On humour, art and the temptation to believe it is always on the side of good
In times of tension, a reasonable hope is often repeated: that we require more humour. In the face of dogma, entrenched positions, and angry solemnity, laughter might restore a measure of air, perspective, and shared humanity. I share this impulse. Yet, I have learned to distrust it, for it conceals a false premise: that humour resides on the side of virtue. It does not. Humour possesses no singular character, and to believe otherwise is the primary error in any defence of humour during difficult times.
I wish to propose something more uncomfortable and useful: that humour is ambivalent by structure, not by accident. The same form—irony, caricature, the meme—serves to open a line of inquiry or to close ranks, to disarm the powerful or to humiliate the vulnerable. What determines its effect is not the fact that it is humour. It is something else, and knowing what that is matters.
1. Laughter is born divided
One need only examine classical theories of humour to see that ambivalence is at its root. Hobbes described laughter as a 'sudden glory': the pleasure of feeling superior in the face of another's weakness, defect, or ridicule. This theory accounts for the caricature that degrades a tyrant by distorting their body, as well as the joke that dehumanises a minority. The laughter of superiority serves both to bring down those at the top and to trample those at the bottom. It is the same mechanism; only the target changes.
Freud provided another facet: humour as a discharge, a psychic economy that allows for the oblique expression of what cannot be stated directly. This renders it a precious instrument for processing fear and circumventing censorship. Yet, this same discharge fuels the contrary suspicion—that laughing relieves tension without transforming anything, that one vents and remains unchanged. The incongruity theory of Kant and Schopenhauer, the laughter that erupts when an expectation is suddenly undone, explains Dadaist montage and the absurd, yet it takes no side. It is a mechanic of surprise, not a moral compass.
Not even the carnival is unequivocally liberating. The festival of inverted order, which Bakhtin elevated as an emblem of popular comic culture, may be tolerated by those in power precisely because it is a regulated exception that, upon its conclusion, confirms the return of the status quo. One is permitted to laugh for a day so that one may better obey for the remainder of the year. Transgression does not always subvert; sometimes, it merely provides ventilation.
2. What the history of comic art teaches, and what it does not
Visual satire possesses a glorious genealogy. It must be viewed without idealisation. Goya, in Los Caprichos, attacked superstition and the inquisitorial machinery with a freedom that remains impressive. Daumier depicted King Louis-Philippe as a grotesque Gargantua devouring wealth, and paid for it with imprisonment. George Grosz flayed the militarism and corruption of the Weimar Republic with his pencil, and ultimately ended up in the Nazi 'degenerate art' exhibition, stripped of his nationality.
These cases demonstrate something significant: power perceives satire as a genuine threat, sufficient to warrant imprisonment, seizure, and proscription. They also demonstrate the opposite of what we might wish. The satire of Grosz did not halt Nazism. That of Daumier did not topple the July Monarchy. Its diagnostic power—its capacity to name what was occurring—was immense; its capacity to arrest it, slight or non-existent. And when one seeks firm evidence that critical humour has changed institutions, it does not appear: what research documents is circulation, repression, and recorded dissent, not caused transformation.
The same occurs with humour under dictatorships. The political jokes that circulated in Communist Europe, the samizdat, the pages of La Codorniz circumventing Francoist censorship: all of that was silent protest, complicity, an emotional archive of fear and of what could not be said. But the historian who studied it most thoroughly concluded that those jokes neither toppled nor stabilised the regimes. They recorded the distance between the people and the official discourse. They did not close it.
3. The best argument against: the valve that does not burst
This is the objection that any honest defence of humour must sustain before addressing it. Critical humour appears to challenge the status quo, yet in reality it discharges the tension that might otherwise have translated into action, thereby assisting in the toleration of the intolerable. One laughs at power, experiences the lucidity of having perceived it, the sense of belonging that comes from laughing with one's peers—and returns home having achieved nothing. Humour as an emotional substitute for politics.
This notion requires nuance, as those who have examined it closely caution that the 'safety valve' metaphor itself is deceptive: it signifies too much and permits no precise measurement. Yet the core remains valid. It has been demonstrated that laughter, far from being inherently liberating, serves a disciplinary function: ridicule keeps individuals in their place, penalises deviation, and reinforces norms through the imposition of shame. Laughter does not merely challenge the order. It also polices it.
