Conflict,humour and reconcilement in Palestine,Israel and Northern Ireland

Abstract

This article studies humour as a cultural form of meaning-making in the complex space of ethno-religious-national conflict and its aftermath. In the context of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and in view of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the author examines the ways in which humour, as deployed by Lisa McGee and Sayed Kashua in their TV shows and in Emile Habiby’s The Secret Life of Saeed, disrupts the given narratives of a place. The power of humour in cultural production is variously shown to contribute to peacebuilding efforts by rejecting the status quo, subverting state discourses, or illuminating the absurdities of everyday experiences of violent conflict. However, the author argues that the use of humour also raises questions about spaces of privilege and subordination, insiders and outsiders, and the dubious goal of reconciliation.

Introduction

Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after a knife attack that almost cost him his life at a literary event, Salman Rushdie shared his opinion that his attacker does not know how to laugh. Rushdie further stated that “humour is liberating, it is a way of celebrating life” and there is beauty in laughter because “we laugh together”. After suggesting that humour and bigotry are incompatible, he asks Colbert, “can you imagine a funny fanatic?” (Colbert, 2024). Receiving a big laugh from the audience and the host to this rhetorical question, Rushdie subverts the power of his attacker who likely carried out their assault on the grounds of religious fundamentalism in response to The Satanic Verses affair. The argument that humour and laughter “carry the potential to reinscribe social hierarchies or to fundamentally disrupt them” (Bhungalia, 2020: 391) upholds this image of Rushdie denying the authority of the attacker to censor him or his writing. In fact, “To laugh or smile in the face of power is not necessarily an expression of opposition; it is a refusal to recognize the authoritative figure itself” (p.388). Although Bhungalia is referring to the politics of refusal in Palestine specifically, their discussion of the transgressive function of humour, particularly when unexpected or out of place, is relevant to many other locations. Serious contexts like war and violent conflict do not tend to evoke connections to humour of any kind but closer study reveals not only the vital presence of humour in representing these conflicts but also the variety of uses and impacts of humour. This is especially true when we consider cultural modes of representation and creative outputs that seek to illustrate or to understand conflict.

Israel–Palestine ¹ and Northern Ireland are two sites of violent conflict that continue to experience ethnic, national, or religious violence in the aftermath of a geopolitical partition borne out of settler colonialism. Although quite different in their histories and geographies, these two cases share some features when considered in parallel. The partition of Ireland in 1921 and the creation of Northern Ireland in the wake of British colonisation led to a violent sectarian conflict known euphemistically as the Troubles, which lasted from roughly 1968 until a peace treaty called the Belfast Agreement was implemented in 1998. However the term ‘post-conflict’ is not appropriate for a place that remains deeply divided, where the education system is segregated on religious grounds and a consociational government intermittently functions (Harrington, 2024). On the other hand, the partition of Palestine in 1948 occurred as a result of a UN resolution that came into effect immediately after the British Empire’s Mandate ended, and which saw the creation of the state of Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. As current events show, the ethno-national conflict in this region has not ceased and no peace process or political negotiation has yet been successful in bringing an end to the horrific violent conflict that has included a number of recognized wars and genocide. The seriousness of these two historical partitions and their aftermaths has been portrayed in countless cultural and artistic forms, many seeking to make sense of the atrocities, and in so doing have addressed, countered or destabilised the profound subject matter with a humorous approach.

