Reír o no reír: (meta)humorismo y violencia en la literatura contemporánea de Colombia y México

Abstract

Humor can be underestimated, but to laugh or not to laugh is as transcendental as the decision to be or not to be. That is the question of this dissertation: the productive encounter of challenging instances of humor in Latin-American literary texts that not only display humor in charged violent backgrounds, but create humorous traps and spaces for meta-humorist reflections, inviting the reader to judge whether to laugh or not to laugh in an aesthetic and ethical sense. Those instances of perplexity would ask the reader to reflect on the nature of the humor displayed, its targets, context, refinement, creativity, meaning and outcomes, among other questions that laugher implies. This would foster a more solicitous public who recognizes a liberating good laugh from a violent one, avoiding the reproduction of stereotypes, hate speeches or the consent of an oppressive status quo.