Trans Comedy as Trans Care

Malatino compares two billboards, one declaring "Trans lives are sacred," found in Detroit in July 2019, and one stating "Trans people deserve health care, support, justice, safety, love," stationed near the border of Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms in November 2018 (2020, 25–26 and 30–31). (Nothing works for staving off isolation, illness, and routine workplace discrimination like stabbing your friends dressed as a neon cartoon alien with funky accessories, am I right?) Play, laughter, and jokes—collective endeavors, done with others, whether real or imaginary, present or distant (Freud 1905, Bergson 1912)—are key to trans care via media2. Playing together, via media, including the comedy of our own making, on the other hand, can take on a form of care, and we in turn keep each other alive. The newest iteration of the decades-long irony wherein cis/straight people reveal themselves as relying on the very healthcare they would deny trans and queer folks but with a new toxic twist, a spoof image of the cover of trans theorist Paul B. Preciado's Testo Junkies with Rogan photoshopped on the cover was soon circulating through the trans internet.

„Korona neexistuje!": Humor ako komunikačná stratégia v čase krízy

The study provides an ethnographic probe into the lives of the members of the PCR test team during the pandemic of COVID-19. The aim is to show the use of humour as a communication strategy in times of crisis from the perspective of symbolic anthropology and ethnography of communication, especially theories of danger and joke. The approach of state health institutions have often failed to meet the needs of society, affecting patients' access to information, the treatment of diseases or the identification of positive patients. Humour helped to prevent the conflicts, signalled forgiveness and influenced attitudes towards adherence to the rules. We focus on interpersonal and interactional aspects of communication, social identification of the respondents, as well as the influence of political culture. Coping strategies are followed through: (1) representations of dirt and the boundaries of the body, (2) the recontextualization of the statements and acts, (3) the boundaries of the joke in relation to feelings of safety, and (4) the subversive effect of humour and flirtation in a time of the disciplining of bodies. The study demonstrates how laughter bridges the gap resulting from the conflicting informational inputs. The recontextualisation of the teams' motto: Corona does not exist! is interpreted in its socio-pragmatic dimension.

Es war einmal ein Virus?

Seit den ersten bekannt gewordenen Fällen von SARS CoV-2 verbreitete sich das Virus wellenförmig über die ganze Welt. Mit ihm ging auch eine Flut von Erzählungen unterschiedlicher Art viral. Der Beitrag beabsichtigt nicht, einen Überblick über dieses mittlerweile schwer zu überblickende Material zu geben;er versucht stattdessen, das Potential einer sich als kritische Gesellschaftsanalyse verstehenden Erzählforschung in der Auseinandersetzung mit der Pandemie vorzuführen. Dazu werden zunächst die gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen und mit ihnen verknüpften Diskurse in den Blick genommen. Von da aus frage ich nach unterschiedlich gelagerten Erzählkomplexen, die diesen Rahmenbedingungen und Diskursen entwachsen. Drei davon werden exemplarisch näher betrachtet: Erzählungen können erstens als Ausdruck kollektiver Vorurteile oder Ventil diffuser Ängste gelesen werden;sie können zweitens symbolischer Ausdruck von Spaltungstendenzen innerhalb einer Gesellschaft sein, oder aber drittens machtvolle Instrumente von Großmachtinteressen. Alle drei Ebenen spielen letztlich ineinander bzw. treffen auf der Ebene des alltäglichen Erzählens aufeinander. Wir haben es hier mit einem komplexen, wechselseitigen Beziehungsgefüge zwischen einem Krankheitserreger, den darüber kursierenden Erzählungen und der mit beiden konfrontierten Gesellschaft zu tun.Alternate :Since the first cases of SARS CoV-2 emerged, the virus has spread in waves all over the world. As an involuntary by-product a flood of different stories went viral. This article does not intend to provide an overview of this elusive material of rumors, conspiracy theories, jokes and so on. Rather it tries to demonstrate the potential of narrative research, seeing itself as critical social analysis, in dealing with the pandemic. To this end, the social framework of the pandemic and the discourses linked to them will first be examined. From there I will investigate different narrative complexes growing out of these framework conditions and discourses. Three of them will be examined in closer detail: Stories can firstly be read as an expression of collective prejudices or as an outlet for diffuse fears;secondly, they can be a symbolic expression of tendencies towards cleavage within a society or, thirdly, they can be powerful instruments at the highest level of international politics. All three levels ultimately interact or meet in everyday storytelling. We are dealing here with a complex, mutual relationship between a virus, the stories circulating about it and the society confronted with both.