This article is interested in the place of humour in the cultural and creative mediations of these conflicts. Elsewhere I have argued for the vital contribution of such mediations to peace and conflict studies, the ability of creative outputs to actively support the work of peacebuilding and the need for social scientists and humanities scholars to engage in more cross-disciplinary dialogue on this (Harrington, 2024). I also extend the important research of Siobhan McEvoy-Levy (2018) on the ways we can read popular culture for peace by considering the myriad cultural forms that constitute peace work beyond popular or mass consumer culture. Humour is by no means a requirement here and it is not novel to suggest that humour can be employed for a variety of reasons in different situations, including as a coping mechanism, to mobilise people, as an exertion of agency or as a challenge to authority (Dodds and Kirby, 2013; Korkut et al., 2022; Noderer, 2020), but I argue that humour does more than these things in response to violent conflict. This article establishes humour as an important cultural form of meaning-making in ethno-religio-national conflicts because it can unsettle and reframe given narratives of disputed territory. Through cultural production such as literary fiction and in visual culture like TV shows, people impacted by violent conflict tell stories that are funny, absurd and satirical as a way to process their experiences. They also might connect with audiences and communities who share those or similar experiences, but, vitally, writers and creators use their chosen cultural forms to narrate what they have lived or witnessed and in doing so they can effect healing and peacebuilding. Therefore the use of humour in cultural production not only creates meaning through storytelling but moreover can play an active role in crafting generative shared spaces where peace and healing can thrive. This is evident in the Northern Irish TV show Derry Girls. However, as my examples below reveal, the effectiveness or success of humour is directly linked to the scale and stage of the conflict. Cases where violent conflict has transformed into a less heightened phase, where a fruitful peace process has occurred or where the society is emerging from conflict are much more likely to experience the healing potential of humour than those societies still mired in intense violence. A discussion of the work of Sayed Kashua, Etgar Keret and Emile Habiby illustrate the complexity of humour in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Humour and peacebuilding

In their article on the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013, Umut Korkut et al. (2022) examine how protestors challenged state repression through the deployment of humour in digital media. Their findings present absurd humour as a vital articulation of the voices of the protestors, as both a community and a collective, that allowed them “to assert claims of truthfulness and humanity in the face of authoritarianism” (p.644). Beyond the commonly recognized function of laughter as dissidence, this verdict on the relationship between humour and humanity is significant as it brings the creators of humour closer to a goal that deliberately fosters connection and even hope. Craig Zelizer (2010) corroborates this when he suggests that humour is both a process tool and a healing tool. In the former, humour can break the cycle of disagreement or tension and can “reframe conflict dynamics between disputing parties . . . and allow space for progress to be made” in terms of negotiation and conflict resolution (p.4). In the latter case, humour allows for the release of emotions that arise in those living with conflict, which can then contribute to the development of coping abilities. Zelizer states “Exploring humour, through jokes, using funny skits, movies, films or other media, can be an excellent tool to help groups that have suffered from conflict begin to heal and to laugh again” (p.4). This argument comes with the qualification that this second function of humour as a healing tool is more applicable to low-level conflict situations or societies emerging from conflict, while humour as an act of resistance is more pertinent to intense conflict situations.

This distinction is important and relevant to the examples I want to explore here. The conflict in Israel–Palestine, or the Arab–Israeli conflict historically, remains an ongoing violent conflict marked by acts of genocide, unremitting killings, attacks, injustices and suffering. Attempts at peaceful resolution through the mediation and negotiation of a peace process have thus far been unsuccessful. The Troubles in Northern Ireland was a roughly three-decades-long violent conflict that saw significant loss of life and injury per capita but, since the Belfast Agreement in 1998, it has de-escalated and there are far fewer deaths and less violence. It exists as a low-level conflict in transition, marked by ongoing and deeply rooted sectarianism and political stalemates, but the parties involved are, for the most part and at this time, more focused on the transformation of historic antagonisms and on building peaceful futures than in the case of the current Arab–Israeli conflict. Therefore, it is important to bear in mind Michael Billig’s (2005) call to question the inherent ‘goodness’ of laughter and to maintain an awareness of how ridicule is often at the centre of humour, particularly when a distinct social hierarchy shapes positions of superiority. While I agree with Zelizer that the function of humour can change depending on the kind or phase of conflict that is being experienced, and certainly there are specificities to location and language or cultural identity, as will be explored further, there is also shared purpose in humour across borders. Studying the two cases above in tandem exposes the ways in which humour operates through cultural production that is not limited to a particular stage of conflict. I maintain that it can be a crucial source of meaning-making that often extends new perspectives or versions of place that for a long time, sometimes centuries, have been presented and received in a certain way. That is to say, ethno-religio-national conflicts in the shadow of colonialism and imperialism exist on a hateful yet robust foundation of Othering, of insiders v. outsiders, territorialisation, racism and capitalist exploitation. It is difficult to dismantle this long-standing scaffold and reveal some of the more absurd and ridiculous aspects of a conflict that, by virtue of their longevity, are taken as given. Astute observation, careful intervention and well-timed, well-devised humorous cultural mediation can be more potently revealing and influential than any number of political speeches or top-level, nation-state institutional efforts to transform the conflict.

