Call for Papers

TOTALITARIAN LAUGHTER:

CULTURES OF THE COMIC UNDER SOCIALISM

May 8-9, 2009

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

Princeton University

http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/
<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 CV, by February 10, 2009 to
<oushakin@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 2008.
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).