Can't Take a Joke! Theorising the Politics of Reactionary Humour Through Far-Right Memes

Abstract

Humour has long been treated separately from the “serious” business that makes up “high
politics”. However, as the global rise of fascism and the far-right appear to be converging
with our current “Age of Hilarity” (Giamario 2022), the study of humour’s politicality
becomes increasingly pressing. In taking this facet of humour “seriously”, this thesis offers
an important contribution to the study of humour and global politics by presenting a
pessimistic theorisation of humour that attends to humour’s capacity for a reactionary
politics: as constitutive of the reactionary subjectivities and sensibilities that circulate across
the so-called “alt-right”. To interrogate these links, I first identify a tendency within existing
scholarship on humour and IR to privilege humour as an emancipatory political force. In
response, I argue that an overemphasis on humour’s capacity for resistance and subversion
paradoxically lends power to the kinds of claims presented by reactionary political projects.
To develop this argument, Part I of the thesis offers a counter-reading of humour as
composed of three mechanisms: 1) humour as boundary-drawing practice; 2) humour as
producing abject Others; 3) humour as constructing reactionary transgression. Taken
together, I argue that the notion of “good, rebellious humour” sustains the practices of
exclusion and abjectification underpinning reactionary humour. Part II puts this counter
reading into practice through a visual discourse analysis of three “alt-right” memes. I find
that humour fulfils a double role through both the content and the form of the meme. First,
humour articulates a set of political beliefs and meanings that resonate through the affective
experience of laughter. Second, humour structures the political terrain itself by determining
the ethical, social and aesthetic judgments at stake. This counter-reading thus offers a
framework for understanding the ways in which humour, despite its often assumed
emancipatory potential, can work to reproduce reactionary politics.

Date of Award	17 Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Chris Rossdale (Supervisor) & Elspeth S Van Veeren (Supervisor)