Life after the Troubles

As a society emerging from conflict, Northern Irish society is in the fortunate position of being able to reflect on the past and to look ahead to what constitutes a shared future. However, as mentioned earlier, the view that the Troubles are simply a part of history and that Northern Irish society has moved beyond the ancient hatreds or animosity, or that people live in a post-sectarian society, is simply not true. Therefore the urgent question of how reconciliation can actually be achieved almost 30 years after a peace treaty is both pertinent and concerning. It is concerning because it emphasizes the immense challenge of getting all sides of a conflict to come together in harmony, in agreement on past events, and ready to address the horrific loss and trauma – in essence to forgive enemies and perpetrators. Writing for The Forgiveness Project, Marina Cantacuzino and Katalin Karolyi state:

Forgiveness can be a critical ingredient in rebuilding broken relationships and repairing damaged communities. It can be an important part of any peace-building process, and sometimes the only thing that can help divided communities move toward reconciliation. Festering trauma so easily has the capacity to become festering dehumanization; since both sides may believe there is risk in equality, they therefore adopt fear-based thinking such as: “If you’re equal to me, then you may harm me.” Sometimes it takes something radical like empathy, forgiveness, and reconciliation to break this impasse. (nd)

While forgiveness certainly is a key factor in the transition to peaceful relations, how communities or individuals scarred by violent conflict and traumatized by unimaginable loss and grief might access empathy and forgiveness is unclear. This difficulty reveals a limitation in the word reconciliation; it suggests a final state of agreement, harmony and the restoration of a relationship that was previously broken. In this way it skips over the often protracted process that it takes to get there. Instead it might be more helpful to focus on the verb to reconcile so as to emphasize the ongoing action(s) that need to occur and the enduring procedure or course that must be faithfully adhered to in order to have any hope of actual reconcilement. I use this word also to remind us of the dogged activeness and the continuity of commitment that are essential to improving lives in sites of conflict and those emerging from conflict. Reconcilement moves away from the state or institutional connection that is commonly associated with the capital R concept of Reconciliation that inevitably calls to mind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRCs), as well as those in Chile, South Korea and Sierra Leone amongst other countries. These important bodies have carried out crucial work to address legacies of imperialism, human rights violations and serious abuses of power but their success has been limited and impacted by numerous factors including financial constraints, blindspots, public apathy and lack of engagement, and an absence of true justice (Hirsch et al., 2012; Ibhawoh et al., 2023).

A key critique, relevant to my discussion, can be levied at the ways in which TRCs operate at the level of political and legal systems, and the actors therein are bound to agendas that may not be relevant to the individuals who make up the general public: that is, those who do not feature on televised or mediated TRC events, and the regular people who do not see themselves as part of this elite system. In these ways, (small r) reconcilement is a more helpful term that exists at the community level and defines the kinds of everyday acts of peace or anti-sectarianism that slowly spread amongst families and neighbourhoods, schools and community centres. It is akin to Haines and Saikia’s (2019) concept of people’s peace as a form of praxis, of “intentional acts of fostering and creating new kinds of community or disrupting normative modes and structures of power or both” often carried out by those “usually overlooked as important actors in the narrative of achieving local peace” (pp.24–25). This also speaks to the extensive scholarship in Peace Studies on human-centred understandings or approaches (Chandler, 2013) and the concept of the everyday and the local (Autesserre, 2014; Mac Ginty, 2021; Millar, 2020). Of course Political Science and International Relations scholars are most interested in the political sphere and the everyday, rather than the ‘creative’ or ‘imaginative’ elements of peacebuilding, although these terms are often referenced (Millar, 2020: 317). But innate to a “reflexive, intuitive response to structures and systems” of power (p.321) is cultural production and it warrants attention in critical peacebuilding literature.

