Between symbolic violence and feminist resistance: humor as a political tool

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to get humour talking for the purpose of identify who is speaking and the social position from which the person talks to: on one hand,toreveal the symbolic violencemechanisms exerted against women which are hidden behind humorous practices; on the other hand, to explore feminist alternatives of resistance to the patriarchal system through humour. To this end, from two representative cases, and by means of Bourdieu’s theories, some of the constitutive elements of the relationship between the representation of the agents involved in the process of producing humour and the social world have been explored. The results show the existence of a patriarchalhabituswidespread by humorous practices as well as a feminist humour typology thatseeks to stimulate changesthrough thedirection of equality and social justice.