The politics of humour in the public sphere: Cartoons, power and modernity in the first transnational humour scandal

This article analyses the Danish ‘cartoon crisis’ as a transnational ‘humour scandal’. While most studies conceptualize this crisis as a controversy about free speech or international relations, this article addresses the question why the crisis was sparked by cartoons. First, the article discusses the culturally specific ‘humour regime’ in which the cartoons were embedded. Second, it analyses the power dynamics of humour.Thirdly, it discusses how the cartoon crisis added a new element to the image of Muslims as completely Other and lacking in modernity: they have no sense of humour. Analysis of this controversy as humor scandal allows us, first, to identify its ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Next, it underscores the emergence of a transnational public sphere. Finally, and most importantly, it highlights the politics of humour — a slippery, often exclusive mode of communication — in national and transnational public spheres

Egypt’s Revolution, Our Revolution: Revolutionary Women and the Transnational Avant-Garde

This article addresses the phenomenon of the Egyptian revolution as an event that is simultaneously specifically Egyptian and universal in its import. It does so through developing the concept of a transnational avant-garde as a constellation of aspirations from ‘the common ground’, the advancements of revolutionary women, and the undoing of the distinction between art and life. Particular attention is paid to insights offered by the work of Ahdaf Soueif, Maggie Awadalla, Ethel Mannin and Huda Lutfi, especially with respect to how the past is maintained in the present

Text and cognition.

In T. Nunes and P. Bryant (Eds.)