Reconcilement is frequently addressed and embodied in creative and artistic works, and given their ‘low stakes’ nature they often have a broad reach. Coming from the minds of individuals or small groups of artists and cultural creators, this kind of work is likely to be personal, localized and specific. Rarely does a writer or artist suggest that they are making a grand gesture at solving a conflict or proving the Truth about past events in their work, rather they creatively render unique or small (but not insignificant) narratives and stories that nonetheless ask the audience to consider serious topics like peace, truth and justice. Numerous Northern Irish writers and cultural producers have employed humour to highlight the absurdity of the Troubles and the peace treaty era. A well-known example is the successful three-season TV show Derry Girls that was first aired in January 2018 on the UK’s Channel 4 but was later launched to the screens of many more millions when it was picked up by Netflix at the end of that year. Following a group of friends and cousins through their teenage years against the backdrop of the Troubles, writer and creator Lisa McGee at the time brought the question “what does a post-conflict society in Northern Ireland truly look like?” to more homes than had ever considered it, especially in the Republic of Ireland and in Britain.

What is most remarkable about Derry Girls is its wholehearted use of humour – big laughs, subtle jibes, sarcasm, throwaway comments, physical comedy and more – in addressing significant societal concerns. While some of the subject matter relates to teenage life, such as sexuality, heartbreak or friendship, much of the storyline’s backdrop is very serious – bomb threats, dissident activity, and the constant presence of possible sectarian violence. The challenge of balancing the frivolity or superficiality of teenage concerns with the gravity of socio-political ones is not lost on the audience. Indeed it is exactly what has held them enthralled because McGee pushes the boundary on how the Troubles can be represented. Following Gimbel (2018: 127), successful comedy makes visible where the boundary is, does not alter it, but perhaps creates the question about the legitimacy of the boundary being located where it is. McGee does precisely this over and over again across 19 short episodes. For example, one of the most famous scenes occurs in the “Across the Barricade” episode in series two, episode 1, when the girls’ Catholic school is purposely brought together with a boys’ Protestant school for some collaborative activities, mirroring the many integration-through-education initiatives in Northern Ireland. Rather than identifying the things all the teenagers have in common, however, the students instead highlight the plethora of perceived differences between Catholics and Protestants, thus aping the ways that young people inherit the prejudice of their elders and the society around them. The stereotypes that are shouted out and that fill the blackboard called “Differences” are not only laugh-out-loud but also astute and layered. The comedy and the commentary that come from this scene gain their resonance from the clever observation of someone inside this society, revealing things that only someone who grew up in Northern Ireland could distinguish, such as “Catholics love incense” and “Protestants love brooches”. Moreover, however, in these differences, McGee captures meaningful socio-historical context. For instance, the difference that states “Peelers are all Prods” exposes the over-representation of Protestants (Prods) in the Northern Irish police force (peelers), while the statement “Catholics love JFK” lays bare the strong American–Irish connection in terms of emigration as well as the flourishing of Irish republicanism there. McGee has stated, “Anything political, if I couldn’t do it through a joke, I wouldn’t do it because then it feels preachy” (Christian-Sims, 2023), underlining the impact of humour and a well-written joke in accessing topics that are otherwise stale or controversial.

Derry Girls then has done more for a broad societal reflection on what being post-conflict really means in the Northern Irish context than some might imagine a TV show capable of, particularly in a post-Brexit landscape and amidst renewed political and academic debate on border politics and Irish reunification. But there is a reason that Derry Girls emerged when it did with Lisa McGee looking back on the 1990s and the peace process negotiations. Northern Ireland in the years of the show’s creation and production was (and still is) a society transitioning out of violent conflict, rather than deeply mired in it. There is vital distance from the worst of the Troubles violence, there is the generation of ‘ceasefire babies’ or ‘peace babies’ ² as depicted by the protagonists in the show, and thus the possibility of healing through humour emerges. While it cannot be argued that the suffering is entirely in the past tense, since traumatic memory, transgenerational pain and other legacies remain firmly present, the show correctly timed the readiness of a society to see the humour in many aspects of the conflict. In this way Derry Girls (McGee, 2018–2022) plays an important role in cultural reconcilement; it is a popular, widely-consumed, human, clever and layered but yet entirely accessible visual representation of a place that does not often enjoy such attention. Northern Ireland itself is hardly a central place in global politics today and, within it, Derry-Londonderry-Doire enjoys even less consideration than the larger city of Belfast. This spotlight on the marginal – both in terms of subject and location – is also part of the successful elevation of the show beyond the screen. The resonance of the focus on the everyday realities and interactions of people in a seemingly post-conflict but still divided society through self-referential humour is very powerful.

