“Disturbed women”. Group self-irony as liberation from feminine taboos

Abstract

Some type of female humor preconstructed creates stereotypes which often are a response to social representations imposed by dominant discourse, in order to distance themselves from them and satirize the oppression and distress of women Humor in this case acts as a catalyst for the reactions, which seek female self assurance and group solidarity, by laughing together at the stereotype which creates collective identity. This female humor is positive and regenerating due to the fact that laughter based on self criticism not only alleviates collectively from what oppresses women, destroying taboos, but also helps redirect situations contributing to modifications of shared social attitudes and therefore gender struggle which means weakening and destabilizing the eternal male chauvinist humor. Besides, it is gratifying and entertaining, because it gives pleasure to see issues which formerly meant a great problem reduced to nothing. In this work, from the perspective of critical discourse analysis and from the polyphonic theory of enunciation, female humor of Maitena will be approached through “Todas las mujeres alteradas”, title of the comic strips which the humorist created for the female magazine from Argentina, published later in the magazine “El País Semanal”, and finally collected in a book published by Lumen in 2006 [2012].