This chapter situates humour as both a social artform and a feminist concern. Drawing on affect theory, new materialism and feminist philosophy, it positions stand-up comedy as a relational, affective practice that unfolds between bodies, atmospheres and audiences. In doing so, it challenges the persistent myth that women are not funny, showing how such narratives are sustained by cultural power structures that regulate which bodies are permitted to take up space, speak and be heard. Through reflections on the contemporary comedy industry and its exclusions, the chapter introduces the Women’s Comedy Workshop as a deliberately women-centred space of risk, play and laughter. Combining practice-led research with a diffractive methodology (Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University Press, 2007), it proposes that laughter itself can operate as a form of feminist pedagogy—an affective, collective practice that generates confidence, solidarity and the possibility of empowerment.

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Introduction

  • Natalie Diddams

摘要

This chapter situates humour as both a social artform and a feminist concern. Drawing on affect theory, new materialism and feminist philosophy, it positions stand-up comedy as a relational, affective practice that unfolds between bodies, atmospheres and audiences. In doing so, it challenges the persistent myth that women are not funny, showing how such narratives are sustained by cultural power structures that regulate which bodies are permitted to take up space, speak and be heard. Through reflections on the contemporary comedy industry and its exclusions, the chapter introduces the Women’s Comedy Workshop as a deliberately women-centred space of risk, play and laughter. Combining practice-led research with a diffractive methodology (Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University Press, 2007), it proposes that laughter itself can operate as a form of feminist pedagogy—an affective, collective practice that generates confidence, solidarity and the possibility of empowerment.