ABSTRACT
To unpack, process, and theorize the multi-channeled complexities of embodied communication and ironic performativity, humor offers a productively unstable point of entry. Ironic performativity traces the struggle, the moment-by-moment power negotiation in the communicative event, detailing the instability and the potential reworkings of political meanings that occur through words, bodies, and patterned systems of meaning. Ironic performativity and attention to the engagement with racist discourses both reflects concretized meanings and critically exposes the ugliness and instability of these meanings. Articulated through a Burkean lens, Lowery, Renegar, and Goehring examine the performativity of Sarah Silverman’s ironic persona in her comedy film Jesus is Magic. The ironic working of the joke is further complicated as the story is by Noah, told by and through Noah’s body and voice, who continually jokes that he is lighter skinned than most Americans’ expectations of Africans.
