Abstract

This paper seeks to make an assessment of the current political landscape with regard to the way comedy gets deployed as a form of political rhetoric and action. It begins with Alenka Zupančič’s analysis in 'The Odd One In' (2008) of G.W.F. Hegel’s developmental account of ancient Greek theatrical forms. The conclusion of comedy as a concrete universal is then expanded through reference to the performance theory of JeffreyC. Alexander. Attention is given to ineffective forms of comedy as political action, namely irony. The potential for a subversive form of comedy is identified and explicated through the 2013 Gezi Park Protests in Turkey. Key to this analysis is the way in which protestors responded to ridicule by state actors and sought to take up the epithet of “çapulcu” (looter) through comedic songs and other protest action. It is argued that oppressed actors came to seriously identity with the epithet by becoming looters of public space thus enacting a kind of concrete universal. Ultimately, the paper makes a call for a more rigorous form of political comedy, one that comes under the heading of a “serious comedy” in opposition to prevailing forms of irony today.