| Summary: | Abstract
In the formulation of new humanities – knowledge, truth
and social action brought together in the defence of what
makes us human in this place and time – there is also the
need to identify the obstacles to honouring our humanity.
This paper continues the task of critically examining
contemporary forms of inhumanity, in this instance as
perpetuated by a liberal Australian government against its
citizens and others. Liberalism, by nature, enables the
co-existence of contradictory practices that both protect
and deny human rights and dignities. In psychoanalytic
terms, the defence of liberties and its repressed other,
the denial of them, are both present in such states.
Because of their links with both the conscious and the
unconscious, an analysis of jokes provides insights into
these contradictory processes. The paper explores how both
the humanities and the inhumanities are manifest variously
in the joking behaviours of social groups.
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