Laughter of the Oppressor: Humour, Whiteness and Masculinity in Late Rhodesia

Abstract

  In the 1960s and 1970s Rhodesian settlers engaged in a violent struggle to maintain white minority rule. Humour and jokes offer insights into how different sections of the settler population attempted to articulate a distinct Rhodesian-ness in this historical situation. I argue that jokes told by white men, for white men, both expressed an idealized white masculinity and engaged fears over its impossibility. In exploring these dynamics I show how humour can be used to explore the production and regulation of social identities and the symbiotic, unnerving relations between white power and white anxiety.