Carnivalesque politics: A Bakhtinian case study of contemporary Arab political humor

Abstract

This paper is a case study of contemporary Arab political jokes in the light of Bakhtinian theory of carnival and the carnivalesque. According to this analysis, these political jokes represent a variety of texts whose topics revert around “glorifying”, mocking, parodying, scatologizing, and ultimately betraying the ruler. These types of political jokes reflect a textual representation of the life cycle of the oppressive ruler, which begins with comic “crowning” and glorification and ends in “decrowning” and comic death. Within this cycle, political jokes represent a kind of hidden dialogue between the oppressed and their marginalized discourse, and the regime and its dominant autocratic discourse. These jokes are disturbing to the regime, leading perhaps to punishment, but they do not necessarily either undermine or actually support the regime. Like carnival, the telling of these jokes in a repressive context merely builds a second world outside the oppressive world of the regime and offers an alternative framework to the regime's policies.