ABSTRACT
This paper explores the role of humour in Clifford Geertz's work on Morocco and seeks to understand why, although Geertz was very witty in person and in writing, and although humour provides the kind of material Geertz would have been able to put to excellent use had he chosen to study it, he never directly addressed questions related to humour in society and only glancingly referred to humour in Morocco. The paper examines the humorous techniques Geertz employs and the kinds of humour he attends to in his writings on Morocco, the characteristics of humour and the ‘comic attitude’ and their relationship to Geertz's views of Moroccan culture and society, how Geertz's rhetorical dispositions and ‘serious’ anthropological stance are rooted, historically, in the late colonial and immediate postcolonial periods, and concludes that Geertz's relative neglect of humour provides interesting insights into both the strengths and weaknesses of his approach to culture, to anthropology, and to Morocco.
