Humorous methodologies for African geographies: refusing deficit- and damage-centered research

ABSTRACT

An experimental workshop brought together 20 stand-up comedians, environmental advocates, artists, researchers, and professors in Yaoundé, Cameroon on 27 and 28 March 2023. Building upon historical traditions of les griots and the popularity of contemporary comedic oration in Cameroon, our collaborative and interactive workshop centered efforts to move beyond dominant and colonial formulas to think creatively about the potentials, limitations, and logistics of humor as a methodological orientation. In this coauthored reflection, we build on the emergent insights generated during our workshop and propose future directions for social scientists and geographers keen to mobilize humor in their intellectual projects. We consider (a) the relations between humor and socio-political and socio-ecological dynamics (including in political contexts of authoritarianism); (b) the need to ground an academic methodology of humor in nuanced and place-based knowledges; and (c) the possibilities and dangers of humor in a wider intellectual praxis seeking to decenter and deprivilege power in research relations and to motivate certain forms of self-critique during research. More broadly, we argue that humor might contribute in the larger ongoing project of moving African geographical scholarship toward practices of creativity, experimentation, and joy beyond ‘damage-centered, deficit-centered, and extractive academic approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Humour
• comedy
• humorous methodologies
• joyful methods
• decolonizing methodologies

The workshop format

At the foundation of our collaborative workshop was the objective to move North-South collaborations and work in the subdiscipline of African Geographies toward forms of decolonial praxis, reciprocity, joyfulness, and mutual understanding (Daley & Murrey, 2022) by focusing on the possibilities for humor and laughter as methodological orientations in geography and the broader social sciences. Our workshop brought together stand-up comedians and performers who shared insights into their craft in Cameroon, environmental advocates working in communities to change behavior, inform policymaking, and raise awareness, and researchers working in International Relations, Geography, Political Science, and Gender Studies. In our activities and considerations, we thought about what it would mean and look like to pursue humor in our research methodologies, methods, and techniques, but also its potentials of communication, sharing information, and raising awareness. We were interested in considering humor as a praxis for decentering and deprivileging power, motivating self-critique, and fostering more egalitarian relations between various ‘experts’ (academics, policymakers, government officials) and communities, particularly those impacted by intergenerational ecological damage and structural violence (although our conversations often exceeded this focus).

The Cameroonian comedians and performers who participated in our workshop agreed that there is not an easy recipe or formula for humor. For stand-up comedians and tv, radio, and social media personalities in Cameroon, comedic popularity is often first founded on the development of a unique character or standpoint that connects with and reflects the thoughts and experiences of their audience. We considered the implications that there are nuanced and place-based knowledges that make the foundation of discerning and even restorative forms of humor. Overall, there is much more to be done to cultivate humor in our intellectual relations, projects, and engagements in Cameroon – yet this work needs to be done slowly, with humility and attention to place-based dynamics. Our workshop nurtured preliminary insights and provided groundwork for future work in this area.

Our sessions at the workshop included hands-on on performance-driven work; an oral history of Cameroonian comedy by one of the country’s most prominent stand-up comedians, Valery Ndongo; and workshopping sessions on the potentials for humor and comedy in public and community engagements on ecological and environmental damage (see Figure 1). Invited comedians provided unparalleled insights into Cameroonian comedic craft (explored below). Each day, for example, the comedian Flaubert Tchoupa (stage name Piment Noir) performed an improv session that summed up and provided commentary on the day’s intellectual contributions from researchers and professors. With humor, Flaubert Tchoupa fostered a space in which to problematize both dominant political discourse, including censored themes, and to nudge workshop participants into moments of self-reflection (for example, calling out hierarchies, differences, and privileges between participants, and providing a running commentary on the ‘surrealness’ he felt as a radio talk show host sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with academics from leading national and international universities.

Figure 1. Group workshopping the potentials and ambiguities of humor and laughter for joyful methodologies in Yaoundé, Cameroon. March 2023. Source: Césaire Shooting, Cameroon.

