The cultural politics of justice: Bakhtin, stand-up comedy and post-9/11 securitization

For Rabelais,‘folk humour’ and its boundless forms are not frivolous, inconsequential aspects of the human condition but, rather, are central to modes of critique and the formation of discourses which seek radical cultural transformation by evading, exposing, resisting, scandalizing and mocking ‘official culture’. Taking its cue from Bakhtin’s exposition of the grotesque realism of the Rabelaisian novel, this article explores the abstract notion of ‘justice’ through the lens of ‘folk humour’—specifically, stand-up comedy which references securitization in the post-9/11 period. In so doing, it calls into question Habermasian discourse ethics, proposing instead a model of ‘doing justice’ predicated on Bakhtinian dialogism.