Lighting the torch of the carnivalesque amid the heart of the existential darkness: the politics in al-Farafir by Yusuf Idris

Abstract EN

This paper aims at exploring the politics of the carnivalesque in Yusuf Idris's satirical play al-Farafir through the lens of the Carnivalesque concept propounded by Michael Bakhtin.

It attempts to prove that the carnivalesque, besides being a terrain in which laughter is stimulated, is a serious weapon for launching satirical attacks on man's follies, venal tendencies and social institutions, a tool of subverting and defying abusive authority, conventional attitudes and disseminated ideologies, and a fertile terrain for black humor.

In his black humorous, darkly farcical, satirical, existential and politically charged play al-Farafir, Idris presents us, in a black humorous vein and a comic guise, with a story about the relation between a Master ("Al Sayed" in Arabic) and his skinny, strange-looking servant dressed in a clownish suit (Farfoor) and the eternal struggle between life and death.

The play highlights the discursive practices that a common Egyptian man (represented in the play as a servant, a slave, or Farfoor) faces in a dictatorial regime that aims at constructing a stereotypical subjugated identity of the commoners while supporting the power of the powerful and the exploiter, showing how power practices infiltrate society to construct discursive identities.