Scientists and scholars thought about how the insights on the use of humor and comedy could be channeled into meaningful methodological shifts. Environmental activists and advocates discussed the potentials for humor to raise awareness of ecological issues. We addressed the potential for humor to speak, for example, about complex issues like struggles for clean water, clean air, and food justice (Dr Chiamba Charity Zetem); to critique plastic pollution (comedian Danny Green aka ‘Towncryer’ and activist Forbi Perise Eyong Nyosai), to raise awareness about human causes of urban flooding (Professor Michel Simeu-Kamdem), soil erosion, and deforestation (environmental activist and advocate Wirsiy Emmanuel Binyuy); to address land justice and displacement (activist Samuel Nnah Ndobe and Dr Emile Sunjo), desertification and the drying up of water bodies during dry seasons, and the marginalization of indigenous forest people (Dr Antang Yamo). Amidst all of our discussion, our focus was on the need for forms of intellectual creativity and joy to challenge the history of extractive academic methods in studies of Cameroon (Murrey, 2017). As scholars, humor is a medium that might allow us to face our weaknesses, our arrogances, and our foibles in lighter, more digestible ways. Through the deliberate use of humor, scholars can discuss the distinctiveness of our identities without essentialisations, without illusions of grandeur. We can laugh at ourselves even as we are uncomfortable. Importantly, we can draw upon humor in decolonial and anti-imperial content to ‘gaze back’ at the empire.

We had three sessions throughout the workshop that required participants to actively reflect upon their aspirations, how their ideas had changed, and other differences (or not) that the workshop made in their thinking and doing (see Figure 2). From these deliberations, we conclude that the topics discussed and the manner in which they were surveyed (hands-on, experimental, explorative, collective) at the workshop was impactful for participants. At the end of day one, for example, participants were asked to write one word on a sticky note that captured their impressions after our first day’s exchanges. These sticky notes were placed on a wall in the conference room, where everyone could walk around and read and comment upon each other’s words. We facilitated an open discussion at the end of Day 1 based on these words. Some of the words included: challenged, engaged, inspired, afraid, unsure.

Figure 2. Collage of workshop activities and debates. March 2023. Source: Césaire Shooting, Cameroon.

We had a partnered activity at the end of day two, during which participants were asked to reflect on their level of interest and confidence in developing a methodology infused with humor. Participants unanimously reported feeling more inspired about the potentials for humor in academic research and environmental justice work. We were also acutely aware of the challenges of doing so. There was considerable divergence of opinion amongst comedians, advocates, and academics about the implementation of comedy by environmental ‘experts.’ There was notable optimism in the potentials of humor, jokes, sarcasm, and more as a means to ‘raise awareness,’ to comment upon unequal power dynamics within research and policymaking, and to nurture more egalitarian interactions with communities. However, there was less consensus on how to use or implement comedy (if ever) to speak to powerful institutional and governmental actors and agencies. Some participants wanted the group to create a formula for other groups to follow, while others did not think a recipe was appropriate for humor in Cameroon. Unlike many workshops in Cameroon and the wider region, which are often eager to develop immediate templates for addressing or recommending solutions to societal problems, we conceived of the workshop as a space-holding collective and a starting point for exploring and raising awareness about the issues rather than trying to have a ‘quick fix.’ While scholars have assessed and analyzed the significance and structures of comedy in African politics, we were interested in thinking about how scholars might (themselves) engage in playfulness, prank, unseriousness, sarcasm, absurdity as intellectual praxes through which to teach, self-reflect, build rapport, and compel meaningful social change.

A humorous methodological orientation for African geographies?

