Fear, anger, and desire: Affect and the interactional intricacies of rape humor on a live podcast. (November 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Franzén, Anna G.; Jonsson, Rickard; Sjöblom, Björn
• Is Part Of: Language in society. Volume 50:Number 5(2021)
• Page Start: 763
• Page End: 786
• Publication Date: 2021-11
• Subjects: Sociolinguistics -- Periodicals; 305
• DOI: 10.1017/S0047404520000615
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0047-4045

Abstract

Abstract: Aggressive, sexist humor is often understood as expressions of inner, misogynist attitudes. This article, however, investigates rape humor as a collective and interactive phenomenon. Drawing on an infamous Swedish podcast episode, we illuminate rape humor in terms of affect, desire, and repression (Butler 1987 ; Billig 1999 ), and as such, how taboo-breaking arouses both pleasure and fear among the participants. The analyses detail affective practices that both promote and discipline affects. The men in the group interpellate one of the participants as a clown, someone whose taboo-breaking they interactionally support and simultaneously distance themselves from. The article concludes that affects, like subject positions, are interpellated in interaction. Building on Wetherell's (2013 ) understanding of affect as both discursive and embodied, we suggest a reintroduction of repression/desire into a discursively oriented framework. (Affective practices, rape humor, desire, repression, taboo, misogynist masculinity, podcast)*