Mockery amid shooting: Laughter as an expression of expertise at a public clinic in Greater Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

Laughter is one of the “weapons of the weak,” a means of degrading those in a position of power. Seeing laughter as such, however, only offers a view into what the performance does to its target, by belittling it, without saying much about what it does to the performer within a given power relation. This article investigates the potential of mockery and laughter to become expressions of expertise when they establish the performer as a knowing subject in relation to their target. Based on fieldwork conducted at a public clinic in Duque de Caxias, Brazil, this article analyzes how locally resident staff, through their extended work and dwelling in a neighborhood where shootings are frequent, mocked their superiors who did not know how to appropriately assess and react to the sound of shooting. By establishing the performer as the knowing subject in relation to those being mocked, laughter in this setting had the potential to unsettle classed hierarchies of knowledge.