Some cartoons, some
thoughts and one or
two points that might
be worth considering.
The hand that mocks
the cradle? The tricky
issue of ‘complicity’
within feminist poststructuralist humour.
Paper presented at the Critical Management Studies Conference, Manchester 11-13 July, 2001.
Humour and Irony Stream
Linda Perriton
Centre for Management
University of York
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
Tel: +44 (0) 1904 433130
Email: ljp8@york.ac.uk
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two points that might be worth considering.
Abstract
The title of this paper states that complicity is a ‘tricky’issue, in particular
with respect to feminist post-structuralism. Through an examination of 20
cartoons that originate in pro-labour, feminist and feminist post-structuralist
traditions I explore how a recognition and use of irony can help inform our
relationship to critique and political engagement. The charge that feminist
post-structuralism is not politically engaged, in part because it is seen as
allied to the ‘suspect’ notion of irony, is a source of tension within feminist
circles and, by implication, the wider CMS community.
Introduction
I imagine that I am not alone in feeling slightly apprehensive about putting a paper forward
(and, worse, actually appearing) in a stream called ‘Humour and Irony’ at a major
conference. It is rich territory for the averagely insecure and, as I prepared this paper, I found
myself asking myself questions such as: Am I expected to be amusing company and the life
and soul of the party? Or will we collectively (and ironically) turn out to be the dullest people
at the conference? Will the sessions be full of people heckling me as if it is some sort of
Comedy Store stand-up routine? (Answer: probably no more than is the case at any other
conference). Or – and this has keep me awake some nights - will I present a paper that
completely misses the point and looks pathetically lightweight alongside much more
substantial and intellectual pieces of work?
Unsurprisingly, a bad case of writer’s block and an outbreak of imaginative displacement
activities was the result. And since writer’s block, for me, is usually the result of trying to
saying the right things in the wrong way it had the effect in this case of changing the form in
which I decided to present this paper1.
This paper is about the difference in humour between pro-labour groups (probably
represented within Critical Management Studies2 by Marxist, Critical Theory and Labour
Process academics) and post-structuralist feminists. In particular I am interested in the use of
cartoons3 by representatives of pro-labour groups and feminists. Cartoons are a uniquely
1
This is not an isolated experiment in academic presentation. An earlier paper (Perriton 1999) is
written in a ‘adjacent text’style which was suggested by Middleton (1995). in her paper on feminist
writing. Textual representation is an enduing interest and the subject of ‘textual guerrilla warfare’as
one element of a textual typology in management writing is covered in more detail in Perriton (2001).
2
Critical Management Studies encompasses many differing theoretical groups in a loose 'Rainbow
Coalition' of scholars opposed to the unquestioning perpetuation of managerialism as the only frame
of management understanding. Fournier and Grey (2000) view its constituent theoretical parts as
comprising "neo-Marxism (labour process theory, Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Gramscian
'hegemony theory'), post-structuralism, deconstructionism, literary criticism, feminism, psychoanalysis,
cultural studies, environmentalism" (p. 16). Whilst these pluralist roots both enrich and deepen the
range of analysis brought to bear on management as a subject the distinct cultural practices of each
of these theoretical groups - including their humour - is a potential source of tension. This paper
suggests that there are some telling differences in humour within the CMS ‘family’.
3
It is tempting in a paper such as this to look at the historic role that cartooning has played in social
comment. The recent General Election has also coincided with an exhibition of the political cartoonist
Gillray (1757-1815) and a periodic surge of interest in this art form. There is a plethora of ‘History of
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
2
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two points that might be worth considering.
succinct, portable and easily reproduced form of humour in comparison to the mediated
complexities inherent in the telling of a joke. They are revealing shorthand demonstrations of
not only the site of humour (why some things are funnier than others) for each of these
groups but also what purpose humour seems to serve in each tradition.
The interesting part, for me, of these images is looking at them in order to find out whether I
can detect patterns of humour use. I am less interested in adding anything to the established
and comprehensive literature on irony and postmodernism. Therefore the paper concentrates
most of its efforts on constructing an argument around the images and is, in effect, about
‘some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two points that might be worth considering’.
However there are interesting academic arguments that intersect and sometimes illuminate
my sense making of the cartoons. Where it has seemed appropriate to expand on these points
or to direct the reader to more scholarly sources these have been presented as footnotes. It is
possible to read and make sense of the argument without recourse to the footnotes. My advice
as author (for what it is worth) is to ignore the footnotes as far as possible and just read the
commentary, then go back and read through the footnotes separately.
The cartoons in this paper have not been chosen as a result of any methodological strictures.
This is less a coherent research study4 than a tentative exploration of difference within the
CMS context and wondering in what ways reflexivity in respect of humour might be
constructive. The cartoons as a collection represent no more than a personal and eclectic
selection of image from groups I have defined as ‘pro-labour’, ‘feminist’ and ‘poststructuralist feminist’. Most, if not all, are by cartoonists who self-identify themselves in that
tradition but some have been attributed to groups by my own acts of classification.
This paper is structured in the following way. The first section focuses on the work of the
radical left cartoonist Heinrich Hinze and explores the constituent ingredients of a classic
Political Cartooning’introductions and sites on the Internet. I have chosen not to include a review of
these and the suffrage cartoons of early feminists on the grounds of relevance. Whilst superficially
these etchings and cartoons belong to a tradition of drawn satire their actual use and effects are
particular to the society they were produced in. Hutcheon (2000) comments:
“Parody changes with culture; its forms. Its relations to its “targets”, and its intentions are not
going to be the same … today as they were in eighteenth-century England. And theories of
parody have changed along with parody’s aesthetic manifestations. This is why a definition of
parody as ridicule that developed in tandem with the art of Pope, Swift and Hogarth doesn’t
necessarily feel right today.”(Hutcheon 2000), pp. xi-xii)
Nor is the humour accessible without more and more footnotes and annotations alongside the original
texts in order for the ‘modern’ reader to understand the humour. A fate that will also await such
modern manifestations of humour as spoof documentaries, pop videos and the cartoons included in
this paper.
