Writer Nerissa Balce is set to lecture on “Laughter Against the State: Political Humor in the U.S. and the Philippines” on 28 June 2012, at 10 A.M., at Science Complex Room 111 in Silliman University. This is part of the monthly lecture series by creative writers initiated by the newly-instituted Edilberto K. Tiempo and Edith L. Tiempo Creative Writing Center of Silliman University.
According to Balce, “Humor, like violence, has been used for and against the state. In recent memory, the photographs of tortured Iraqis by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison remind us of the relationship between humor and the racial violence of war… For this presentation, we will examine the politics of humor in memes that circulated in social media in the fall of 2011. We will analyze theories of humor at work in two different but interrelated cases: memes on American police brutality during the Occupy Wall Street protests and memes on Gloria Arroyo’s controversial neck brace during her corruption trial. A central question we will ask is whether humor offers more than laughter or should we take humor seriously in the face of police brutality and government corruption?”
Balce received a B.A. in Literature and an M.A. in Philippine Studies from De La Salle University. She was a fellow for the Silliman University National Writers Workshop and worked as a journalist in Manila, writing articles on Philippine literature, politics, culture and the arts. She took doctoral studies at the University of California-Berkeley on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies. Before joining SUNY Stony Brook’s Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, she received a postdoc at the University of Oregon and taught at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst’s Comparative Literature Program. Her recent essays include “The Filipina’s Breast: Savagery, Docility and the Erotics of the American Empire” in Social Text’s special issue on the writings of Edward Said, and “Filipino Bodies, Lynching and Empire,” in the anthology Positively No Filipinos Allowed: Building Communities and Discourse.
She is currently in Silliman as visiting professor and resident writer to prepare a book manuscript on American imperialism as a visual language, and the gendered/racialized figure of the Filipino savage in early 20th century U.S. culture. (Ian Rosales Casocot/EKT-ELT-CWC)
