Jacqueline Bussie just didn't get it. The joke was lost on her.
The religion and philosophy professor saw nothing funny about the account of a slave being burned alive, as told in Toni Morrison's "Beloved." Not a hint of humor in the tale of Holocaust victims being led to their death by merciless Nazi guards, as told in Elie Wiesel's "The Gates of the Forest." And, yet, there was laughter.
Nearly 300 references to it in Wiesel's classic – more than one per page. She counted. And the slave? He died laughing. It all seemed wholly inappropriate. Taboo, even. What on earth was so funny, Bussie wondered.
Her answer earned her a $10,000 cash prize, a book deal and trip to New York to accept the Trinity Prize, awarded annually by Trinity Press International to recognize an emerging writer or scholar whose work offers new perspectives on biblical, cultural, ethical, theological or religious issues and has broad applications for a general audience.
In writing her book, "The Laughter of the Oppressed," Bussie answers the question that haunted her after years of studying, even teaching in her religion and literature classes, novels like Shusaku Endo's "Silence," about the brutal persecution endured by the small Christian community in 17th century Japan. Why are people laughing when they have no reason to?
"I thought there had to be some type of function to it. I mean, in 'Silence,' Endo writes of martyrs who literally go to their death laughing. But no one talks about this," Bussie recalls. "I see why we're afraid of it, because it violates a certain kind of etiquette. But I wanted to try to break down that barrier. I felt like I had to do that because the authors, themselves, are putting this out there for us, and I felt like I was ignoring it. I thought, 'There is something here I need to learn.'"
Unable to find any positive evaluation of laughter in the classical writings of mainstream Christianity, Bussie turned to historical fiction to unearth what sociologists call "the hidden transcript," or the real story of how everyday people live and believe, which often contrasts with the "official" authoritative version of what's going on and what's valuable.
She pored over books on the Holocaust, slavery and tales of persecution and oppression. She interviewed Holocaust survivors. She studied slave religion and black laughter, and sought out African-American authors and theorists, always sure that there was a function for this inappropriate laughter. She found while no one had written about it, the theme of "inappropriate laughter" was always present. So, she began to write. And two years later, she answered her own question.
"The answer that I argue throughout the book is that laughter functions as a form of ethical and theological resistance," Bussie explains. "Through their laughter, the oppressed resist despair and interrupt the system of oppression and devaluation that is being inflicted on them. Laughter interrupts the banality of evil."
Bussie flew to New York on Oct. 26 to accept the Trinity Prize at a ceremony at the Harvard Club. Her book will be available by September 2007.
Excerpts from "The Laughter of the Oppressed"
"As you read this page, at this very moment in time, someone in the world is laughing. Perhaps this person, watching the humorous antics of a child, laughs out of delight and amusement. Though such comic laughter is likely, Greg Rollins' testimony suggests that other more complex and intriguing possibilities exist. Perhaps instead this person, much like the members of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq, laughs in the midst of suffering and sorrow. Imagine for a moment the man or woman who laughs not at a comedy club but at, say, a funeral, or upon hearing horrible news. Almost all of us have had an experience of such 'inappropriate' laughter – either our own or someone else's – but have we adequately explored the question of what such laughter at the horrible means? Have we sufficiently pondered the purpose of such laughter and its possible cross-cultural similarities? In particular, have people of faith turned an inquisitive ethical and theological eye toward this altogether different and unanticipated tragic laughter that occurs in the moments when we most expect tears? This book seeks to fill this inexplicable gap in contemporary theology and invites you to radically reconsider a phenomenon that everyone thinks they understand: the universal human behavior of laughter. In these pages, I ask and answer several unusual questions, including, what does it mean to laugh while one is suffering or disempowered? Why are people laughing who have no ostensible cause for laughter? And what is the ethical and theological significance, if any, of such laughter of the oppressed? Precisely because these questions sound so strange to us, I believe we should ask them."
"My work began with a simple question prompted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer's reflections on standing in solidarity with the oppressed: Where is the theological consideration of laughter 'from below,' 'from the perspective of the outcast, the mistreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer'?
Christian theology has made no systematic inquiry into the laughter of those who suffer, not even into the laughter of its own believers. Similarly, though the importance of humor and laughter within Judaism is well known, Christians have failed to explore the religious significance of the laughter of our Jewish brothers and sisters, and to ask in light of such an analysis if our own large-scale rejection of laughter on theological grounds is justified. And yet, might not this laughter of both Jewish and Christian persons of faith have something important to tell Christian theology? Might it not hold critical insights into the nature of faith, doubt, language, and the twin problems of evil and suffering? Surely academic theology would benefit by listening to what Kathryn Tanner refers to as everyday theologians – real people in the real world struggling to live lives of faith and integrity. In the course of writing this book, I discovered that these real people are laughing, yet regrettably theology has not asked them why."