4
Such coherent research studies do exist and are published. Most notable in the context of women
and political cartoons is the study by Gilmartin and Brunn (1998), which looked at the representation
of women in cartoons in relation to the 1995 World Conference on Women. Bibliographical searches
of women and cartooning reveals extensive scholarship on the issue of suffrage cartooning both in the
US and the UK, interest in the issue of the relative rarity of women editorial cartoonists and the
occasional study of specific publications and their portrayal of gender. Feminist analysis of cartoons
has been interested in women’s subjectivity as illustrated in these forms (e.g.(Reincke 1991);
Hammond 1991) and also in women’s subjectivity as defined by women (Mitchel, 1981). Research in
this area in the UK is not as well established as in the US.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
3
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
‘protest’ cartoon5. The second section looks at ‘generalist’ women’s cartoons and suggests
that women’s cartoons often reveal a deep interest and sense of playfulness around the issue
of women’s struggles within patriarchy as opposed to simply ‘poking fun’ at men. (Although
poking fun at men is by no means abs ent from the genre). The final section considers the
complex position of post-structuralist feminist humour with respect to the broader feminist
tradition of illustrating women’s struggles with patriarchy 6. The conclusion suggests that we
could usefully fi nd in poststructuralist feminist humour some parallels to the experience of
pre- and post-experience students.
The campaigning, didactic tradition of pro-labour humour
As outlined in the introduction to this paper I want to turn first to the work of an Australian
pro-labour cartoonist called Heinrich Hinze 7. Hinze works with ‘Scratch Media’, which is an
organisation that produces posters, cartoons and other publications for us by union and labour
activists. Hinze has also worked as the ‘unofficial’ carto onist of S-11 (now M1) the anticapitalist protest group. The S-11 website8 has a section devoted to material that can be
downloaded by supporters and distributed as part of their activities against capitalism. The
link is named ‘propaganda’. This ‘celebra tory’ use of a term that their opponents use to
denote untrustworthy information is an ironic recognition of the press coverage they expect
their activities to receive. In doing so they effectively counteract the attempt to discredit their
education efforts. However, this in effect is the last flirtation with the sort of irony that I will
argue is an almost constant feature of feminist cartoons. In keeping with the ‘educative’ slant
to much of Hinze’s material the cartoons he produces for his pro -labour/anti-capitalist
audience are overtly didactic. 9
[Insert] Figure 1: 'Greetings to our international Olympic visitors’
www.scratch.com/mail34/37007.gif
5
My argument essentially is that pro-labour humour occupies a different 'oppositional' space to poststructuralist feminism in respect of critique. Pro-labour cartoons often mirror Labour’s rhetorical
positioning in direct opposition to Capital. In many cartoons the object of critique (often a fat capitalist)
fills the frame, inviting the critic to stand before it and to mock. The idea that opposition can be
expressed in such geographical terms and concepts is one that Pile (1997) explores to great effect.
6
Women are seen in situations where their relationship to the societal norms that oppress them is
complex and where the comic value is in the acknowledgement of the various ways in which women
both participate and struggle against society. Although Tretheway (1999) argues that this ironic sense
is representative of feminism in general I suggest that it appears most often in post-structuralist
feminist work.
7
‘Hinze’is the pseudonym of David Pope. Pope has been a cartoonist for trade unions, socialist
papers and various community organisations and campaigns in Australia since the mid-1980s. He
was editorial cartoonist for the short-lived national independent weekly, The Republican.’His cartoons
have been included in both annual reviews of political cartooning in Australia by the National Museum
of Australia.
8
www.s11.org
9
th
It is Hutcheon’s (2000) contention that much of the art forms of the late 20 Century have become
didactic (and are becoming increasingly so) in which case the cartoons below are cast firmly in this
cultural and artistic movement towards instruction. However, some traditions of humour are distinctly
more didactic than others and I suggest that pro-labour cartoons are at the ‘political schoolmarm’end
of the scale.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
4
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
The cartoons that I have selected from Hinze all ‘work’ on the basis of a knowle dge of social
and cultural norms on the part of the educated (in the sense of anti -capitalist politics) reader.
For example, the humour in the cartoon above relies on recognising the ‘major event’
marketing practice of creating mascots to embody the offici al spirit of both the host and the
event. Thus at any major international sporting tournament there are (increasingly) tortured
interpretations of national animal or cultural symbols in order to link to the event. The
Moscow Olympics10, for example, had a c artoon bear in a lovable and child -friendly
reworking of the Imperial Russian symbol and more recently the English Football
Association evoked the ‘Three Lions’ on the player’s kit to recreate the three foam and fur
mascots that were supposed to denote the ‘lionlike’ qualities that the players would embody.
In the case of the Sydney Olympics Hinze has taken the opportunity to ‘out’ various aspects
of Australian political and social life instead of the rather asinine ones chosen by the Sydney
Olympic Committ ee of ‘Ollie the Kookaburra’ (the Olympic Spirit), ‘Syd the Platypus’
(denoting the environment and spirit of Sydney’s population) and ‘Milly the Echidna’
(denoting the Millennium and technology). The thought of these alternative mascots being
adopted ‘officially’ is one level of the joke – but one that is a secondary function of the
cartoon next to the more straightforwardly instructive message.
[Insert] Figure 2 "McDonalds"
http://www.s11.org/images/mcdonalds_cartoon.gif
In the case of the cartoon ‘Radicals lure our kids’ Hinze is relying not so much on an artistic
or written text but on the inversion of a form of social ‘text’ available to the political right 11.
As with the use of ‘mascots’ this cartoon imagines a parallel world where the ‘truths’ of the
political and social left and not those of the right are the ones given via the mainstream media
and are seen as ‘on message’. And in this cartoon it is that figu ratively and physically
favoured target of anti-capitalist protest – McDonald’s - that is amusingly (for the assumed
reader) seen at the receiving end of police action usually reserved for the reader.
