Ataques de risa. El humor como estrategia 'queer'

Abstract

Focusing on a series of recent artistic and activist interventions, this essay seeks to explore the elective affinity between humor, irony and the comical, on the one hand, and the cultures of sexual dissidence on the other. The essay deals specially with the use of humor in critical situations, situations of extreme vulnerability, dominated by affects like sadness, apathy and anger. Building a global framework, and taking into account artistic productions in Paris, underground tactics in Buenos Aires and activist responses in New York, the essay seeks to identify a particularly queer mode, embodied and contextualized in each of these local instances. Finally, and although it studies mostly the 80s, the essay wonders whether we can include this postmodern strategy in the venerable tradition of the “ruses of the weakling”, which can be traced back to the Baroque and probably beyond.