Furiously Funny

Furiously Funny: Comic Rage from Ralph Ellison to Chris Rock explores the simultaneous expression of militancy and humor in African American literature that came to fruition in the post–World War II moment. This book traces the increasing presence of African American works containing a combustible mix of fury and radicalism, of pathos and pain, of wit and love that fuse to create what I refer to as comic rage. I employ Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to argue that works of comic rage centralize African American experience and tradition in direct challenges to dominant (white) narratives and (black) counter-narratives about race, identity, and nation. Works of comic rage sit at the center of the discourse through humor’s connection to the familiar and the recognizable in mainstream and African America. Comic rage capitalizes on the inability of African Americans to be fully expelled from mainstream American constructions of its identity and culture. Therefore, as with the abject that cannot be expelled, works of comic rage cause the narratives and counter-narratives to collapse and initiate a re-visioning of fundamental, destructive assumptions within white supremacy. Whether those assumptions involve history, literature, or (white) superiority, comic rage aggressively promotes an African American subjectivity that rejects white stereotypes of blackness and African American responses that remain dependent on the power dynamics that reinforce white supremacy (master vs. slave, perpetrator vs. victim).