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EU’ve got to be kidding : anxiety, humour and ontological security
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Brassett, James, Browning, Christopher S. and O'Dwyer, Muireann (2021) EU’ve got to be kidding : anxiety, humour and ontological security. Global Society, 35 (1). pp. 8-26. doi:10.1080/13600826.2020.1828298
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828298
Abstract
Recent years have seen a pronounced turn to humour in EU discourse. From attempts to build solidarity with/through the rights of satirists after the Danish Cartoon Crisis and Charlie Hebdo, to ongoing efforts to re-brand the EU as a reflexive and liberal polity through self-deprecating messaging and the use of snark in diplomacy on Brexit/Trump, the rise of EU humour raises critical questions for IR. This paper argues that one important way to think about humour is as a mechanism for managing anxiety. A widely known ‘defence mechanism’, humour, joking and laughter can suspend the seriousness and pressure of difficult social situations. We draw on the literature on ontological security to argue that, when deployed in political and diplomatic discourses, humour might tell us rather more about the power relations, hierarchies, and instabilities which characterise a given polity. In particular, we mobilise ontological security to theorise 1) the performative politics of biographical narratives of the EU as committed to values of free speech in the form of satire; 2) the success (and failure) of EU attempts at vicarious identification with a counter cultural politics of irony; 3) the use of humour to shame politicians or states that do not live up to EU expectations about normal politics; and 4) the mobilisation of an idealised self through cartoon and social media uses of EU humour. Overall, we foreground the political questions of ‘who gets to joke?’ and ‘who is excluded from the joke’? This raises further dilemmas over the consequences of generalising the use of humour in EU politics as it engages the related challenges of rising populism and geopolitical instability.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | |||||||||
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| Subjects: | J Political Science > JZ International relations | |||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | |||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Nation-state, National security, Sovereignty -- Political aspects, International relations, Wit and humor -- Political aspects, European Union countries -- Foreign relations -- 21st century, Discourse analysis -- Political aspects -- European Union countries, Democracy -- European Union countries | |||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Global Society | |||||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | |||||||||
| ISSN: | 1360-0826 | |||||||||
| Official Date: | 2021 | |||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 35 | |||||||||
| Number: | 1 | |||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 8-26 | |||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/13600826.2020.1828298 | |||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | |||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | |||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Global Society on 29/10/2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/ 10.1080/13600826.2020.1828298 | |||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | |||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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