FROM THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION TO THE RIGHT TO PLAY: reflections on public policies for early childhood education

This work is a qualitative biographical research, which aims to reflect the right to education and play of children who are the target audience of Early Childhood Education (El), for this, we resorted to the main educational public policies aimed at implementation of these rights, from which, we highlight the Common National Curriculum Base - BNCC (2017), the National Curriculum Reference for Early Childhood Education - RCNEI (1998), the Child and Adolescent Statute - ECA (1990), the Laws of Guidelines of Bases of National Education - LDB (1961;1971;1996), among other documents, we also rely on the studies of theorists such as Aries (1978), Saviane (2008;2018), Kunz (2015), among other authors. In this work, it is possible to perceive the gradual historical evolution of the conception of the child, currently recognized as a subject of rights, including the right to education and play in El institutions. We also emphasize our considerations about the defense of the child's right to education and to play, even in times of the Covid-19 pandemic and the absence of public policies in this adverse context.

Stereotyping Arab women in jokes circulated on social media during the coronavirus crisis

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic in late 2019, fear and panic dominated the content of online news. Simultaneously, there was a prevalence of jokes on different social media sites. During the crisis, most Arab countries went through a nationwide lockdown for weeks that people found themselves trapped in their homes and resorted to social media to express their frustration about the prevailing happenings. They began exchanging jokes on social media that indirectly reflected stereotypes about them. One thousand four hundred and twenty-four jokes (1424) were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp messages for three months and were categorized based on the themes they covered. Gender-related jokes ranked the highest and were predominantly targeting women. Hence, this study is an attempt to explore how Arab Women were stereotyped in jokes circulated on social media during the coronavirus crisis. The 508 gender-related jokes were analysed in light of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The analysis generated four main themes, namely ‘marital relations’ (33%), ‘habits and attributes’ (26%), ‘beauty and makeup’ (23%), and ‘violence’ (18%). Women were stereotyped as being ugly and less feminine without makeup, talkative, shopaholic, despising and annoying wives, and violent and harmful partners in their private sphere. The study concludes that such negative stereotypes might be unintentionally produced and reinforced through laughter-eliciting jokes circulating fast in the virtual world. © 2022. European Journal of Humour Research. All Rights Reserved.

‘We can sh*t for another 10 years.’ Toilet paper, pandemic politics and cultural citizenship: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

The global reality of the COVID-19/Corona pandemic paradoxically boosted national politics, broadcasting and citizenship. Media coverage, especially initially, praised citizen solidarity and the creative solutions that were pioneered to care for each other. A year later, a lasting social learning curve throughout and after this crisis seems illusory. The pandemic, this paper argues, needs to be understood in a longer timeframe as the working through and coming to terms with neo-liberal governmentality. The (often hilarious) early responses on social media provide a strong entry to do so. Our focus will be on the Netherlands which had a so-called ‘intelligent’ lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. Using the authors’ own sharing back and forth of toilet paper memes as a starting point, we aim to explore the notion of collective self-reflection and citizen co-education underlying both heated and simply ridiculous posts. Using previous discussion of cultural citizenship, this paper inquires into how pandemic citizenship played out as a vast exercise in disciplining and distinction through jokes and anger. The material suggests a nostalgic turn that might point to an implicitly voiced critique of neoliberal governmentality.

Conținuturi implicite în bancurile generate de pandemia Covid-19 (II): clasificare semantico-pragmatică

No other phenomenon has affected the natural course of life of the entire planet since World War II until the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to implementing the rules generated by the state of emergency or by the state of alert, the citizens are seeking parallel solutions, that function as a refuge, where they can withdraw from fear. Being out of control, this feeling can irreparably paralyse rational thinking. Natively endowed with a very well-developed sense of humour, our compatriots found an opportunity to turn it to account by using their ingenuity. They created a rich inventory of comic texts, which would sweeten the fear of the unfriendly profile of this coronavirus. In this paper we refer to a special type of urban folk literature, generated, as previously stated, by physical isolation at home, but which occurred simultaneously with the exit from latency of a spirit which is thirsty for figment. To be more specific, we analyzed some of the jokes that have circulated on various communication channels (especially electronic ones) and whose invariant theme is the human existence during the epidemic, captured in all its fundamental aspects. A condition for the successful communication of a joke is placing the interlocutors in a familiar context of immediate conceptions, interests and aspirations, which means that both the speaker and the recipient benefit from a common background. On the one hand, we tried to identify the semantic meaning of the texts we took into consideration, and on the other hand, we studied how we are led, "activated" to the pragmatic meaning of the statement through latent, implicit content.