African-American Folkloric Humor: Resilience, Province of Meaning, Responsiveness

This chapter begins by pointing out how the cruel history of slavery included efforts to suppress humor which served as a way for the enslaved to come to terms with slavery’s institutionalized imposed relevances, as a mechanism of resilience. The practice of oral folklore within a domain marked off from everyday life, as if by a kind of epoché that excluded slave-owners, promoted intersubjective responsiveness among those enslaved through the non-social features of the province of folkloric humor—as a careful commentary on one tale illustrates. The tale, though, climaxes in something of a benign approach even to the slave-owner depicted in the tale, as if the responsiveness of folkloric humor culminates in a kind of ethical responsibility even toward one’s enemy/oppressor.