>but maybe, Yoshie, this is why we part company about how to handle such
>instances of sexism and the like on the part of individual men. oh sure, a
>tongue lashing might do every once in a while, but i've found irony,
>praody, sarcasm, mocking, all forms of humor useful in these
>situations--situations where you might like to educate, persuade, set an
>example. the thing about humor is that it mediates criticisms in a way
>that makes it a bit easier to take the tongue lashing. the criticized's
>sense of self is recoverable and we'd hoped transformed in the experience
>because you've offered that as a possibility rather than engaging in an
>unmediated destructive form of critique. the gesture is read by your
>interlocutor as one in which s/he, we hope, realizes that you believe
>they're good and decent people worthy of of the criticisms and capable of
>hearing it and maybe learning something. (see the lit on 'playing the
>dozens' and on working class humor used against employers).
<snip>
>this is the point i think carrol might be missing: such forms of humor
>have, historically, been used by the oppressed as a way of criticizing
>oppressors. (Yankee Doodle Dandy anyone?) in this sense, it is a language
>of exclusion precisely in the same ways that drum beats were some times
>used as a language of exclusion among enslaved africans. there is the
>possibility of resistance, sometimes right to someone's face, someone who
>might have the power to crush you, kill you, beat you, etc, that might be
>empowering in some sense. and this experience, when shared, might be a
>form of consciousness raising that isn't nearly as intimidating than the
>kind of consciousness raising that relies on soapboxes and high drama
I think that you are talking about two different (though not always separate) things above: humoring the oppressor; and covertly criticizing the oppressor. The latter may be necessary and even fun sometimes (as in Wilde's _The Importance of Being Earnest_ and Zora Neal Hurston's _Mules and Men_), but the former seems unhealthy (whether we are humoring the absolute enemy [or its personifications--capitalists] or the dominant groups within the working class like men and whites), in that the oppressed are simply shouldering the emotional labor that has been always foisted upon them _without_ their volunteering to do so. The kind of stuff Audre Lorde (among others) talks about in _Sister Outsider_:
***** I speak out of direct and particular anger..., and a white woman says, 'Tell me how you feel but don't say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.' But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change?...I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are.... The angers between women will not kill us if we can articulate them with precision, if we listen to the content of what is said with at least as much intensity as we defend ourselves against the manner of saying. When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar. I have tried to learn my anger's usefulness to me, as well as its limitations.
For women raised to fear, too often anger threatens annihilation. In the male construct of brute force, we were taught that our lives depended upon the good will of patriarchal power. The anger of others was to be avoided at all costs because there was nothing to be learned from it but pain, a judgment that we had been bad girls, come up lacking, not done what we were supposed to do. And if we accept our powerlessness, then of course any anger can destroy us. [However, t]he anger of women can transform difference through insight into power. For anger between peers births change, not destruction, and the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth. *****
In other words, "Anything worth learning is a hurt--these changes come with pain," as Teresa says to Esperanza (who worries about Ramon's hurt feelings after confronting him about sexism the night before) in _Salt of the Earth_. (And the film proves Teresa to be correct.)
Finally, the masks of humor and irony are often masks of tragedy, so there is no reason to reify them as inherently valuable. They are signs of our tragic weakness that causes our use of many survival skills. Here's a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem for you that addresses this very question.
***** We wear the mask that grins and lies It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes-- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To Thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh, the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask.
--Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask" *****
Yoshie