The secondary text being appealed to here is one where ‘McDonaldisation’ is a form of
shorthand for the political concerns of the readership. The appeal to the ‘politics of anti capitalism’ can also be seen in the images of the cartoonist ‘arun’ who produces cartoons for
the Australian progressive newspaper ‘Green Left Weekly’. Like the Scratch Media site, the
‘Leftfield’ mailing list allows groups who wish to use humour in their campaigns to have
access to these images in order to further their causes. The following image again shows that
these cartoonists are producing didactic images for both humour and political use.
[Insert] Figure 3: “The World Bank”.
www.shortfuze.com.au/leftfield/left9.html
10
Mascots of all the Olympics of the Marketing era can be ‘revisted’ at
http://www.fipo.olympic.org/e/fimo/memorabilia/mascot/. ‘Misha’, you will no doubt remember,
followed in the paw prints of Amik the Beaver (Montreal) and my personal favourite, Waldi the
Dachshund, a rainbow dog that is credited with being the first official mascot of the Olympic
movement.
11
All parodic forms rely to some extent on the audience being aware of the intertextuality of the
message. The comedic effect rests on the audience inferring not merely intent to parody but also the
intent to parody a certain text (Hutcheon 2000).
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
5
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
The positioning of the ‘protestor’(the assumed readership) in these images is import ant.
In most pro-labour cartoons the presumed audience of the cartoons is not the subject of the
cartoon. In the ‘mascots’, ‘radicals’ and ‘McBank’ images the satire is turned against the
perceived oppressor and/or their tools (e.g. the media, police, br ands and event marketing).
The exception to this is when the cartoons are positioned to show an affiliated labour group
as being the victim of government or capitalist policy. This is, for example, what is
happening in these cartoons designed to highlight working conditions and issues in the
Australian Higher Education sector.
[Insert] Figure 4 "Swamped at work: university workload and stress"
www.scratch.com.au/mail34/37003.gif
[Insert] Figure 5 "The university sausage factory"
www.scratch.com.au/mail34/37004.gif
In most pro-labour cartoons the cartoon is an affirmation of the politics and social attitudes of
the audience. In the above cartoons the university lecturer is reassured that their im pression
of their mountainous workload and of their enslavement to the principle of mass access to
higher education is correct. In the earlier images the political views of the presumed audience
are ‘fantasised’ to the extent that the audience can imagine them in place of those of the
conservative media. And in this final image it is now, literally, the protesting audience that is
reassured that they have the capitalist opposition’s attention.
[Insert] Figure 6 "Global protest"
www.scratch.com.au/mail34/37059.gif
In this cartoon we have the imagined ‘noticing’ of Capital of the real events that the audience
are ‘heroes’ of on the streets. The actions of the organisation that Hinze represents as one of
their ‘propagandists’ are see n from the vantage point of inside the car. It picks up on the
‘privileged’ white, male and middle class joke/cliché, that in a context of excess, everything
starts to look the same. However in order to bolster the morale of the audience of this image
it is the nature of anti -capitalist protests that are starting to impinge on the capitalist world as
‘excess’. In this the ‘hordes’ of protestors in the picture is an affirmation of both the just
cause and the wanted effect. In this world of humour Art mirrors Life12.
12
As can be seen from this account of S-11’s activities during the WEF meeting in Melbourne in
September 2000.
“Western Australia Premier Richard Court was the entering the complex by government car but was
stopped and surrounded by protestors. Out of reach from police assistance, in the middle of a surging
crowd, the premier attempted to calm the situation by talking with the S11 protestors. Despite being
cordial, the premier was verbally abused and forced back into the car by the surging crowd. For nearly
an hour outnumbered police watched helplessly from nearby as protestors attacked the premier’s car
with large implements.”
(EmergencyNet News, 11 Sept 2000, http://www.emergency.com/2000/S11-Australia.htm)
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
6
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
The placing of the ‘opposition’ figure within the main frame of the cartoon – with the judging
audience taking up the position of gazing upon the figure and mocking – is a common device
in political cartooning. Ironically, perhaps, pro -labour cartoons work in similar ways to
cartoons used by the mainstream media within a pro -capitalist political context. The
‘political’ cartoon in this sense may be a genre which constructs its own norms and which, in
the case of pro-labour uses, has a didactic mess age overlaid.
In order to illustrate this point I have selected two political editorial cartoons that use the
same positioning of the audience (i.e. absent but assumed to be onlookers) in relation to the
central figure(s) being satirised. The first image is a Vince O’Farrell cartoon. It shows the
similarity of the targets of political satire and political activism. In this cartoon the
stereotypical white, middle -aged male, cigar smoking and contemptuous capitalist has made
it out of his car and into the w orld of employee surveys.
[Insert] Figure 7 “Well Tomkins?”
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/ofarrell.asp
30/5/01)
(Image
dated
The second picture bridges to the next section on feminist cartooning. It is an editorial
cartoon by the Sydney morning Herald cartoonist Cathy Wilcox – one of the relatively few
women political cartoonists working on major newspapers. In this image she is satirising the
Right Wing politics of the Howard Government and again place s the object of the satire
centre-stage.
[Insert] Figure 8 "John Howard"
http://apsa2000.anu.edu.au/cartoonwilcox.jpg (image dated 4/09/00)
This section has looked at the didactic nature of cartoons of the radical and campaign ing left.
It claimed that, with the exception of cartoons where labour was portrayed as the victim, the
most usual subject position of the intended audience was outside of the cartoon frame and not
as a character involved in the site of humour. The cartoon s affirm and reinforce their political
and social views of this ‘absent’ character. The traditional concerns and tools of global
capital were inverted 13 for humorous effect but in most cases the humour of the cartoon was a
13
Cartoons concerning ‘gender inversion’are considered by (Hammond 1991). She equates the use
of such cartoons with a particular stage of feminist political activism in the 1960s and 1970s, which
was particularly concerned with upsetting the idea that the status quo was a satisfactory state of
affairs. As such ‘inversion cartoons’are symptomatic of a political movement that is reaching a peak
in terms of political awareness of a controversial issue that is deeply tied to societal expectations. She
found that such ‘inversion’images were not confined to pro-feminist publications but were a consistent
feature of cartoon humour across the board – including publications such as ‘Playboy’. In this sense
the humour of ‘inversion images’in the pro-labour movement could be indicative of the stage that the
debate has reached in the public domain rather than an intrinsic feature of ‘their’humour. I think this is
a possibility that should be borne in mind but that other factors point to pro-labour humour being
qualitatively different to that of feminists and post-structuralist feminists.
