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Humorous politics: the increasing role of laughter in public affairs
June 2, 2025 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
University Court Room and MS Teams
Longtime CISRUL associate DR. RAÚL ACOSTA (Goethe University Frankfurt) will talk about his new project NoJoke on political humour, including standup comedy.
At a time when polarization is gaining a foothold in political landscapes around the world, humour has become a tool and language for various parties involved. On one hand, the growing distrust in experts, traditional political parties, and mainstream media has helped comedians and journalists produce increasingly popular infotainment, that is, entertaining forms of news and analyses. On the other hand, just like some politicians have created novel political parties, so have many decided to use quips and humour more often in their public appearances and statements. A few comedians have even entered political office around the world, promising to shake up systems that, they claim, lies behind a serious façade. Does the multiplication of absurdity in politics run the risk of saturation? Would an increasingly ludicrous scene become hard to criticise? In our project “NoJoke: Humour as an epistemic practice of the political present,” we examine several ways in which parody, satire and ridicule help us make sense of our historical moment.
