An Exploration of Writing Education for a Critical Sense of Humor a Dissertat
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University of Nevada, Reno Pedagogy of the Amused: An Exploration of Writing Education for a Critical Sense of Humor A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Luke E. Kingery Dr. Catherine J. Chaput/Dissertation Advisor May 2019 Copyright by Luke E. Kingery 2019 All Rights Reserved THE GRADUATE SCHOOL We recommend that the dissertation prepared under our supervision by Entitled be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of , Advisor , Committee Member , Comm ittee Member , Committee Member , Graduate School Representative David W. Zeh, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School i Abstract While scholars have been largely optimistic about the role of humor as a critical public pedagogy that generates emancipatory spaces from which students can recognize social injustice and re-envision a more equitable society, I argue that the distance humor generates can be used to emancipate people from empathic responses that would otherwise motivate action. I offer three cases that serve as examples of how critical humor is a neutral rhetoric that can serve nefarious ends as easily as critical: stand-up comedy that makes fun of activists, trolls who use disparaging humor to bolster and protect their privileged identities, and conspiracy theorist news outlets that use satirical elements to generate credibility. Finally, I offer an argument for bringing the study of the sense of humor into the composition classroom as a way of braiding together the prominent pedagogical approaches to composition of expressivism, social constructivism, critical theory, and posthumanism. ii Dedication This is for Dara who always reminds me Birdie who always listens Carlos who knows about my website Currie who always takes my calls Carley who always tells the truth And Cori who flies free iii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Emancipation from Empathy: The Problem with Humor as a Critical Public Pedagogy…1 Chapter 2: Making Fun of Making a Difference: George Carlin’s Humor and Spectatorship Advocacy…29 Chapter 3: Transcending the Troll: Rhetorical Identification, Positive Distinctiveness, and Transcendence…60 Chapter 4: Incredibly Credible Liars: Satirical News and Ethos in the Infowar…95 Chapter 5: Exploring the Sense of Humor: The Critical Classroom as a Space for Critical Public Pedagogical Inquiry…128 Works Cited…160 1 Chapter 1 Emancipation from Empathy: The Problem with Humor as a Critical Public Pedagogy Laughing at the pain and suffering in the world is not the best medicine. At best, it is an anesthetic—it may lessen the pain caused by the symptoms, but it does not address the root cause of them. Climate change is destroying the planet, obscene wealth inequality has ushered in a new gilded age, money in politics has fully corrupted the systems of government, the United States government has engaged in the internment of children separated from their families for seeking asylum—late-night comedy hosts skewer these issues and the people behind them, but things continue on unabated. We not only laugh at our problems, but we laugh at those who have the audacity to try to solve these problems as being dreamers out of touch with reality. This laughter does make us feel better. It offers a momentary reprieve from the stress, frustration, and grief these issues cause, and that is good. It is needed and necessary. However, as a form of public pedagogy this humor also teaches us to believe in and accept a certain representation of reality—a reality that seems inevitable and unavoidable. Laughing at our problems minimizes our perception of their severity, but it also persuades us to accept our problems as too large to deal with. Humor does have the potential to shake us free from this reality, but it is important to know the difference between humor that incarcerates and humor that emancipates—this answer lies in the study of public pedagogy. The mission of critical pedagogy is to help students become aware of the ways in which schooling has taught them to serve their oppressors. Paulo Freire is the father of the modern turn towards a critical pedagogy, and scholars such as Andrea Darder, Peter McLaren, Henry A. Giroux, Stanley Aronowitz, and Ira Shor took up this mantle in the 2 1980s and 1990s to open students’ eyes to the forces that compel them and shape them in the image of injustices that came before. For composition scholars, the goal is to teach writing, but the question is always what students should write about: literature, scholarship, themselves. Ira Shor argued in When Students have Power that the content of the composition classroom should be the university and education itself—he wanted to give the power back to students in order to shirk the fetters of the traditional teacher- student power dynamic that had been inhibiting new kinds of learning. Peter Elbow advocated for ways to revolutionize the classroom