The match of humour to stages in political activism is an interesting theory. There are two views of
how irony ‘works’ and both of them are potentially unappealing to a political movement with their
activist head of steam up. The first considers irony, because of its non-literalness, to involve the
receiver of the message in decoding the meaning (for a moment those of us with post-structuralist
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
7
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
secondary effect to that of education and reinforcement. Despite the mainstream media being
one of the targets and sources of humour in pro-labour cartooning that political cartooning in
the mainstream press exploits the same cartooning conventions. In particular it places the
object of satire in the frame and allows the reader/viewer to assume the position of judge. In
the next section I suggest that feminist cartoons assume a different relationship of the reader
to the cartoon and the subject matter – revealing through a diverse cartoon t radition the way
women find humour within their relationship to a patriarchal society.
Women in the frame …
This section starts by examining images included in a 1980s anthology of women’s
cartoons14. The anthology was a consciously political project. Th rough advertisements placed
in the national press women amateur and professional cartoonists were encouraged to submit
their images of the year 1984 and the Women’s Press published the subsequent collection. In
effect it was a political/artistic project by women and largely for consumption by women.
This is not however the only model for the production of images for women 15 and, indeed,
this paper includes several images by women who sell their work in a commercial and
professional context. But whether they are drawn for reasons of empowerment and
celebration and/or commercial gain there are similarities in cartoons by women regarding
how they – in contrast to the pro-labour cartoons in which labour is largely absent – include
themselves in their images 16.
The pro-labour cartoons in the last section belong to a genre of political satire (shared with
mainstream political comment) that removes the assumed ‘sympathetic audience’ from the
frame. In this tradition the object of ridicule stands alone and at the mer cy of the humour. In
women’s cartooning the tradition is different. In effect the assumed ‘sympathetic audience’ is
shown alongside the object/or is the object of the humour. In the first two cartoons from the
‘Women Draw 1984’ anthology it is clear that p atriarchy is the subject of the humour but that
views of language must suspend our disbelief). As a result the originator of the meaning in effect has
to relinquish control of the message. For many groups this may be a political decision as much as one
about humour and communication Gilkison, J. (1999). The second view – and this matches the view
that Hutcheon (1995) shares, of irony only operating within a discourse community – is that irony is a
transaction between at least two parties by necessity already within the same ‘in-group’ (Gilkison
1999). Inasmuch as irony helps to forge ties they are probably those of initiates already within a group
rather than a function of bringing outsiders in. For a group in an active political stage this might not be
a good strategy.
14
The way women’s cartoons are published and marketed is an important issue in itself and although
revealing of many aspects of women’s experience of media, is outwith the scope of this paper.
15
th
(Mitchel 1981) notes that from the 17 Century onwards that men have been society’s recognised
producers of caricature and that men, not women, have been the chief target of derision. In her study
of collections of cartoon images Mitchel estimated that only 25% of the images depicted women in
major or minor roles. And for a great deal of the history of cartooning women were ridiculed for vanity
– women past child-bearing age who maintained their obsession with image despite their social
redundancy were the most satirised. Gilmartin and Brunn (1998) also refer to this ‘symbolic
annihilation’of women by their absence in cartoons. As a feminist project, rewriting and redrawing
women into accounts of popular culture and history, mirrors those undertaken in other fields.
16
This is unsurprising given that feminism claims that ‘It [is] not a question of how feminist theory
could be moulded to incorporate and give voice to the divergent realities of women, but how those
realities in their connectedness, relationality and othering reconfigure our understanding of theworld
… .’(Crowley, 1999 p.134). Showing how women connect with other women and the world is a key
feature of feminist thought.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
8
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
the humour also relies on the recognition that being IN the frame is part of the joke. The men
in these cartoons (and what they stand for) may be worthy of being laughed at, but then there
is also the ‘humour less’laughter of recognising this as our reality.
[Insert] Figure 9 “If God had intended women to think … ” (Youens and Perkins, 1984)
If there is humour inherent in the irritations of sharing our world with such men then there is
also humour to be found in the small triumphs over patriarchy. The following cartoon not
only acknowledges the humour of ‘how do we find ourselves here in this reality with these
men?’ but also of the possibilities of subverting the rules that accompan y that reality. This is
quite different from the humour of ‘gender inversion’ 17.
[Insert] Figure 10 "Knock out” (Youens and Perkins, 1984)
It also seems possible in women’s cartoons to use women’s positioning within the image in
comic ways rare in political or pro -labour cartoons. As already established it is unusual for
labour to appear as the subject of the cartoon unless it is in the position of victim of external
forces (as with the higher education examples). This is not the case in women’s cartoons even
when the point of the image is to convey the fact that women are subject to those same
oppressive societal conditions or norms. In the next two images it is the source of the
oppression that is ‘absent’and implied, not the vi ctim.
Children also appear in these images and are used to different effect as comic foils. In the
first image it is the mother who ‘uses’ the innocence and confusion of the girl about the hand
that Fate awaits to deal her in order to make the point abou t the world they live in.
[Insert] Figure 11 "Gloom and Doom" (Youens and Perkins, 1984)
And in the second image it is the child who asks the ‘innocent’ question that reveals the
shaky foundations on which the power of the domes tic patriarch is resting.
[Insert] Figure 12 "If daddy is a hunter-gatherer ....?" (Youens and Perkins, 1984)
Given the modern media age and the need to attract people’s attention and sympathy, humour
in activism is an obvious route to explore. Humour which highlights your cause – whether it
is pro-labour or pro-women’s rights – is good for the morale of supporters and good for the
recruitment of potential sympathisers and activists. Clearly humour can be used, and is used,
as a straightforward consciousness raising tool and most of the examples I have looked at so
far (both pro-labour and pro-women) can be positioned at some point along a scale of
didactic intent.
