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 15 5

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 belongingness 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.