While scholars have assessed and analyzed the social and political significance and particular structures of comic performances and humor, we were interested in thinking about how scholars might (themselves) engage in playfulness, prank, unseriousness, sarcasm, absurdity as intellectual praxes through which to teach, self-reflect, build rapport, and compel meaningful social change. In our considerations of humor (e.g., acts, speech, and gestures prompting and rousing laughter) and comedy (e.g., more formal approaches to stimulating – or seeking to stimulate – laughter), we thought of these social practices not as fixed (or formulaic) methods but as shared dispositions. Shared dispositions are essential in grounding collective identity and navigating group dynamics; they influence decision-making and intracultural attitudes, demeanors, and practices. For some of us, part of this collective work is about refusing extractive academic practices that extract data (thus accumulating intellectual and financial capital; Murrey, 2017; Tilley, 2017) and focus on compiling stories and evidence of violence, dispossession, trauma, and ‘deficit’ (on the latter, see McQuaid et al., 2021). Tuck and Yang (2014) argue that ‘there are some forms of knowledge that the academy does not deserve’ because the academy (as a community of practice) ‘stockpiles’ histories of violence and subjugation (see also McKittrick, 2021; Tuck, 2009). They articulate an understanding of ‘damage-centred’ intellectual work that focuses on harm and critique, which, even when well-intentioned, can be damaging as it displaces agency, intention, and self-actualization in ways that victimize, deny dignity, or even dehumanize (Tuck, 2009; Tuck & Yang, 2014). During our exchanges one participant reflected, ‘There is a need to integrate comedy and humour in the curriculum at different levels of education in Cameroon, with the hope of enriching our knowledge outcomes.’ For scholars working in the subdiscipline of African Geographies, we encounter the double colonial legacy of both ‘damage-centred’ and ‘deficit-centred’ methodological and empirical orientations, where the starting point for research has long been measuring, observing, and analyzing supposed deficiencies, weaknesses, and flaws in African societies (McQuaid et al., 2021; Myers, 2005) and this ‘deficit’ approach has filtered into how African Geographies have been taught (Esson & Last, 2020). A methodological orientation attuned to humor, joyfulness, and dignity can help to challenge this paradigm (Hirsch, 2021).

Scholars have argued that modern comedy often rests on the ‘deliberate use of tension and release’ (Libera, 2020) or engaging with ‘catastrophe and reprieve.’ Jokes often work around deliberate provocation and discomfort, followed by release, according to the French philosopher Henri Bergson who theorized laughter as a ‘pressure-relief valve’ in his book Le Rire: Essai sur la signification du comique (1900/1924). The language of comedy often demands that we confront dark subjects rife with imagery of death and destruction. For example, the stand-up comedian Valery Ndongo speaks of how the political economy of Cameroon renders people as ‘deja die’ (already-dead or living dead): ‘on est deja die ici au pays-oo’ (we are already dead in this country). Ndongo prompts laughter by rendering banal the nearly unspeakable political and economic structures that result in largescale premature death and violence. Comedy has thus been an important part of how humans process catastrophe and disease (Martin, 2022), weakness, pain, and violence, including racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and trans-phobias. In their historiography of the sounds, moments, and affects of laughter, Casadei (2024, pp. 16–17) explains, that laughter ‘while outwardly a sign of cheerfulness, it is a means of stimulating suffering, humiliation, wretchedness, and so on, to those who can understand its double meaning, a signal of precisely the feelings it conceals.’ An impressive body of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has considered the political act of laughter, and the political and social impacts of comedy (Bussie, 2007). Bergson and Bertolt Brecht understand comedy as ‘anesthetising’ collective and individual pain and suffering (Silberman, 2012); this can be both generative in permitting perseverance and resilience within moments of distress and trauma, but also potentially politically demobilizing as it can reroute and neutralize anger and grief.

Many of the difficulties and problems we addressed are those raised by scholars working on humor, comedy, and laughter – that there is no standardized format (no logos, no script) for laughter and that a ‘systematic account of laughter’s causes may be impossible, or even undesirable’ (Casadei, 2024, p. 2). Laughter is negotiated spontaneously. Notably, in more formalized comedic settings (the telling of a joke, or stand-up comedy, for example) the humorousness of a statement or act is often dependent upon a shared context in which comedy is an expected or accepted behavior. In a final reflective activity, one participant observed,

The humourist, like the scientist, first identifies a subject, finds the problem, and then analyses it according to the canons of each art. Humour thus reveals an interest in observation and critical analysis, which are precisely the elements and techniques on which the social sciences rely to study social and political facts … Can both the researcher and the humourist can find a space where they can express themselves more freely and encourage greater receptivity to their messages?