However I think some women have gone beyond this use of humour as consciousness-raising
– perhaps as a result of the different ways in which feminism as an issue is debated generally
17
See footnote 13.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
humour.
9
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
in society. They have moved on to explore the question of ‘how did we end up here?’ They
do so through images which not only position the women reflecting the absurdity of the
world about them but also images which suggest the complex and unpredictable reactions
they have to the world once their consciousness is raised.
The previous cartoon therefore stands at an important ‘Y junction’ in women’s humour and
cartooning. There are two paths it can, and did I think, go down. And I think the best way to
think through these alternative paths is to put ourselves in the position of the woman ironing
the underpants. The first path would have us im agine the response of the woman to her
child’s statement as an ‘Ahah!’ moment of consciousness about gender relations. In this
scenario the image is functioning as a tool fit for political action. The other path would
deliver us to a point where we could imagine the woman already ‘knowing’ the absurdity of
the position she finds herself in and for her continue to iron underpants. This second
imagined response leads us towards the recognition and use of irony within women’s
cartoons and towards an ambiguous response to the humour from the point of view of an
activist. Because to go down this particular line is to muddy the waters as far as the use of
this humour in political action is concerned and turns it into a tool not fit for political action
or, more critically, as a tool that reveals inherent conservatism.
If we accept that women’s humour to some extent is based in women confronting problems
inherent in a patriarchal society 18,19 then the natural extension of that position is the question
of the humour inherent in women’s reactions. When that reaction is such that it works to
expose the absurdity of the reality then this is, from the point of view of parity with pro labour humour, an acceptable use of humour and transcends any stylistic differences with
regards to the appearance of women within the image. However women’s humour that
chronicles the reactions of women who are already aware of the nature of the oppression is
problematic. In terms of political ‘approval’ then it is likely that only cartoons which show an
‘appropriate’ oppositional response (anger, scorn, resistance etc) are likely to be considered
legitimate.
In feminist post -structuralist cartoons the use of irony and the depiction of ‘knowing’
responses to the world which are not legitima te – or at least cover a complex range of
responses – makes this humour much more difficult to be accepted as acceptable within a
community which bases its identity in any degree on the concept of activism and opposition.
In the next section I look at the work of the Australian feminist post -structuralist cartoonist
Judy Horacek and explore some of those issues.
Is it the irony that’s the problem, or the post-structuralism?
I have argued in the last section that some women’s cartoons base their humour in that place
beyond discovery of their oppression and instead focus on both the irony of the situation and
18
Perry’s (1994) study of suffragette work (quoted in Gilmartin and Brunn 1998) suggested that the
difference between the images drawn by men and women was that men’s suffrage art used women
as symbols (Liberty, Justice etc) whereas women were more likely to draw ‘real’women confronting
‘real’ problems and immersed in a particular cultural context. This observation seems to hold true
today in both generalist and post-structuralist feminist cartoons.
19
Tretheway (1999) implies that women are ahead in the evolutionary process with regards to humour
and suggests that women have embraced irony because of the power that it gives them in such
arenas as consciousness raising.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist 10
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
of their response. Irony 20 as a concept is closely associated with postmodernism and,
inasmuch as it denotes an ambivalent response to oppression (somet imes ‘appropriate’ and
sometimes ‘inappropriate’ to an activist identity), is deeply suspect. Irony, it is suggested,
doesn’t mean what it says and in that way is similar to the lie 21,22 - in uncomfortable
proximity to telling fibs and general duplicity. Thi s makes it powerful and, in the context of
groups who feel that they are in ‘opposition’ to entrenched and powerful forces, a very
threatening idea. One of the most damning accusations a politicised ‘alternative’ grouping
can make is that of complicity 23,24– the idea that a group or individual is ‘aiding and abetting’
the activities (ideological or otherwise) of the object of critique. In this section I argue that
20
Irony works through difference and unexpected juxtapositions. ‘Traditional’ironic forms (or ‘Irony
Lite’as a marketing brand might have it) is a function of ‘the imposed association of two apparently
incongruent elements such as their deeper congruence with each other is uncovered by the audience’
(Shugart 1999,p. 440). So we can see in the ‘underpants’cartoon that it is thewords of the child in the
cartoon that creates the sense of incongruence. In fact the cartoon works in quite a straightforward
way in that the irony, the incongruence, is literally spelt out by the child. The speech bubble points out
for the audience that there is an incongruent situation at play where the male who figures himself as
‘hunter- gatherer’, does the aforementioned Neanderthal activities in neatly pressed underwear.
21
Hutcheon (1995) states that irony moves out of the realm of the true and the false and into that of
the felicitous and infelicitous and that it removes the security that words mean only what they say.
22
There are however more positive views of irony. Andress (1997) defends irony and rejects the
charge that it is about nit-picking or sarcasm or that you must reject it in order to discuss the nature of
a just society.
23
Kutz (2000) is an extended evaluation of the notion of complicity and why it is such a powerful
construct within societal discourse. His view is that its power resides because it is inextricably bound
up with the idea of individualism and agency that is in turn embedded in the socio-economic ordering
of society. He contends that we are morally uncomfortable with the idea of complicity as being able to
be ascribed to a group because groups function in such a way as to psychologically ‘accept’ the
charge of complicity as part and parcel of the function of their role. In our field an example of this
would be senior management teams ‘accepting’that they embody – for corporate reasons only – the
culpability of ‘corporate manslaughter’. Public protest is usually intent on reversing such perceived
group evasion of complicity and calls for individuals to be bought to justice – therefore reasserting the
socio-economic norms of individual agency.
It also accounts for the discomfort that individuals within a theoretical school feel when a charge of
complicity is made against (supposedly) the theory itself. Individuals who subscribe to the theory ht us
charged – according to the socio-economic norms – ‘correctly’interpret this as a charge made against
them as individuals.
“Paradigmatically, individual moral agents are reproached, or reproach themselves, for harms
ascribable to them and them alone, on the basis of their intentional actions and causal
contributions.
