Comic Plots as Conflict Resolution Strategy

Kuusisto, Riikka

doi:10.1177/1354066109345052

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Humour can serve both to politicise and depoliticise particular social relations (Kuipers, 2005). Within IR scholarship, however, humour has not received much attention, with a few, but notable, exceptions: Wedeen (2002) has provided a superb analysis of the subversive function of humour in Assad's Syria, while other IR scholars have discussed humour in the context of postcolonialism (Krishna, 1993), conflict resolution (Kuusisto, 2009) and pop culture (Payne, 2017). Yet, humour is still largely seen as an epiphenomenon in world politics, one that is not relevant to issues of war and peace.…”

Section: Humour As a Coping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

Adler‐Nissen

Tsinovoi

2018

European Journal of International Relations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recognition, or the lack of it, is a central concern in International Relations. However, how states cope with international misrecognition has so far not been thoroughly explored in International Relations scholarship. To address this, the article presents a theoretical framework for understanding international misrecognition by drawing on discursive and psychoanalytical theories of collective identity formation and humour studies. The article conceptualises international misrecognition as a gap between the dominant narrative of a national Self and the way in which this national Self is reflected in the ‘mirror’ of the international Other. We argue that humour offers an important way of coping with misrecognition by ridiculing and thereby downplaying international criticism. The significance for international relations is illustrated through an analysis of the public diplomacy campaign ‘Presenting Israel’, which, through parodying video clips, mobilised ordinary Israeli citizens to engage in peer-to-peer public diplomacy when travelling abroad. Public diplomacy campaigns are commonly seen by scholars and practitioners as attempts to improve the nation’s image and smoothen or normalise international Self–Other relations. However, after analysing the discursive and visual components of the campaign — which parodied how European media portrayed Israel as primitive, violent and exotic — this article observes that in the context of international misrecognition, such coping attempts can actually contribute to further international estrangement.

show abstract

Section: Humour As a Coping Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

Adler‐Nissen

Tsinovoi

2018

European Journal of International Relations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…34 Kuusisto has demonstrated that comedy as a narrative form offers conflict resolution strategies in international politics. 35 Spencer has shown how romantic narratives influence our understanding of events. 36 According to Ringmar, the debate over the Iraq War in the early 2000s was best characterised as a battle between different narrative types.…”

Section: Narrating International Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ironic Western Self: Radical and Conservative Irony in the ‘Losing Turkey’ Narrative

Vuorelma

2018

Millennium

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article focuses on ironic narrative forms in international media and policy debates concerning political developments in Turkey during the era of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in the 2000s. More specifically, the article examines the narrative of ‘losing’ Turkey, which has grown in significance during the AKP era, and argues that the metaphor also contains an ironic, self-critical reading that contributes to the debate on the idea of the West. The article advances knowledge concerning different functions of ironic narratives, proposing that we need to distinguish between (1) radical irony and (2) conservative irony. It is argued that radical irony is an outward-looking strategy to advance social justice and to challenge the Western self’s hegemonic representations, while conservative irony is an attempt to re-strengthen the Western self’s hegemony in the international system. The debate on ‘losing’ Turkey is an illustrative case where a Western subject is intersubjectively imagined and narrated with moral and aesthetic preferences. It can be seen as a negotiation about the moral traditions that underpin the West as an imagined and narrated social system. The article argues that the Western self is partly constituted through ironic narrative forms.

show abstract

“…12 In the following, we ignore satire -which Frye (1957: 223) describes as 'militant irony' -as this genre runs counter to irony's effects (for a detailed discussion of satire, see Forchtner, 2016: 222-224). 13 It is worth noting that our understanding of the comic genre differs from Kuusisto (2009) who, working on IR, welcomes comic plots as a conflict resolution strategy which brings actors together. While this might indeed be welcomed, our conceptualisation focuses on more abstract, cognitive, feelingrelated consequences of the various genres, thus viewing comedy as a mode which tends to block collective learning processes.…”

Section: Acknowledgementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a revised theory of collective learning processes: Argumentation, narrative and the making of the social bond

Forchtner

Jorge

Eder

2018

European Journal of Social Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Societies change; and sociology has, since its inception, described and evaluated these changes. This article proposes a revised theory of collective learning processes, a conceptual framework which addresses ways in which people make sense of and cope with change. Drawing on Habermas’ classic proposal, but shifting the focus from argumentation towards storytelling, it explains how certain articulations allow for collective learning processes (imagining more inclusive orders), while others block learning processes (imagining more exclusive orders). More specifically, the article points to narrative genres (romance, tragedy, comedy and irony) which organize feelings and shape the social bond, proposing that ironic and tragic stories have the potential to trigger collective learning processes, while romantic and comic stories tend to block them.

show abstract

Comic Plots as Conflict Resolution Strategy

Cited by 23 publications

References 26 publications

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

The Ironic Western Self: Radical and Conservative Irony in the ‘Losing Turkey’ Narrative

Towards a revised theory of collective learning processes: Argumentation, narrative and the making of the social bond

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About