The argument that “self-comicalisation helps people produce distance, either from themselves or the social group to which they belong, and direct attention to the absurd, contradictory plurality that characterizes everyday life in a precarious situation” (Sakai, 2022: 145) makes sense in both the Derry Girls context and in Israeli–Palestinian cultural production. In the Northern Irish case, the audience might laugh at the ridiculous minutiae of how sectarianism pervades society or the myriad ways of navigating the conflict while also trying to go about daily life as a teenager. In Palestinian–Israeli creative output such as Emile Habiby’s book The Secret Life of Saeed (2003[1974]) or Sayed Kashua’s TV show Arab Labour (Avoda Aravit, 2007), it is revealed that narratives of war or ongoing conflict “[render] the reality of life multi-layered, in which the ordinary and the extraordinary, aggression and comfort, and the fearful and the ridiculous all flow in parallel, often without integration or coherence.” Here, the comedic mode, employing jokes and humour, favours this complexity and “create[s] space for mimesis of such plurality of lived experiences” (Sakai, 2022: 157). Though the individual cases are quite distinct, these instances of cultural production generate crucial spaces in which to expose and unsettle the societies they represent.

The tragic and the comedic in Palestine

Sayed Kashua, the creator of the hit 2007 sitcom Arab Labor (Avoda Aravit), has commented on how humour was the central selling point of his show about the idea of a shared homeland for Israelis and Palestinians. Not only did it take him four years to get the green light from Israel’s Channel 2 to make the show, but a comedic portrayal of the Arab–Palestinian citizens of Israel was his only available option to convince Jewish–Israeli audiences to watch a show mostly in Arabic with Hebrew subtitles about an Arab family (Ukleja, 2018). In an interview aired on PBS, Kashua (2007–2012) explains:

This is the first time you see Arabs in their living room, in their bedrooms, and not like enemies and I think that most of the Israelis are very curious to know about Arabs in a different way. I think it is the first time they are not just acting like Arabs, like terrorists, they are almost regular Arabs trying to live their own private daily lives . . . almost like human beings.

And humour proves to be a powerful tool in bringing this subject matter into the homes of the average Israeli family who have no previous exposure to the quotidian realities of Arabs; indeed the show “contains no big speeches about occupation and it stares down fundamentalist polarities . . . it’s just really, really funny” (Anthony, 2008). However Kashua (2007–2012) also reveals that he agonized over what audiences would actually think of his central message regarding the existence of Arabs whose lands are under the occupation of Israel. While humour is employed as an important tactic in bringing the topic to air, it ultimately reflects the uneven societal power positions that signal spaces of privilege or autonomy, on the one hand, and spaces of submission or dependence, on the other, reminding us of Billig’s (2005) position on laughter as ridicule earlier. The fact that “Differences in the appreciation of humour are to a large extent socially and culturally determined” (Kuipers, 2015: 28) is resonant here too as conscientious cultural creators and consumers might think about how to understand the “multiple ways humour may relate to formations of power” (Malmvig, 2023: 522). This is especially the case in the context of the Arab citizens of Israel since the terms Arab Israeli or Palestinian Israeli refer to those who remained after the partition of Palestine in 1948, the creation of the Green Line and the nakba or expulsion of Palestinians from what became the state of Israel. ³ Describing his life as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, Kashua says “I belong to this discriminated minority that has no power at all, not economic power or any kind of power in the general society” (Weiss, 2016).

