ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to critically revisit a joking relationship concept through a conversational and ethnographic study about Quechua humor (Central Andes of Peru). A certain impasse, related to the definition of the humorous form, spans over various joking relationship paradigms, as much the 1930–1940s functionalist and seminal one as the 1990–2000s pragmatic and critical one. Indeed, verbal practices tend to be defined through ambivalences and paradoxes that enable avoidance of a frontal and positive definition of the phenomena. In this sense, I propose to reverse the theoretical concept of “joking relationship” into the more pragmatic “erotic humor.” A fine-grained analysis of Quechua humorous jousts displays two conversational routines, corresponding to two gendered voices, distinguishable by the way they manipulate humorous eroticism.