The individualism of this understanding of the subject of accountability is deeply rooted in
modern consciousness. It owes much, clearly, to Protestant theologies and Kantian moral
theories, but it is not the product of moral theory or doctrinal theology. Rather, this conception
is an expression of the social and economic transformations that have made the conviction, in
Emerson’s words, “that imitation is suicide; that [each] must take himself for better or worse,
as his portion,” a primary element in our cultural self-understanding. The … principle
expresses the primacy of the individual subject.” (Kutz 2000, p. 4)
24
Such prominent feminists as Haraway are interpreted as ‘chiding’ feminists for complicity with
power. DiPalma (1999) states that ‘Haraway … implicitly calls readers to task for complicity with
power … this methodology [is] an important feminist political act’. Even as they act as researchers
and readers the imperitive for ‘good feminists’to avoid complicity with power is clear.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist 11
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
irony, per se, is compatible with the idea of direct action as well as being a feature of theory . I
want to try and reclaim for the ironist some claims to activist legitimacy 25.
Parody26, a pictorial or visual form of irony, has proved a very popular resource for political
activism in recent years. So we can look at images such as arun’s McDonald’s billboard and
recognise it as a ‘campaigning’ form of parody. The incongruence, which is at the heart of
this humour and that of irony, works through the similarity of the art form but the
incongruence of the message. This is a form of activist protest tha t the Guerrilla Girls,
feminist campaigners for equal rights for women in the US entertainment industry, have used
in their campaigns. Their manipulation of the incongruity of image is, for me, a more
successful use of the form than arun’s (and other pro -labour cartoonists’) use of the
incongruity of text. Contrast, for example, the obvious politicking of the McDonald’s
billboard to the recent poster released by the Guerrilla Girls.
[Insert] Figure 13 “The birth of feminism”
http://www.guerillagirls.com/posters/birth.html
This spoof movie poster relies on the obvious incongruous casting of the film, the choice of
director and of the singer on the soundtrack to make a point about the artistic and commercial
control that women have in Hollywood. By using a ‘story’ that unequivocally belongs to
women and recasting it in the typical Hollywood genre the Guerrilla Girls are showing the
extent to which men control the professional lives of women artists and the depiction of
women in society as a whole 27.
25
Hutcheon (1995) goes further and claims that irony and parody are forms that are ‘transideological’.
She claims that irony can and does function in the service of various and opposedpolitical positions
and undercuts the interests of many interests. She uses this premise of the ‘transideological’nature of
irony to explain why it makes some groups nervous and suspicious and quotes Enright in claiming
that if ‘irony’s guns face in every direction’that anyone might come under fire. The use of irony by
women (a source of traditional male nervousness in regard to truthfulness) and in a context where the
guns are usually (figuratively) pointed at capitalism is obviously a nervous moment. Who knows where
their ironic utterances might be turned to next??
26
In the history of humour Hutcheon (2000) argues that parody has changed its way of functioning.
Parody in the time of Pope and Hogarth was more ostensibly about ridicule but Hutcheon arguesthat
it now carries the more specific purpose and form to become ‘extended ironic structures that replay
and recontextualize previous works of art’(Hutcheon 2000 p.xii). Works of art in this context can also
mean popular and commercial art forms such as advertisements, billboard posters and music.
Hutcheon (2000) – and since she has published a book devoted to parodic art forms this is a
standpoint that makes a certain amount of sense – denotes parody as a visual/aural humour which
plays at elder sibling to the more ‘junior’and rhetorical from which is verbal irony.
27
Similar parodies have been used in citizen activism by groups such as San Francisco’s ‘Billboard
Liberation Front’, Australia’s ‘Bug-Up’as well as in magazines and campaigns by ‘Adbusters’(Klein
2001). Klein is at pains to point out in her book that such appropriations (her term is ‘culture jamming’)
are not mere stand-alone parodic acts. But as Hutcheon (2000) argues there is nothing in the nature
of parody that requires it to be dismissed because it is humorous and that it is a form that is capable
of carrying extended and powerful messages. What Klein is being sensitive about– and the criticism
that she clearly wants to head off at the pass by emphasising the deep cultural significance and
engagement behind ‘culture jamming’– is the charge that parody is suspect because it is inherently
conservative. Hutcheon points out that “parody might be said to be, at heart, less an aggressive than
a conciliatory rhetorical strategy, building upon more than attacking its other, while still retaining its
critical distance (Hutcheon 2000 p. xiv)
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist 12
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
The way that parody functions – by recreating most of the form of that which it seeks to
criticise in order to parody it by altering the essential meaning of it – does not attack ‘the
other’ in a straightforward way. It is ambivalent in the way that it cannot directly stand in
opposition to what it opposes. So much so that in some cases the parodic form can be ‘read’
conservatively but this does not necessarily negate the possibility of its use in campaigns.
Incidentally, the ‘dangers’ of conservative readings of parody was illustrated by a male
colleague who commented upon seeing this image on my office door (ironically, I like to
think) that he would sure be interested in seeing that film when it came out.
All ironic forms come with a health warning when they are deployed and exploited by
activist groups – whether they are pro-labour groups or feminists. The only sure way of
protecting yourself from a charge of conservatism or of reproducing the form you seek to
gain critical distance from is to eschew all for ms of ironic humour and to embrace didactic
humour. This is something that pro -labour groups are more likely to do in terms of their use
of humour. However there are examples of pro-labour and activist groups using visual irony
to good effect. The deployment of irony is therefore unlikely, on its own, to be source of
‘comedic tension’ in the CMS alliance. But what happens when irony meets post -modernism
and feminism?
Yep, it’s the post-structuralism after all … .
Objections to postmodernism are closely allied to those that lie at the heart of an activist
tradition’s suspicion of irony. But in this case it isn’t the inconsistent response that it
troubling so much as postmodernism theoretical undermining of the possibilities and basis for
political action b ecause it questions the status of the sovereign individual. Even feminists,
who arguably have gained the most through their taking up of post -structuralist thought in
order to challenge the politics of identity, have often been frustrated by the fact that it erodes
the basis on which you can claim ‘natural’ rights for the individual 28. And yet the most
popular attack on postmodernism has been to call into question the accessibility of the
discourse. The obscure intellectualism (in the view of the critics) of the theory is usually
portrayed as erecting deliberate barriers to understanding, and, significantly, as a meaningless
alternative to ‘real’political activism.
