Construction of gender identities via satire: The case of Juvenal
VIEW FULL TEXT HERE

Keywords

satire
humor
gender identity
critical theory
Juvenal’s Satire VI

How to Cite

Zekavat, M., & Pourgiv, F. (2015). Construction of gender identities via satire: The case of Juvenal. The European Journal of Humour Research, 3(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2015.3.1.zekavat

Abstract

Many studies underscore the societal aspects of satire, yet its role in the construction of social subjects’ identities has been mostly ignored. Since satire has been ubiquitous in various cultures and epochs, and identity is also among the primary contemporary concerns in our globalised and multicultural world, the study of the role of satire in the construction of social subjects’ identities can prove to be significantly rewarding. Accordingly, this article aims to investigate how satire can contribute to the construction of gender identity in social subjects. It is proposed that opposition/otherness/difference is the common denominator between satire and gender identity. First, different theories of humour are surveyed to show that opposition is integral to satire. Then, it is conveyed that otherness and opposition are similarly essential in the construction of gender identity in both men and women. As opposition can be a common denominator on the axis of sex, satire can be among the determinants of gender identity construction. In the end, Juvenal’s Satire VI is explicated to further illustrate the theoretical argumentation. It is concluded that the opposition essential to satire can coalesce with the integral otherness in gender identity, hence to contribute to its construction.

https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2015.3.1.zekavat
VIEW FULL TEXT HERE

References

Appiah, K. A. (2005). The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Archakis, A. & Tsakona, V. (2005). ‘Analyzing conversational data in GTVH terms: A new approach to the issue of identity construction via humour’. Humour 18 (1), pp. 41–68.

Attardo, S. (1994). Linguistic Theories of Humour. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Attardo, S. (2008). ‘A primer for the linguistics of humour’, in Raskin, V. (ed.), The Primer of Humour Research, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 101-155.

Basu, S. (1999). ‘Dialogic ethics and the virtue of humour’. The Journal of Political Philosophy 7, pp. 378-403.

Bergson, H. (1917). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. New York: Macmillan.

Braund, S. H. (1992). ‘Juvenal—misogynist or misogamist?’. Journal of Roman Studies 82, pp. 71-86.

Butler, J. P. (1987). Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. New York: Columbia University Press.

Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge.

Carrell, A. (2008). ‘Historical views of humour’, in Raskin, V. (ed.), The Primer of Humour Research, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 303-332.

Condren, C. (2012). ‘Satire and definition’. Humour 25 (4), pp. 375-399.

Connery, B. A., and Combe, K. (1995). ‘Theorizing satire: A retrospective and introduction’, in Connery, B. A. and Combe, K. (eds.), Theorizing Satire: Essays in Literary Criticism, New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 1-15.

Davis, D. (2008). ‘Communication and humour’, in Raskin, V. (ed.), The Primer of Humour Research, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 543-568.

De Beauvoir, S. (2011). The Second Sex [eBook]. Trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany Chevallier. New York: Vintage Books.

Devi, G. and Rahman, N. (2014). Humour in Middle Eastern Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Freud, S. (1964). Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press.

Freudenburg, K. (2004). Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Göktürk, D. (2008). ‘Jokes and butts: Can we imagine humour in a global public sphere?’ PMLA 123 (5), pp. 1707-1711.

Greimas, A. J. (1966). Semantique structurale. Paris: Larousse. Engl. Tr. (1983). Structural Semantics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Habib, R. (2008). ‘Humour and disagreement: Identity construction and cross-cultural enrichment’. Journal of Pragmatics 40, pp. 1117–1145.

Harrington, J. M. (2009). Mens Sana: Authorized Emotions and the Construction of Identity and Deviance in the Saturae of Juvenal. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Michigan.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). Phenomenology of the Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press.

Highet, G. (1960). Juvenal the Satirist: A Study. London: Oxford University Press.

Hooley, D. M. (2007). Roman Satire. Malden: Blackwell.

Irigaray, L. (1985). This Sex Which is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Johnson, W. R. (1996). ‘Male victimology in Juvenal 6’. Ramus 25, pp. 170-186.

Juvenal. (2006). ‘Juvenal Book 2nd: Satire 6th: Englished against Women’, Trans. William Popple. Translation and Literature 15, pp. 51-82.

Kairoff, C. T. (2007). ‘Gendering satire: Behn to Burney’, in Quintero, R. (ed.), A Companion to Satire, Malden: Blackwell, pp. 226-292.

