the original.

농담은 활동적이고, 살아 있으며, 이동 가능한 불복종의 형태다.
↘︎ 농담은 최고의 권력 형태다. 활동가들은 행동을 가지고 있으며, 그 삶을 산다. 이론가들은 말을 가지고 있으며, 그들의 분야를 잘 안다. 그러나 농담은 이 두 관점을 통합한다.

Blank | Vacuum

I like these two concepts analyzed by the author. While they share similar characteristics, they serve different purposes in the design of jokes. Both play an important role in how humour functions, but they differ in their goals and mechanisms.

Blank: is a space for the audience to engage. It refers to the room intentionally left for interpretation. It conveys implicit meaning and audience participation. it really relies on ‘what is not said’ to deliver meaning in a joke, and ultimately, it encourages deeper internalization of the message.

Vacuum: refers to absence or contradiction within power structures or system, the vacuum points to the flaws and gaps that the system intentionally conceals or denies. Humour or joke exposes and mocks this vacuum, reveals the irrationality of moral deficiences of those in power.

Dadaist Troll

의미 있는 질문에 무의미한 답변으로 응답하는 것은, 질문이 제기된 프레임 속에서의 정치를 부정하는 효과적인 도구이다.

The question, “do you condone or condemn,” is a trap, a gotcha, intended to force all opposition to accord to a neoliberal frame – in other words, it is an exercise in sense-making. The absurd response refuses to participate in this exercise. It removes itself from the frame.

the political theorist Aaron Peters contends that jokes are one among a series of political instruments, and should be used in concert with them. Says:

The joke as a disruption of the symbolic order is useful in taking on the antagonist not through a formal and recognisable disagreement in content but instead as an attempt to negate the form of legitimate rational debate as they might have otherwise naturally presumed.

A central element in political contention is disruption. e.g:

• the disruption of the circulation of goods and services in industrial strikes
• the disruption of the reprodudction of space in occupations (as protest)
• the disruption of all social relations in riots or uprising.

jokes too, are a form of disruption to the symbolic order, interfering wth the circulation of discourse. they can be seen as something unintended to occur at the formal level when engaging in "politics".

It is this mixture of the disruption of the symbolic order at a number of levels, both the physical and the communicative that disconcerts the powerful the most.

Joke as a Subversive Side Narrative

1. Jokes provide alternative narratives.
As tools that twist or dismantle existing orders and discourses, jokes play a role similar to side narratives in expanding or replacing the main narrative.
For example, jokes that mock or expose power structures highlight issues that are either ignored or intentionally excluded from the main narrative. Jokes reveal contradictions or absurdities in power dynamics that are often obscured in the main discourse.
↘︎ 농담은 주요 담론이 설정한 규칙, 논리, 질서를 따르지 않는다. 오히려 기존 담론의 허점이나 모순을 폭로하거나, 그 틀 자체를 무력화하는 데 초점을 맞추는 것: 농담은 주요 담론을 보완하거나 전복하는 방식으로
새로운 담론의 가능성을 만들어낸다.

2. Jokes utilize tacit knowledge(implicit understanding).
Jokes rely on shared cultural contexts and symbols, which is similar to how side narratives connect to existing stories while functioning independently. In particular, the "in-joke" nature of humour fosters implicit agreement within specific groups, mirroring how side narratives convey the perspectives and experiences of those groups. Jokes, grounded in shared implicit understanding, can create a space for forming new solidarity and communities.
↘︎ 농담은 주요 담론이 추구하는 '합리적 설득' 방식 대신, 공유된 문화적 맥락이나 감정을 바탕으로 즉각적인 공감과 반응을 유도한다. 이는 논리보다는 감각적이고 정서적인 방식으로 작동하는 주변 서사의 특성과 맞닿아 있다.

3. Jokes operate in parallel.
Jokes do not remain confined within the framework of the main narrative; instead, they operate alongside it in parallel, offering new alternatives or perspectives. This allows them to exist as independent stories or messages separate from the main discourse. Like how side narratives work in parallel with the main narrative to provide alternatives.
↘︎ 농담은 기존 담론의 흐름을 깨면서도, 새로운 질문이나 논의를 유도할 수 있는 것이다. 이로 인해 주요 담론과는 병렬적으로 존재하면서도, 그 경계를 확장하거나 전환시키는 역할을 한다.

4. Jokes are fast.
They operate by quickly bypassing or replacing the main narrative.