by circumventing the traditional power dynamic between teachers and students by centralizing student experience. He and others such as Ken Macrorie and Donald Murray, believed that by writing about their own experiences, students would become more skillful writers enabling them to participate more fully in professional and academic discourses. David Bartholomae felt that this approach neglected the social element of identity and argued that students should practice and reinvent the conventions of academic study—In this way students would be encouraged to take risks and fail as opposed to writing safely about their own experiences. It is in this process of risk-taking that Bartholomae asserted would lead to learning and growth. All of these scholars sought to live up to the responsibilities of preparing students for professional and academic writing. As part of the so-called social turn of the 1980s and 1990s many scholars argued that the content of the composition classroom should be the culture they come from. Scholars such as Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, Diana George, and John Trimbur to name a few argued that as part of a move away from process approaches to writing instruction, teachers should help students to recognize the hegemonic forces of culture so 3 that the composition classroom might be more equitable and encourage students to be more aware of their own socially constructed identities. Out of this turn toward culture studies in combination with critical approaches that studied how the education system works to reproduce power comes the theory of public pedagogy. In this sense, public pedagogy is the study of cultural forces as pedagogical—not to be confused with the kind of public pedagogy advocated for by Ashley J. Holmes which asks students to engage in public forms of writing. For Giroux, public pedagogy is the notion that students learn most of what they know outside of the classroom, and these cultural forces should be studied as pedagogical, so that scholars can better understand how and what culture teaches. This is where I pick up the thread of the conversation and propose that humor is a fertile site for exploring public pedagogy and for bringing this study into the composition classroom. The first-year writing class has goals that align with the study of humor—evaluating sources of information, writing in various modes, and developing a critical sense of societal norms. However, without bring this study into the classroom, citizens would be left at its mercy. Culture is not designed intentionally. In Pierre Bourdieu’s words, culture is better understood as a habitus that is made up of “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations… without in any way being the product of obedience to rules… or the product of an orchestrating conductor” (72). Thus, Giroux suggests that the study of public pedagogy is the study of how this habitus habituates us. Students practice consuming culture and develop a guiding model of citizenship that persuades them of certain versions of reality. The 4 question for scholars who study humor as a public pedagogy is how humor produces habits of mind that condition people to act and/or accept the current iteration of the habitus. Largely, they have been optimistic that this sort of humorous/educational entertainment is encouraging people to work for change and participate in deliberative democracy. All tend to agree that humor, because it tends to highlight some social norm and then expose an incongruity, has the potential to create distance and space from which audiences can question and reconceive their perceptions of reality. Understanding culture as pedagogy has enabled scholars to articulate how culture promotes certain versions of society—often these versions of society support the reigning system of neoliberal capitalism in which the free market determines all morality (Giroux). On the other hand, scholars such as bell hooks, Lawrence Grossberg, and Giroux, have theorized that artists and performers can create art and culture that is critical of and challenges the dominant public pedagogy. While there are various modes through which this occurs, scholars have begun to focus on how humor, satire, and pranks can serve the function of creating emancipatory spaces—where audiences can step outside of their a priori belief systems to look back and reflect from a new vantage point (Rossing 2016; Harold 2004; Haugerud 2012: McCosker 2014; Achter 2008; Sandlin and Milam 2008; McClennen and Maisel 2014). From this space, citizens can foster a critical consciousness and awareness of harmful hegemonies such as racism and white privilege (Rossing 2015), neoliberalism, advertising and consumerism (Harold 2004; Sandlin and Milam 2008), and wealth inequality (Haugerud 2012). Rather than looking to traditional news, scholars have suggested that satirical news outlets are more credible and use strategies that may be rescuing the state of democracy (McClennen and Maisel 2014; 5 Baym 2009; Achter 2008).