In democracies saturated with content, this suspicion possesses a contemporary iteration: a significant portion of the critical humour we consume may function as a ritual of confirmation. It convinces no one; it gathers the already convinced around the pleasure of laughing at the opposing side. It does not initiate conversation. It distributes badges of belonging.
4. Humour as a weapon of intolerance
Then there is the aspect that is most difficult to confront, as it entirely refutes the notion of humour as a natural ally of just causes. Humour is currently one of the most effective instruments of radicalisation.
Recent research documents this with data. A study of twelve hundred memes from far-right channels demonstrated that those combining extremist narrative with humour achieved greater dissemination than those employing one or the other in isolation: humour is the vehicle that facilitates the transmission of the message. Another analysis, concerning an animated series from an ultra-right party, concluded that humour softens exclusionary discourse —racism, misogyny— and renders it more acceptable to audiences who would reject the unadorned message. Laughter does not embellish exclusion: it introduces it into drawing rooms where it would not otherwise gain entry.
The mechanism possesses an operational designation: 'it was only a joke'. Irony permits the delivery of a message and, upon criticism, a retreat—I was not being serious, you do not understand the joke, you take everything too personally. It is a strategic ambiguity that launches the content while reserving the alibi. The meme serves as its perfect medium: inexpensive to produce, infinitely replicable, semantically elusive, and capable of circulating far from its original context while carrying a charge that no one claims. Anyone who believes that humour resides on the side of virtue has not observed the recent years.
5. So, what does it depend on?
If the same form both opens and closes, the pertinent question is not whether humour is inherently good or bad, but rather what determines its character. The answer, to the extent that it can be rigorously maintained, is its direction.
There is a distinction that circulates in debates regarding comedy —laughing upwards or downwards, against power or against the vulnerable— that should be employed with caution, for it is not a law with universal criteria, but a prudential orientation. It does not resolve every case: at times it is unclear who is above and who is below, and the historical context of inequality carries more weight than the intention of the person making the joke. Yet it points to the essential. Humour that disarms is directed against those who possess power, dogma, or excessive solemnity. Humour that inflicts harm preys upon those already beneath. The form is identical; the direction is not.
This connects to a premise I maintain in this Notebook regarding other matters: the political nature of a gesture resides not in the gesture itself, but in its conditions. Just as the political nature of a work resides not in its subject matter but in the infrastructure surrounding it, the political nature of a joke resides not in its humour, but in whom it targets, from what position, before whom, and with what circulation. To demand 'more humour' without qualification is akin to demanding 'more political art' without qualification: it remains on the surface of the problem. What is significant is the direction and the conditions.
6. What humour can actually do against polarisation
After all of this, I continue to believe that humour has something to offer in times of intolerance. Yet no longer as a weapon that unites magically, but as a concrete and demanding operation.
The discourse of polarisation functions by compelling a choice of side: either you are with my own, or you are the enemy, and any nuance is treachery. Humour can achieve something that serious discourse, in such a climate, almost cannot: the introduction of self-distancing. It allows a community to name its own contradictions without immediately descending into doctrinal language. It sustains both truth and artifice simultaneously, viewing dogma from a distance. In an environment saturated with moral solemnity, a joke that also risks offending one's own side can invite more attentive listening than any manifesto.
Therein lies the key. Humour that is useful against tension is not that which ridicules the opposing side—that merely fuels the trenches and is part of the affliction. It is that which dares to laugh at one's own side. It is that which does not close interpretation into a slogan, but opens it into a doubt. It is that which pays the price of including itself as a target. Such humour is rare, uncomfortable, and lacks profitability, as it does not provide the easy pleasure of superiority. Yet it is the only form that, rather than distributing credentials of belonging, calls them into question.
Perhaps for this reason, it is prudent to be wary of humour that merely reinforces our sense of being correct, and to seek that which makes us feel, for a moment, slightly less certain of ourselves. That minor insecurity—the experience of having laughed at one's own side—is among the few things capable of opening a fissure in a wall. It is not substantial. Yet in times that specialise in the construction of walls, a fissure through which light may pass is not a trivial matter.
On the open conversation
This text intersects with a question that permeates my work: that the political nature of a form—a work, a critique, a joke—resides not in the form itself, but in its conditions and its direction. Should anyone wish to intervene from the fields of humour studies, the history of satire, political communication, or artistic practice, the notebook remains open.
Sources
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