In this way, Kashua, despite the show’s success, likens himself to Scheherazade in A Thousand and One Nights who tells jokes to stay alive – a “minority way of humour”. His approach may be cleverly conceived but the stark reality of his being silenced is also laid bare:

I will tell you a joke, and maybe it will make you laugh, and then I tell you another joke and maybe we can laugh together and you will listen to me, then maybe I can tell you a little bit of a sad story.

This admission shows how, in certain contexts, using humour to distract and to entertain in order to be heard – acting the clown – can also denote the demoralizing position of weakness. Interestingly, the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, a surrealist who writes short stories, flash fiction and graphic novels as well as being a scriptwriter, echoes Kashua’s point. Keret’s writing is preoccupied with the feelings of paranoia prevalent in Israeli society, which he renders creatively through the use of gallows humour. For instance in one of his most well-known stories “The Night the Buses Died” (Keret, 1992) the corpses of buses lie scattered in Tel Aviv after apparent suicide bomb attacks; no humans are injured, only the buses. The story dwells in absurdity as the local people mourn the “rivulets of fuel oozing out of their disemboweled shells” (p.155) but yet the author makes his point about how the unexpected, and often very violent, impacts everyday life during the Arab–Israeli conflict. When asked about the ways in which he employs dark humour in his writing, Keret (2017) suggests that because “humour is the weapon of the weak” it “helps you keep your dignity in a losing situation”. Thus, from different standpoints, both Kashua and Keret view the use of humour in their creative pursuits as a weapon that speaks to their respective weakness in the face of a conflict between higher or more powerful authorities, states, institutions or even nationalisms.

However, the distinction must be emphasized here that Keret regards humour as a form of protest when you can do nothing else (cited in Silverberg, 2019). This emerges in his writing as a novel representation of the Israeli perspective that does not glorify or celebrate the dominant Israeli-state position in the conflict but depicts it rather in abrupt snapshots as a depressing, fruitless and deeply sad reality. In this way he does unsettle received expectations of writing Israel. Rather than representing consensus, defiance, collective aggression, he portrays absurdity that foregrounds the fractured and traumatized Israelis who simply exist in society, often in disagreement with the state, feeling powerless or at a loss to improve their situation. Conversely, given his self-awareness of his marginalized identity, Sayed Kashua’s questioning of the value of humour in terms of his status as an Arab Palestinian in Israeli society is impossible to separate from the inequalities he endures as such. To wonder if his humour makes him a figure of mockery reframes not only the success of his TV sitcom but also the conflict itself by bringing attention to this under-represented figure who occupies the most absurd space of all, that of “existent non-existence”. ⁴ Yet thinking alongside Chrisoula Lionis (2016: 175–176) in Laughter in Occupied Palestine, “humour is geared toward intercultural exchange” and thus “the humour of Palestinian cultural output implicates audiences into [a] strategy of non-violent resistance”. If audiences are coerced, willingly or unwillingly, into laughter at the trauma, marginalization or oppression of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli state practices as rendered by Palestinian cultural creators such as Kashua, it can be suggested that a social bond or degree of solidarity is generated in the seemingly non-threatening space of cultural production (p.178). It follows then that laughter or humour, even when employed from a weaker position, can be a leveller. Being drawn into the joke or humorous observation requires the audience to exert some degree of recognition or maybe, perhaps, empathy. Furthermore, it is worth asking, whose perspective are we getting? If subjects are made fun of, or their situation is made light of by an outside agent, by a government or state organisations, this directionality is surely different to those who choose to speak from their lived experience and viewpoint.