We repeatedly addressed our concern that academic researchers are constrained by our contextual positioning as ‘serious’ professionals. Even the occasional witticisms incorporated by academics during their presentations at our workshop elicited scattered and slow laughter.

Setting out on a collective agenda to consider the methodological potentials of humor was inherently challenging, as a methodology is implemented through a set of practices that are structured, focused, reproducible, standardized, logically deducible, and founded on ideas about causation and effect. Laughter and humor, on the other hand, ‘sit … so uneasily with reason and logos broadly conceived’ (Casadei, 2024, p. 26). Laughter can be slippery, messy, and unhemmed. There are many potentials for cross-fertilizations between contemporary moves and projects to challenge, unsettle, or ‘decolonise’ mainstream social science methodologies (Murrey et al., 2023), including arts-based, participatory, and black geographical methodologies (Adams, 2022; Ferreira da Silva, 2014; McKittrick, 2021), or research on the place-based use of music and sound in Cameroon (Budji, 2019; Musah, 2021), for example.

Laughing in ‘le continent’ of Cameroon: the need to ground humorous methodologies in place-based knowledges

Indeed, comedy is very often place- and culture-specific. An ‘inside joke’ refers to the phenomenon by which something is made funny because of contextual knowledge. In Cameroon, for example, simply using certain phrases in conversation can generate immediate laughter. For example, the phrases ‘le continent’ (‘the continent’) refers to the country of Cameroon as if it were ‘the continent:’ a reference of its complexity, seeming lack of comparable places (a place unlike any other), and its seeming outsized importance in intellectual and sporting realms internationally (from champion Mixed Martial Arts fighters, to a historically highly successful national football team, to a long list of leading global thinkers). Another comedic phrase is ‘dans la sauce’ (‘in the sauce’) refers to the larger social context (as a sauce). The term is generally used to interrogate agency, as people are moved in and out of the sauce, or they question the constitution of the sauce (i.e., society) all together and their inappropriate location within it. Or finally, ‘c’est de ça qu’il s’agit’ (‘that is what it is all about’) is a gentle mockery of a public statement made by a leading sports figure, the footballer and former coach of the national team Rigobert Song, often to infuse humor and lightheartedness to the conclusion of a statement.

Landry Nguetsa is a playwright, theater director at Emintha in Yaoundé, and was recognized as the Best Actor in the Central African Region at the SOTIGUI Awards in 2022 and Best Comedian in Cameroon at the 14th Canal 2’Or Awards in 2023. In his reflections on the use and role of performance art in Cameroon, he addressed a frequent dismissal from Cameroonians that this form of artistic commentary is distinctively Euro-American or ‘non-Cameroonian.’ Through his work and extravagant performance style over the past decade, Landry has broken new ground through his theater work. His diction and dress mark, and sometimes mock, ‘Cameroonian-ness.’ His public performances are innovative, intellectually self-seeking and captivating. Following his embodied performance at the workshop, he lay on the ground across the doorway and asked everyone to enter the room (see Figure 3). Landry discussed the importance of modifying Euro-normative performance styles to challenge, incite, and even distress spectators regarding current social, environmental and economic predicaments. For Landry, many Cameroonians are unfamiliar with professional concepts of theater as a transformative societal instrument, and he seeks to change this. Some commentators have wondered if performance – especially the spontaneous public style and genre of Landry – is ‘too foreign’ or even ‘Western. Landry, on the other hand, characterizes his performance style as a hybrid and kind of intergenerational adaptation. He shared his ambitions to hone a people-action-centered performance style that is transdisciplinary, transnational, and can shift public performance structures for Cameroonian audiences. His insights raise important questions about ‘authenticity’ and indigeneity in certain performance styles, and how some comedic forms might inadvertently alienate local audiences.

Figure 3. Actor, playwright, and performer Landry Nguesta provokes the group with his embodied performance. Yaoundé, Cameroon. March 2023. Source: Césaire Shooting, Cameroon.

Figure 4. Collage of screenshots from @237_Towncryer’s YouTube chanel, demonstrating his comedic technique of desperately and loudly ‘crying’ about serious issues to provoke laughter and raise awareness. Source: 237_Towncryer.

