ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book assembles insightful contributions by leading African scholars, who live where the jokes have a vivacious life. Academics, scholars, undergraduates and higher degree students in African studies, popular culture, theatre, performance studies and literary studies will find it useful. The book also helps to sociologists, ethnographers and anthropologists and it is sincerely hoped that this work contributes in no small way to understanding joke-performance in Africa. It offers revealing ideas about the intersection of joke-performance forms, media, and contents across traditional and modern modes and their reception. The book fully centres on the description of the joke form from interdisciplinary perspectives, ranging from critical discourse analysis, interviews, humour theories, psychoanalysis, the postcolony and technauriture to the interactive dramaturgy of joke-performances, irrespective of media and modes of performance.
