On Laughter, the Grotesque, and the Ability to Pretend

Reframing Uncertainty in Goma, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Bibliographic Data

ID14769174
AuthorsSilke Oldenburg (0000-0002-3109-6514, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume98
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCahiers de littérature orale (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0396-891X • E-ISSN: 2266-1816
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/15cgi
OpenAlexW7115177357
LanguageEN
References cited30

This article explores the complex role of laughter, the grotesque, and the practice of pretense in everyday life in Goma, a city in the war-affected Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Goma since 2008, the study examines how residents navigate chronic uncertainty, ongoing violence, and social precarity through humour and performative acts. In a context marked by protracted armed conflict, where crisis has become a chronic, everyday condition, laughter emerges not simply as a spontaneous emotional reaction but as a deliberate social practice and form of agency. Through a combination of verbal humour, embodied laughter, and playful “faire semblant” (pretending), inhabitants reframe their precarious realities, sustain dignity, and create spaces for social critique and resilience. Here, reframing is not used in the sense of cognitive or discursive frame analysis, but rather to describe how humour and laughter enable people to shift the affective and moral register of experience in everyday life. Drawing on political anthropology, phenomenology, and humour studies, the article situates Goma as a grotesque urban environment where fact and fiction, fear and irony, are constantly intertwined. Ethnographic examples reveal how laughter functions as a vital mode of sense-making, enabling people to navigate tension, insecurity, and trauma. The performative dimension of laughter and pretense allows residents to assert control over meaning and social relations despite the overwhelming uncertainty of their environment. While this study raises the challenge of capturing such fleeting, context-dependent expressions in academic writing, it ultimately shows that laughter in Goma is an agentive, relational practice that sustains social bonds, critiques power, and transforms suffering into a shared, bearable experience

Cognitive reframing · Embodied cognition · Ethnography · Everyday life · Laughter · Performative utterance · Politics · Social constructionism · Humor Studies and Applications · Interdisciplinary Cultural and Social Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

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