A powerful body of scholarship shows the enormous social and political versatility of humor in authoritarian geopolitical contexts. As a mechanism of empowerment and provocation, comedians often use humor to critique, expose, and demystify power and the powerful. Peter McGraw et al. (2014), for example, describe the violation of norms in comedy based on benignity and violation, through which marginalized groups ‘speak back’ to the powerful and subvert imperial discourse. Waisanen (2018, 72) writes of comedy as a means to ‘reworld the status quo.’ There are many examples of humor amidst political upheaval, including the current generation of Cameroonian comedians working on and offline to address political and economic woes. As part of a reflection on the types of possible formulas for counter-hegemonic practices, Flaubert Tchoupa (alias ‘Piment Noir’) performed an improvisation sketch at our workshop. In it, he renamed the political system of Cameroon as Wandafukistan: a place that suffers from several ‘diseases.’ The first, he explained is, ‘cerebral “sardinosis,” characterised by excessive consumption of sardine oil, with the first case detected in 1982.’ According to Tchoupa, a naturopath tried to eradicate this disease with certain medicines (in this case, populist ideologies) such as ‘power to the people’ and ‘suffer don finish’ (e.g., your suffering is over). However, the disease became bogged down in slogans such as ‘great ambitions,’ ‘great achievements,’ and ‘the strength of experience’ (each one a campaign slogan for Cameroon’s president). This has favored the emergence of the second disease, namely ‘tontino immuno-deficiency, which is characterized by exaggerated love for the tontine [women’s collective, through which money is shared and raised cooperatively] and whose manifestation is the contestation, in particular of the results of recent presidential elections.’

Far from being trivial, these different metaphors used by Piment Noir describe, in a playful and tongue-in-cheek way, the electoral cycle and the political system in Cameroon. The first ‘disease’ (cerebral sardinosis) refers to the political system established by the ruling party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC), since 1982, by calling out one of its modes of operation: clientelism. The RDPC famously giving goods to the population following party meetings and campaign events, this includes tins of sardines. This disease refers to the ways in which the sardine oil has ‘infected’ the brain and thinking of political followers, prohibiting them from certain forms of critical thinking, and enabling the party to preserve its power. This impartial humor does not spare the political opposition either. The metaphor of the naturopath associated with the figure of the leader of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), the main opposition party in the 1990s, also puts his weaknesses in perspective. The second ‘disease,’ Tchoupa explained, emerged with the creation of the Movement for Cameroonian Renaissance (MRC), the main opposition party since 2014 and whose leaders contested the results of the 7 October 2018 presidential elections. With humor, Flaubert Tchoupa created a vocabulary in which to problematize dominant discourse, including censored, risky, and dangerous topics.

Danny Green’s discussion, titled ‘How to connect with your audience, the basics of making people laugh online,’ focused on the specifics of Cameroonian audiences. Green offered several working definitions of distinct audiences: the neutral audience, the hostile audience, the uninformed audience, the expert audience, and the business audience. Knowing how to identify the various audiences is hugely significant; doing so correctly guides comedians and performers as they determine what content and messages certain people care about and the appropriate tone and voice for the message. For Green, the focus is on making Anglophone Cameroonians and Nigerians laugh online through his stage persona of a ‘town crier’ (see Figure 4). Green posts videos of himself audibly, bodily, and loudly crying in response to local social, political, and ecological issues. In one video, he sobs in response to an ever-enlarging impromptu rubbish heap near his home in Douala. He asks, crying, ‘Where is the government? Where are the sanitation crews? Where is people’s outrage when schoolchildren pass the sizable rubbish daily?’ A few weeks later, he posted a follow-up video showing that the rubbish heap had been cleaned up, presumably after pressure upon the private waste management company, HYSACAM, in response to his viral video. Green disclosed at the workshop that he ‘jokes about serious topics’ but also wondered if ‘too much humor’ can ‘distract’ an audience when the intention is social change and education. Importantly, these insights illustrated the diversity of audiences within Cameroon.

