Punching up in Stand-up Comedy: Speaking Truth to Power (2023) Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chiilana (Eds.) Routledge: Oxon, New York. ISBN 978-1-03226725-8

Abstract

Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana’s edited collection Punching Up in Stand-Up Comedy: Speaking Truth to Power (2023) is a timely 
intervention on the role of humour in destabilising power, as witnessed in the current socio-political context. As I write this review, the recent uproar against stand-up comedians Kunal Kamra and Ranveer Allahbadia in India has barely subsided, making us ponder about the limits to free speech in a democracy. This book consisting of 12 chapters elaborates the growth and potential of stand-up 
comedy in different countries and cultures - Morocco, Indonesia, India, Finland, France to name a few. A long, exhaustive introduction not only allows us a glimpse of the many forms of humour and the various issues related to it namely, humour as creating elongingness and a sense of community, role of comedy in highlighting the gaps between lived realities and the promise of citizenship, the long digital life of political jokes and the blurring of the private and the public etc.