Handi-/Cappin' Slaves and Laughter by the Dozens

Abstract

The article claims that insofar as dozens or capping - black combative humor - arose out of slavery and its prohibition against fighting (which threatened property damage), it is fundamentally a humor of disability. Because of this more or less unique form of comedic creation and conditioning, not all contemporary American humor that deploys disability demeans it. Rather, some such humor deploys disability in remedial, considerably redemptive ways, demonstrable through black folklore and literary texts. Such texts illuminate the peculiar form of American comedy as a practice in tragic extravagance, one substantially born of its own extravagant source in racial bondage.

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