‘To laugh or not to laugh at oneself’

Abstract In this article we analyse NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory as a re-invention of genre, whereby the postmodernist author harnesses the fable to satirise the absurdities of the postcolonial state. We draw on postmodernist theories and theories of the carnivalesque to re-theorise the politically salutary purposes of satire, as depicted in Glory . By re-inventing the genre through creating speaking animal characters, and by situating them in a recognisably postcolonial African state (Zimbabwe), Bulawayo conveys satire’s capacity to both laugh at and encourage transformation. In Glory , therefore, Bulawayo successfully employs satiric humour to ridicule both the political rulers and the ruled who prop up their own oppression. Despite the theoretical ambiguity of humour, events at the end of the novel suggest Bulawayo’s authorial intention to use satirical humour to catalyse the subversion of the seemingly impregnable masculinist necropolitics of fictional Jidada.