One of the most important literary representations of the Arab–Israeli experience is Emile Habiby’s novel The Secret Life of Saeed: the Pessoptimist. First published in Arabic in 1974 and translated into English in 1989, it tells the tragi-comic tale of Saeed who is a collaborator of Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Agency and, in a surreal turn, is taken to outer space by aliens where he recounts his predicament to the reader from atop a stake. As a satire, it is influenced strongly by Voltaire’s Candide and in its reimagining of this literary classic it reshapes both Western and Arabic literary traditions. Indeed satire has become an increasingly popular form in Palestinian cultural output, including visual media, perhaps since satire most suitably offers “a devastatingly accurate grammar for capturing the precarious condition of the Palestinian present” (Bhungalia, 2020: 393). The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist is a fragmented tale that eschews the national imaginary, while the novel form is subverted by an epistolary frame narrative in which the text is braided and interrupted in a way that echoes the layered existence of Saeed: his present–absent status as a Palestinian in the state of Israel, an informer to Mossad, and a stateless refugee in the land of his birth. Employing satire as the key medium through which to convey his narrative, Habiby adheres to what James E Caron (2022: 272) calls satire’s “inherent intent to promote social reform”. Caron further argues:

Satire functions as comic political speech, that is, satire conceptualized as a particular kind of speech act functions as a comic supplement to the public sphere in order to effect metanoia, a change in thinking, perception, or belief, even a repentance of the old way of thinking, perceiving, believing. Satire operates as a comic public sphere because any specific instance of satire has an intent to promote discussion and debate and thus encourage the possibility of a civic reform that enables positive peace. (p.274)

I quote this at length because it speaks to Habiby’s careful representation of a complicated and fraught space. It is not easy to convey the complexity of the experience of an Arab–Palestinian citizen of Israel but the seemingly arbitrary, episodic, and even unresolved nature of the novel, from the perspective of a trickster-figure, illuminates the moral dilemma Saeed is in. The novel’s satirical tone and its depiction of the absurd, its comic effect, all require the reader to think, to rethink, to discuss and debate and, in line with Caron, to consider ways in which a predicament such as Saeed’s, which is fictionalized but based in reality, could be reconceived. What alternative life can there be? What needs to change for this to be true? How can one actually exist in ‘present absence’? The humour adopted by Emile Habiby invites public sphere conversation and, while the matter of impact and societal change remains the elephant in the room, humour in the form of satire here in this novel demands of any reader that they consider not only their own positionality with respect to global geopolitics, but also accountability and transparency in the specific case of violent territorial conflict and occupation in Israel and Palestine. In this way, while humour can create social bonds across otherwise established ethnic or religious borders, an insider–outsider status is also called into question as those who do not laugh are excluded from the in-group who share the space of laughter. This is alluded to by Sonja Noderer in her (2020) study on the important role of humour in relation to the Assad regime in Syria, particularly gallows humour, as a coping mechanism or a form of resistance that undermines political authority. While Noderer also references the other side of this, namely how humour can be divisive or feed into stereotyping, she argues that the symbolic power of humour to combat fear, authoritarianism and to create a counter-narrative is both necessary and significant (p.272).

Conclusion

Speaking at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast in Northern Ireland after a performance of Owen McClafferty’s Quietly in 2014, journalist of the Troubles, Brian Rowan (2015: 148), recognized that:

For years we have lived in a place in which we were afraid to talk in our sleep. But now, at least we feel safer – more able to express ourselves and our feelings, in books such as Park’s The Truth Commissioner, and in plays such as Owen McClafferty’s Quietly, here on this stage this evening – a performance that brought the ghosts and trauma of a dark period back into play and back into our thinking.