There was a moment of tension between Anglophone and Francophone comedians (what was referred to by one comedian as a ‘clash’), as Green and Ndongo debated whether there is a ‘proper history’ of Cameroonian comedy, and the need for such a history to attend to the distinctions and similarities between both linguistic styles. Some participants further noted that even that history would not be comprehensive, as it would be largely urban-centric. More consideration is needed on the particular forms of humor in rural areas where neither French nor English are the spoken languages, including those towns and villages without electrification and with less Internet connectivity (in 2019, the national electricity provider, ENEO, noted that only 32% of Cameroonian households have access to the public grid).

Especially further attention is needed on gender and humor in Cameroon, including how this would impact is usage and perception in academia. At an International Women’s Day roundtable on the experiences of women comedians in Cameroon in March 2024, women comedians described a ‘cutthroat’ industry that often shoehorned women into stereotypical roles designed and directed by male artists. The comedians called out a cultural environment that disregards or misunderstands the important contributions of women to comedy and the phenomenon of ‘blacklisting,’ or professionally ostracizing women comedians who broke patriarchal rules or refused to engage in sexualized activities or characters (the event was co-hosted by Landry Nguetsa’s theater company, Emintha, and A-fro-Topos Cultural Lab in Yaoundé). Heteropatriarchy played into the structure and the planning of our workshop, and ultimately no women comedians were available to attend. When gender differences were addressed, there were considerable and vocal disagreements amongst participants. At one point, for example, someone made a generalizing comment about women comedians on social media using their platform to find wealthy romantic partners. At our workshop, we spoke about the underrepresentation of women in comedy, the practice of female impersonation by male comedians, and some of the women present shared personal stories and anecdotes to illustrate and identify some of the misogyny within professional comedy, and to encourage the participants to be generous and kind with one another in the collective pursuit of humor.

Humour to deprivilege power and foster conviviality

We were interested in establishing a collective interest in humor to reach popular audiences and create new recipes for liveable futures beyond this tradition of damage-centered work in Cameroon and the wider African continent. Humor can help to nurture connection and provoke and support unlearning (recognizing our own established logics and epistemes as colonial, capitalist, problematic, and more). Anne Libera (2020) argues that ‘genuinely shared laughter creates bonds through mutual understanding.’ Humor moves scholarship toward imagining, creativity, and joyful methods. Alternatively, humor and jokes can fragment groups, as in a group that finds a particular joke funny (and ‘gets it’) while another group might feel excluded or even exposed and humiliated. What does intentionally introducing joy into scholarly practices of knowing, being, and learning mean? Not to ignore substantive violence but to create places and communities of catharsis – to intentionally seek generative exchanges.

We needed to think about when and why we want to be funny (and when, for example, we want to be ‘serious’). For researchers, humor is a medium that can allow us to face our weaknesses, our arrogances, and our foibles in lighter, more digestible ways. Through the deliberate use of humor, we can discuss the distinctiveness of our identities without essentializations, without illusions of grandeur. We can laugh at ourselves even as we are uncomfortable. Amber Murrey, for example, spoke about the place of self-parody for her as a white American researcher working in Cameroon (see Figure 5). Comedic self-depreciation and public self-mockery can be an important tactic of humility for those in positions of racial power and authority. The collaborative team remained attentive to the limitations, challenges, and risks of using humor and the risks of overstating the ‘impact’ of our coming together (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Group photo of our workshop collective. Yahoot hotel, Nlongkak, Yaoundé, Cameroon. March 2023. Source: Césaire Shooting, Cameroon.

