ABSTRACT

This article analyses the dialogue stemming from viral WhatsApp jokes on the Zimbabwean coup in November 2017. It argues that coup jokes have created an opportunity to discuss the nature of Zimbabwean politics since 2000. This dialogue, characterised by ambivalence, multiplicity, and open-endedness, provides insights on the political traits that have dominated Zimbabwe since 2000. These are rendered as politics of personality, chimurenga and partisanship. While the architects of the coup sought to create and propagate one narrative, later described as ‘restoring legacy’, coup jokes carried internal contradictions, doubts and conflicts which made possible an understanding of the coup narrative as inherently dialogic. Selected WhatsApp coup jokes, which circulated between 14 and 24 November 2017, were studied. Insights from Bakhtin's dialogism were applied to the study of jokes in order to illuminate their contradictions, dualities and openness, and how this enabled an understanding of the traits that have dominated Zimbabwean politics.

摘要

本文分析了 2017 年 11 月津巴布韦政变的病毒式 WhatsApp 笑话所引发的对话。它认为政变笑话创造了一个讨论自 2000 年以来津巴布韦政治本质的机会。这种对话的特点是矛盾性、多样性和开放性，提供了对自 2000 年以来主导津巴布韦的政治特征的见解。这些被呈现为个性、chimurenga 和党派关系的政治。虽然政变的设计者试图创造和传播一种叙事，后来被描述为“恢复遗产”，但政变笑话携带着内部矛盾、怀疑和冲突，这使得将政变叙事理解为内在的对话成为可能。对 2017 年 11 月 14 日至 24 日期间流传的 WhatsApp 政变笑话进行了研究。巴赫金的见解