It is well known and widely agreed that cultural modes such as literature, visual media and theatre are essential in bringing to light stories that otherwise go unheard. Fictional accounts of the past or present, especially in a (post-)conflict context, offer a unique way to approach divisive material and traumatic memory because the distance from reality, from ‘truth’, enables stories to sit alongside each other and share space where neither has to be the only version of events. The freedom offered by imagination or invention becomes indispensable to revisiting the past and in turn opportunities emerge to process the trauma and the loss experienced in violent conflict. Equally, as has been described above, humour can be a productive mode through which to resist the status quo; whether in unsettling dominant narratives, often state-led, or creating spaces of levity and alternative versions of experience. One of the most significant challenges to those victimized and dehumanized through geopolitical conflict is the strangle-hold of silence that pervades their lives. They do not know where, how or to whom to speak safely – as captured in Seamus Heaney’s famous line “whatever you say, say nothing.” Speaking out can be dangerous but the work of many writers and artists confronts suppression. Even during conflict transformation and for societies emerging from violent conflict, the lack of societal openness and transparency that is associated with intense conflict remains, sometimes due to political and social controls but often due simply to the deep well of trauma that people are not equipped to deal with. Further, the legacy of immense loss and suffering lives on with younger generations seeking to make sense of what their parents or grandparents experienced. Liadan Ní Chuinn’s recent publication Every One Still Here (2025) is a collection of six stories about the still-violent and haunting ways that the Troubles permeate communities and families from the perspective of a writer born in the year that the conflict supposedly ended with a peace treaty. The astute observations about the Troubles and its legacies in these stories remind us that “the past is today’s battlefield; contested, clashing, controversial and all part of [the] complex and competing narratives” (Rowan, 2015: 140). This also returns us to questions about reception and the public: who is watching or reading these cultural outputs? Are some audiences made uncomfortable seeing ‘another side’ or a different story than what they are used to? Is the success of Derry Girls or Arab Labour, for instance, partially due to their palatability, they are provocative but do not go too far? Comprehensive answers would require a deep engagement with qualitative research and reception theory but what matters is that their circulation demands conversation and addresses gaps in the socio-cultural sphere and beyond.

So it emerges that writing and other forms of cultural expression break the silence and the stigma in bringing to light histories that have been unspoken or even censored. Through this there is the possibility for healing and for hope; not for reconciliation necessarily, but for a fractured society to come together for the first time and humour can carry this forward to publics that are willing to embrace levity amidst the darkness. Dorothy Roome’s (1999) compelling work on post-Apartheid South Africa problematizes the way in which the term ‘cultural reconciliation’ has been appropriated by the state as a post-conflict nation-building tool. She argues that this can mean culture and its relationship to what I would refer to as a people’s peace praxis is co-opted by the nation-state to enforce dominant ideologies and accept the state-sanctioned order of things in what is considered to be a post-conflict society or, more accurately, a post-peace agreement society or one transitioning from violent conflict. Therefore, cultural reconciliation, while meaningful in its aim, is also something that needs to be treated with careful attention to context, and might be swapped for the term ‘reconcilement’ that centres local actors and dissociates from the state as previously described. Spaces of privilege, insider and outsider status, as well as temporality in terms of the conflict timeline are all pertinent to the pursuit of peaceful relations and the role of cultural output in supporting or achieving it.

It is also worth emphasizing here the maxim that humour is a serious matter. In Axel Heck’s (2020: 281) conceptualization, “humour is not an act of physical violence like torching cars or throwing stones . . . [but] we should not underestimate the violent potential of language and other forms of communication.” This returns us to Sayed Kashua and the questions of whether his TV comedy led to change in Israeli homes and minds, in what ways was he able to wield humour as a weapon, and to what extent the Arab–Israeli experience was rather being discussed and perhaps laughed at by those more powerful. Speaking a few years after Arab Labor ended its fourth season in 2013, Kashua told a New Yorker journalist that he refused to do a fifth season of the show; “I couldn’t do humor anymore” (Margalit, 2015: 36). In fact, during the 2014 escalation of violence in Gaza and in his West Jerusalem neighbourhood, Kashua and his family moved to the United States. He shared that he admitted defeat, left the show, and furthermore has slowly stopped using humour as a device to instill change. He found that “all his efforts to fit in and change Israeli society by making jokes to Jewish Israelis did nothing to change the balance of power” (Weiss, 2016). The limits of humour to alter or intervene in the established lines of power and hierarchies of control, as in the case of ongoing violent conflict and territorial expansion, are painfully evident. In perhaps his most tragic admission, Kashua says, “To have humour . . . you have to have hope” (Aziza, 2016). This heartbreaking statement reveals the limits of humour as a tool for the writer who finds themselves without hope, and opens up an interesting connection between hopefulness and the ability to laugh or create humour. It is clear that the given narratives of societies scarred by conflict can be unsettled through the unexpected, often incongruous, use of humour but the phase and extent of that conflict and the proximity of hope for a more peaceful future ultimately shape the relationship between humour and reconcilement.