One of the questions that we raised during our final reflective session was if we felt there an argument for Cameroon as a particularly receptive environment for a ‘humorous methodology.’ Part of the potentials of aspiring to develop a methodology of humor is that it challenges the status quo of research on violence, impoverishment, and the supposed ‘lack’ in African societies. Such perspectives are founded on Eurocentric norms that are perpetuated in the way in which empirical material is gathered; they are sometimes reflected in the norms within even African and Cameroonian universities. So that while the Cameroonian social context naturally gives rise to laughter, developing or implementing humor in research is not an easy task. In part due to the very difficult access to university funding. Many Cameroonian academics, regardless of their level (professor, doctor or graduate student), regularly point to the inadequate, and in some cases non-existent, funding for research in Cameroonian universities (Kouokam, 2025; Morelle & Owona Nguini, 2018). This institutional shortcoming is not conducive to the exploration or development of new scientific approaches. What is more, some participants reflected that the funding of research based on a ‘humoristic method’ is ‘highly unlikely to succeed’ in the early stages of academic careers, given the prejudices that will be brought to bear on the so-called disciplinary ‘relevance,’ ‘rigor,’ and scope of such research, despite its originality. Despite challenges, other members of our collective countered that the importance of implementing place-based iterations of decolonial and collectively-oriented methods is too urgent to abandon, and we can look at recent projects like the use of the Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1979) in academic workshops in Buea (Sunjo & Willis, in press).

Through a dialectic of connectivity and difference (Castree, 2010), collective ways of knowing through humor can unleash productive and creative forces like laughter, easing tensions, fostering hope, or provoking new insights in our audiences when talking about difficult topics. Humor can foster bidirectional communication, but we acknowledged that it can also be exclusive (Bonello et al., 2018); it can playfully respond to real problems that seem insurmountable or without official solution. There is an important body of work in cultural geographies of production, consumption, and circulation that productively can be brought into this conversation on methodologies of humor, including as future work seeks to interrogate the relations between intellectual-humorists and their audiences, what the ‘consumption’ of this scholarly comedy would look like or be implemented.

Conclusions and future directions

Within and beyond Cameroon, humor and comedy are not research methodologies (one exception, albiet outside of Cameroon, is Lockyer & Weaver’s, 2022 consideration of the role of comedy in reflexive methodological practice). Humor and comedy have been frequent objects of study for anthropologists and human geographers as well as within cultural studies (Goldstein, 2003; Hammett et al., 2023; Labanieh, 2022). There has been some important – but still rare – reflection on the use of laughter and humor in teaching pedagogy (Wanzer et al., 2006). However, humor as a research methodology or way for scientists to engage with their communities and audiences is distinct from these various scholarships, and it has potential to add to the much longer tapestry of thought within creative geographies (including beyond Africa; Williams, 2016). Our focus during this workshop was experimental and limited to setting the foundation and making collective considerations of cross-fertilizations between comedians, comedic playwriters, and scholars across Cameroon.

We were aware that we were not coming together to ‘discover’ the usefulness of humor to communicate on difficult topics or with people in their everyday language. Scholars have considered the potentials and pitfalls for performance, including comedic performance, to lead to meaningful social change. Roger Sansi (2015), for example, writes that,

it is not necessarily meant to ‘generate “Change” with a capital c.’ Rather, it is to “create unexpected situations, building unforeseen relations, unconventional and unprecedented associations and communities in a particular location – local, specific changes. General perceptions about art, its impact and reach … [are too often] vague yet loaded the term social engagement/practice art can be within the arts of Africa.

At our workshop, we were motivated by opportunities for small ‘c’ change: moments of clarity in our collective interrogation and exploration of humor as we reflected on the potential importance of moving academic analysis away from damaged-centered and extractive methods. As we have shown herein, a humorous methodology might also provide a modest means to critique the forms of disingenuousness, hypocrisy, and ignorance embedded within some methodological orientations in the social sciences. While we have considered the potential pitfalls or cautionary engagements with comedy and humor herein, we remain animated by the possibilities for humor as one possible creative tool within African geographical scholarship’s wider project of seeking out and fostering intellectual patterns and practices of creativity and joy.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank all of the participants who joined and constituted our collective and who make our co-learning enjoyable, thought-provoking, and possible. The workshop was funded through the Public and Community Engagement with Research Seed Fund 2022/23 (2022/PSF/1296) and Inspiration Award from the University of Oxford, with other project funding from a British Academy/Wolfson Fellowship (WF22\220021), and Mansfield College, Oxford.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the British Academy [(WF22\220021)]; Public Engagement with Research Seed Fund, the University of Oxford [(2022/PSF/1296)].