The Laughter of the Unreconciled: Jokes and Humor in Narratives of Atrocity

What is the role of laughter, jokes, and humor in narratives of atrocity? Scholars have studied testimony and storytelling as avenues for mediating emotional responses to atrocity, such as grief and rage. Less attention has been giving to laughter in atrocity narratives—to the nervous or defiant laughter of perpetrators, to witness accounts of having been laughed at by their abusers, or to humor as a strategy of resistance. This paper investigates how laughter informs the role of storytelling in relation to what Arendt refers to as reconciliation “with reality.” It argues that attention to laughter in narratives of atrocity offers a basis for exposing and confronting denial and a neglected avenue for recovering political agency. Building on Arendt’s discussion of storytelling and insights on the logic of humor from social psychology and drama, the first section investigates what laughter conveys about the relationship between political reconciliation and the passage of time. The capacity to laugh--to laugh again, to laugh together, to know when it is appropriate to laugh-- is seen as evidence of reconciliation and a decisive break with the past. Conversely, inappropriate, awkward, or callous laughter in stories of atrocity can signify the rejection of a break with the past. The second section examines laughter and jokes in confessional narratives of atrocity gathered by the veteran organization, Winter Solider, and dramatized in the film, The Act of Killing. The third section analyzes the role of laughter in victim testimony, focusing on the testimony of witnesses at Canada’s TRC who integrated humorous tales of resistance into narratives of suffering and loss. I conclude by reflecting on how the capacity to imagine possibilities for community, agency, and resistance may be informed by attention to the range of possibilities for laughter.