Kochersberger, A. O., Ford, T. E., Woodzicka, J. A., Romero-Sanchez, M., Carretero-Dios, H. (2014). ‘The role of identification with women as a determinant of amusement with sexist humour’. Humour 27 (3), pp. 441–460.

Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kuipers, G. (2009). ‘Humour styles and symbolic boundaries’. Journal of Literary Theory 3 (2), pp. 219–240.

Levinas, E. (1987). Time and the Other. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Mansfield, N. (2000). Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin.

Meyer, J. C. (2000). ‘Humour as a double-edged sword: Four functions of humour in communication’. Communication Theory 10, pp. 310-331.

Mills, S. (1997). Discourse. London and New York: Routledge.

Morreall, J. (1983). Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany: State University of New York.

Morreall, J. (2008). ‘Philosophy and religion’, in Raskin, V. (ed.), The Primer of Humour Research, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 211-242.

Morreall, J. (2009). Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humour. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Morreall, J. (2012). ‘Philosophy of humour’, in Zalta, E. N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2013 Edition. URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/humor/ [Accessed 24 November 2014].

Morton, S. (2003). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London and New York: Routledge.

Nussbaum, F. (1976). ‘Juvenal, Swift, and The Folly of Love”. Eighteenth-Century Studies 9 (4), pp. 540-552.

Nussbaum. F. A. (1984). The Brink of All We Hate: English Satire on Women 1660-1750. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky.

Orwell, G. (2013). Nineteen Eighty-Four. London and New York: Penguin.

Pascal, B. (2001, reproduced in electronic form). The Provincial Letters. Louisville: Bank of Wisdom.

Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic Mechanisms of Humour. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

Ruch, W. (2008). ‘Psychology of humour’, in Raskin, V. (ed.), The Primer of Humour Research, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 17-100.

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus.

Schaefer, Z. A. (2013). ‘Getting dirty with humour: Co-constructing workplace identities through performative scripts’. Humour 26 (4), pp. 511-530.

Schiffrin, D. (1996). ‘Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity’. Language in Society 25 (2), pp. 167-203.

Schrauf, R. W. (2000). ‘Narrative repair of threatened identity’. Narrative Inquiry 10 (1), pp. 127-145.

Scott, J. W. (1999). Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press.

Simpson, P. (2003). On the Discourse of Satire. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Smith, Jr., W. S. (1980). ‘Husband vs. wife in Juvenal’s sixth satire’. The Classical World 73 (6), pp. 323-332.

Smith, W. S. (2008). ‘Advice on sex by the self-defeating satirists: Horace Sermones 1.2, Juvenal Satire 6, and Roman satiric writing’, in Smith, W. S. (ed.), Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 111-128.

Spivak, G. C. (1987). In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. London and New York: Methuen.

Spivak, G. C. (1988). ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L. (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271-313.

Spivak, G. C. (1990). The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York and London: Routledge.

Spivak, G. C. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.

Swift, J. (1729). ‘A modest proposal’. Dublin: S. Harding. URL: http://jonathanswiftarchive.org.uk/browse/text_10_8_1.html [Accessed 28 May 2015].

Swift, J. (2005). Gulliver’s Travels. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Test, G. A. (1991). Satire: Spirit and Art. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Twark, J. E. (2007). Humour, Satire and Identity: Eastern German Literature in the 1990s. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Wedeen, L. (2013). ‘Ideology and humour in dark times: Notes from Syria’. Critical Inquiry 39, pp. 841-873.

Williams, III, G. W. (2012). ‘Irony as the birth of Kierkegaard’s “single individual” and the beginning of politics’. Toronto Journal of Theology 28 (2), pp. 309-318.

Wittig, M. (2007). ‘One is not born a woman’, in Richter, D. H. (ed.), The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends 3rd ed., Boston and New York: Bedfordist/St. Martin’s, pp. 1637-1642.

Wright, B. (2011). ‘“Why would you do that, Larry?”: Identity formation and humour in Curb Your Enthusiasm’. The Journal of Popular Culture 44 (3), pp. 660-677.

Zekavat, M. (2014). ‘A discursive model of satire’. JESELL (Jena Electronic Studies in English Language and Literature), pp. 1-18. URL: http://zs.thulb.uni-jena.de/receive/jportal_jparticle_00324293 [Accessed 24 November 2014].

All authors agree to an Attribution Non-Commercial Non Derivative Creative Commons License on their work.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.