And there is, of course, cartoon evidence from the pro-labour sector of this deep-seated and
pervasive sense of post-structuralism denoting intellectual dilettantism and (literally in this
next example’s case) mere café activism.
[Insert] Figure 13 "Postmodernism"
http://www.shortfuze.com.au/leftfield/bits5.html
The cartoon reveals the underlying assumption of those who base their identity on the idea of
activism, that when push -comes-to-shove at the barricades that post-structuralists will be (at
best) unreliable shots, and (at worst) unable to light a Molotov cocktail without wanting to
deconstruct the significance of using a Coca -Cola bottle as missile. And into this historic
28
Mascia-Lees (1989) for example commented that it was typical that just as women were scoring
important victories on male subjectivity the goalposts were shifted.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist 13
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
tension strides the humour of post-structuralist feminists. Not only do they ‘not get the joke’
about their café activism they poke fun at the ir own ‘caffe latte depression’29.
This next cartoon by Australian and post -structuralist cartoonist, Judy Horaceck, is a typical
example of her work and shows feminists living with the daily dilemmas of ‘the post -modern
world’. This cartoon illustrates t he point I was making earlier about the range of possible
responses women have to the acquiring of knowledge about their oppression. As women we
are living in a ‘post -surprise’state as regards to the range of barriers to women’s participation
in society. The women in the images below know that the expected (and legitimate) response
to patriarchy is to get out there and dismantle it, but there are times when another piece of
cake is the much more attractive idea.
[Insert] Figure 14 "Heads we bring down the Patriarchy ..." (Horacek 1998)
I want to compare this cartoon with the underpants image shown in an earlier section. That
image ‘allowed’ two readings, one that could be considered both as both ironic and
consciousness raising and the second that allowed for a more ambivalent response of
‘knowing’ the irony already and living within it. Horacek’s cartoons seem to me to allow no
such ambiguity about which response the women in the cartoon are making. These are not
cartoons that assume that any consciousness -raising is required; instead the irony is based on
feminists acknowledging the occasional desire for consciousness suppressing. The continued
major and minor outrages committed in the world against women are firmly in the minds of
the women in her cartoons – the humour resides in the various ways in which women respond
to them. The women are not always seen as rising triumphant above the patriarchy (as was
the case in some of the earlier cartoons by women in this paper). Instead in many of the
images women are seen as defeated or self -defeatist in their responses and acknowledgement
of this can still involve humour.
The cartoon I have shown above is comprised of the last three frames of a much more
detailed cartoon outlining typ ical challenges that a feminist faces in trying to maintain a
political position. Two of the earlier frames are below:
[Insert] Figure 15 "Role models" (Horacek 1998)
[Insert] Figure 16 "Penis Envy" (Horacek 1998)
In her cartoons Horacek will often draw women sharing the experience of these everyday
absurdities (as in the ‘role model’cartoon above). Women, as a group, in her cartoons occupy
a consistently ‘knowing’ position. I think they also occupy this ‘desiring’ and ‘suppressing’
position I alluded to earlier. Although they are caught up in the absurdity of the situation in
respect of the media images and with combating ‘penis envy’ – there is a sense of seductive
inertia at play. Hence the women are seen watching tv for role models (not attending rallies)
and of deciding on another piece of cake before bringing down the patriarchy. For many
women the humour is therefore not only ‘against’ men and patriarchy but also ‘again st’
29
Horacek (1998) has a cartoon that charts three decades of café pessimism.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
humour.
14
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
traditional feminist calls for action. This goes as far as rejecting the messages that orthodox
feminist thought draws from feminist icons.
For example, in the following cartoon, Virginia Woolf’s dictum to write, women need a room
of their own is revisited.
[Insert] Figure 17 "Money" (Horacek 1998)
[Insert] Figure 18 "No less poetic" (Horacek 1998)
It is this unwillingness to embrace the obvious and to continually leave open the possibi lities
both of what individual women might want or decide if the barriers to achieving their desire
were removed that is true to post-structuralist forms of feminism 30.
As such Horacek does reveal the whole range of possible feminist and ‘non -feminist’, a ctivist
and non-activist reactions to oppression. But she is still a feminist cartoonist and some of her
sharpest comment is reserved for the consistent misjudgement of what women are and want
and need as defined by men. The ‘penis envy’ image mocks the ma le obsession that women
would want something as symbolic (and inconvenient) as their penises when jobs and money
are the alternative. Another favourite target is the male dominated media and advertising
industry. Horacek exposes another absurd misconception about what women worry about in
‘pre-menstrual in a postmodern age 5’ when her character muses on the promise to women
that sanitary towels represent ‘complete protection’.
[Insert] Figure 19 "Premenstrual in the postmodern age, 5" (Horacek 1998)
Horacek, through her ironic images, plays with uncertainties about women and their response
to the world in ways that are not common in generalist feminist humour or cartooning. In
effect in answer to the question ‘How would women react if feminism triumphed?’ she is
answering that no one knows – least of all women. Some of them might just be relieved not
to have to endure tampon adverts written by men, others might eat more cake with friends,
whilst others would gain grants for their art, get better jobs or get angry with the notion of
privatisation. The humour at the moment lies in the variation and indeterminacy of women as
opposed to the structures and assumptions that attempt to fix their images in ways that aren’t
representative of the ‘slippery’reality.
One or two points that might be worth considering …
30
I claim here that it is true to the post-structuralist form of feminism but it could be indicative of poststructuralist thought in general as ‘multiple response’is also considered an effect of the fragmentary
subject (Woollacott 1998). However the rejection of a single straightforwardly ironic reading is seen
as the preserve of feminist post-structuralism by Shugart (1999). Her study of the ironic feminist art of
Australian artist Susan Dorothea White – specifically that of her painting of the The First Supper –
sees the irony deployed by feminist post-structuralists as a deliberately ‘darker’and open ended use.
