O humor discursivo como estratégia de luta política: uma análise bakhtiniana da construção do diálogo com Mafalda

Abstract

This research grows out of the analysis of the manifestation of laughter in Mafalda, a character created by Quino. The theoretical foundation for this investigation is made up of concepts from Bakhtin and the Circle such as: laughter, utterance, ideology and social voice (Bakhtin, 2011, 2022; Volóchinov, 2018, 2019; Medviédev, 2019), along with a brief articulation with the philosophy of difference based on the concept of the war machine (Deleuze; Guattari, 2012). We carried out a qualitative analysis, rooted in the sociological method. Laughter is a manifesto of popular culture and marks clashes between unofficial culture and official culture (Bakhtin, 2010). Our dissertation zeroes in on Mafalda and her laughter as a political tool. Laughter is part of a revolutionary exercise in building more emancipated forms of consciousness. We work out a correlation between utterance and historical and political issues in everyday life. We analyze Mafalda comic strips, taking in her relative global popularity. We compare the character with another one, Rê Bordosa, taking into account similarities between each character’s laughter. Our research is justified by its democratic appeal. As a goal, we seek to figure out how laughter works in Mafalda’s comic strips. The specific objectives are: a) to describe the corpus content; b) to identify social voices in Toda Mafalda (2013); c) to analyze the context and process of constructing laughter in Mafalda; d) to interpret and compare data from the characters Mafalda and Rê Bordosa. Our results show that the laughter presented by the character is a primary element that generates irony. Verbovisual components, setting, and characters come together in an organic and unique way in each strip. The character Mafalda sets up a maieutic dialogue. Her political laughter is grounded in ethics and aims at a more humanized interaction, oriented toward deconstructing the structure of contemporary Western society. Her critique of social reality points to the building up of a new democracy, since the current State is overtaken by an authoritarian perspective.