CFP: Totalitarian Laughter: Cultures of the Comic under Socialism (Princeton, May 15-17, 2009)

[Sibelan Forrester]

TOTALITARIAN LAUGHTER:

CULTURES OF THE COMIC UNDER SOCIALISM

May 15-17, 2009

Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures

Princeton University

http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/

Throughout its history, socialist mass culture actively relied on 
satire, humor, and comedy to foster emotional bonds with its audience. 
Orchestrated by the state cultural industry, public laughter released 
social and political tension, while leaving intact or buttressing 
mechanisms of repression and institutions of power. In turn, late Soviet 
irony or the aesthetic of grotesque, developed from below, became 
instrumental in solidifying a cultural distance from the values promoted 
by the socialist state. Varied in their impact and scope, these cultures 
of the comic nonetheless constantly pointed to the irrationality and 
ludicrousness of the socialist way of life.

Whether officially approved or censored, totalitarian laughter 
relativized existing practices and norms, suggesting different models of 
understanding and embodying really existing socialism. Regardless of 
their content, these jokes of repression shared the same quality: they 
were made, not found. It is precisely this active production of 
totalitarian laughter from above and from below that this conference 
aims to explore. How did state socialism transform traditional genres 
and categories of the comic? How crucial was state censorship in 
producing (or suppressing) totalitarian laughter? Through what forms of 
displacement and condensation did official and non-official cultures 
achieve their comic effect? How did these practices of the comic 
correspond and interact with each other? What kinds of communities were 
formed in the process of producing jokes of repression? What were the 
mechanisms and paths of circulation through which laughable versions of 
socialism became available to larger audiences? Finally, what kinds of 
pleasure did totalitarian laughter promise, if not deliver?

We seek to address these questions by bringing together an 
interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in reconstructing the 
peculiar relationship between repression and laughter under state 
socialism. We invite papers that explore forms of socialist grotesque in 
the Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe in such diverse fields 
as politics, history, literature, arts, music, theater, television, and 
film, among others.

Please send an abstract (300 words) of the paper you would like to 
present at this conference, along with your short CV, by February 10, 
2009 to <oushakin at princeton.edu>

We may be able to offer a limited number of travel subsidies for foreign 
presenters.
Those selected to give presentations at the conference will be contacted 
at the end of February 2009.

Final papers will be due no later than April 20, and they will be posted 
on the conference's website.

Program committee:
Serguei Oushakine (Princeton), Petre Petrov (Princeton), Seth Graham 
(UCL), Kevin M.F. Platt (Penn), Nancy Ries (Colgate).

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