But this does not, I think, fit well with Hutcheon’s (1995) more convincing argument that irony is
‘transideological’.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist 15
humour.
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
I’d like first to separate out some personal reflections about my look at cartoons in various
‘critical’ traditions from some more general (and unanswered, naturally) question s about
what it might contribute to our debates here this week.
I wanted to use the insights about how cartooning ‘works’ in relation to pro -labour, feminist
and feminist post -structuralist humour to help make sense of the experience of ‘fitting in’.
When I first took up my post at York one of the most difficult things about the transition from
being a stranger to being a colleague was getting the humour ‘right’. There were, in my
memory of the early days, experiences of ‘jarring’ and ‘grating’ moments whe n it seemed
that humour in relation to the political underpinnings of my work was problematic. I felt that
jokes I might make against myself (very much in the style of Horacek) were being interpreted
as pointing to a level of political commitment to femini sm, and change in respect of
management pedagogy and practice, that bordered on the sham. Such uncomfortable
reflexive moments regarding how humour works for and against us within CMS was the
prompt for thinking about this paper.
The research for the paper has enabled me to think through my own experience of
‘unrecognised’ irony and to start asking different questions about how humour might define
and delineate different discursive and academic communities.
Paradoxically the study of irony has resulted i n me taking it less seriously than I did. I find
myself agreeing with Hutcheon, who said of it:
“I don’t think irony has been a terribly significant force in the evolution of civilisation
or anything grandiose like that. But it does seem to have been arou nd for a long time,
in Western culture at least, and it certainly has been the object of much attention.”
(Hutcheon, 1995, p. 2)
Irony is interesting (but not a grandiose notion) in the context of the CM community because
it seems to be in use (at this p oint in time) by some academic communities and rejected as a
useful form of communication (at this time) by others. In particular it has been my argument
that pro-labour groups seem very reluctant to make use of it whereas it has been taken up as
an essentially feminist act by those aligned with feminist critique. The pro -labour cartoons –
with their use of ‘capital inversion’ and mockery as primary comic device – appear wary of
it. Some suggestions as to why this might be the case are included in the ‘acad emic footnotes’
section of the paper. But I think there is still room for discussion about how a movement
currently in an ‘activist’ stage of its lifecycle chooses to exploit humour and to reject humour
forms which do not allow political control of ‘the me ssage’.
My look at feminist cartoons highlighted the degree to which women preferred to explore the
humour that arose from their ‘adventures in the land of patriarchy’. Some of these images
were straightforward attempts at consciousness-raising yet the ma jority implied that women
include themselves in the frame because their lives are funny, they recognise the comic
potential in laughing at themselves and also find other women funny. In contrast to a
movement whose activist profile is on the up, women’s ir onic humour is perhaps well suited
to this ‘post-knowing’ phase of their political life -cycle. In a period where many believe that
all the important fights have been won then irony makes sense as a way of managing the
realities of our ‘rueful’ politics. F eminist post-structuralism also acknowledges this through
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
humour.
16
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
its use of irony but goes, I think, further in being quite open about the humour inherent in
living through the perceived gender politics ennui. The fitful nature of political engagement
in a world where you know where the battle lines are drawn is what is captured in Horaceks’
cartoons.
In an academic context where political commitment is prized (or at giving the impression you
would be ‘up’ for The Revolution when it comes) feminist post -structuralist humour, like its
theory, is vulnerable. And yet I think it represents an important insight into the realities of
living in a ‘state of knowingness’. My pedagogical work is primarily with post -experience
managers who are on part -time courses - students who are not just learning about
management ‘as a topic’ but are seeking to make sense of their own professional lives
through education. Many of the students have their fees paid by their employers and others
see the cost of the programme as a direct inv estment in their employability. Most, if not all,
of a typical cohort have had no exposure to critical theoretical perspectives previously or a
broader view of their work in sociological terms. Because they are new to theory I think the
temptation is to think of them in terms of ‘unknowing’ subjects in respect of management.
And our teaching, like the humour of pro -labour groups, is often interpreted by students as
placing them ‘outside of the frame’ and in an unproblematic relationship to these (newly
theorised) forms of oppressive organising.
What I think we often overlook is that post-experience management students do not need
their consciousness raised to any degree – they are already aware that they iron corporate
underpants. They are ‘knowing’ subjec ts and occupy the same position as women do in
Horacek’s cartoon images. In response to the question ‘How would these managers react if
CMS triumphed?’ I think the answer is that no one knows – and least of all the managers.
Some of them might just be reli eved not to have to endure guru sessions run by Harvard
graduates, others might eat more chips at lunchtime, others would quite work and obtain
grants for their art, some of them would get better jobs, get angry with the notion of
privatisation or run trai n companies along anarchist utopian models. The manager’s
relationship to the firm is often characterised by the same inconsistency to their relationship
with managerialism as women experience in relation to Patriarchy. Sometimes it is a
relationship of at traction and desire, sometimes a relationship of rejection and resistance and
sometimes one of consciousness suppression.
I want to be clear that this paper is not an extended piece of advocacy for the use of
Horacek’s cartoons in management education. 31 I do however want to suggest that a feminist
post-structuralist humour is a useful heuristic in thinking through why the student (and
academic) community within management studies can often display an ‘inconsistency of
response’ to the idea of action. This inconsistency, furthermore, is not the sole preserve of a
particular theoretical school of thought but affects all of us at different times. Within the
CMS community – given that it’s next project is surely the imagining of new ways of
organising informed by its critique of existing forms – this variance of engagement is an
important thing both to acknowledge and discuss. But most of all I’d like to see the end
internecine scrapping over issues of ‘complicity’ or lack of political engagement. The
habitual use of irony is not a sign of a lack of political engagement. But irony could from a
useful framework to talk about our fluctuating and ambiguous (and often very funny)
relationship to critique and action.
31
See Bailey (1998) for an account of using such cartoons as part of management teaching.
The hand that mocks the cradle? The tricky issue of ‘complicity’within feminist post-structuralist
humour.
17
Some cartoons, some thoughts and one or two pointsthat might be worth considering.
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19