It triggers emotional and embodied responses such as laughing, which becomes even more powerful when shared with others.įor instance, research has shown that shared humour fosters socialisation and integration into a group. To counter this, humour proves a powerful tool to bring affectivity back in. While the meaning of most was obscure to me at first, progressively I found them disturbingly funny over the years, and ultimately this helped trigger my scholarly interest in the use of two powerful tools in the social sciences, drawing and humour, and in affect theories that seek to understand the deep emotional and embodied dimensions of our lives. I personally owe much of the awakening of my political consciousness and rebelliousness to Quino’s black-and-white comic strips. Through his art, Quino engaged in pointed social critique on a wide range of topics – the state of the world, politics, cliches and prejudices, the middle-class family, social relationships, food and art – where visual and verbal humour played a central role. His legacy also includes numerous other black-and-white comic strips, often wordless and composed of single vignettes.

The Mafalda comics ran from 1964 to 1973 and are the most widely known of Quino’s works – they’ve been translated into multiple languages, including braille, and were also turned into an animated series. She was imagined by the Argentinian cartoonist Joaquin Salvador Lavado Tejon, known to all as Quino, who passed away September 30 at age 88. Millions of readers across the world are familiar with the dark-haired, impertinent, soup-hating, diabolically smart and terribly funny little girl named Mafalda.

Mafalda & Friends 1 by Quino