Scientific publications

Summary

Laughing about Nazism: a sacrilege? How do we interpret students' acts that are shocking, uncomfortable, incomprehensible? Our contribution is based on fieldwork in two schools in the outskirts of Hamburg and Leipzig. Ethnographic observation allows for an analysis of laughter and the practice of joking among adolescents faced with the Nazi past. The concept of Eigensinn allows us to analyze the multiple forms of adoption of scholarly knowledge (which are not foreseen by the institution), that are surprising and sometimes illegitimate: by taking the laughter of adolescents in class and in the schoolyard as an object of analysis. The concept of Eigensinn enables us to better distinguish different levels of historical interpretation adopted by the adolescents in front of their teacher or in peer groups, and notably in a masculine environment. This concept also allows us to grasp the ambiguity of certain acts of transgression of the adolescents. While playing with the rules, they contribute to maintaining the institutional order. The article also insists on the collective dimension of Eigensinn (in this case masculine peer groups), thereby socially situating the Eigensinn. It thus tries to understand, through the example of the school, the functioning of social order as a (re)invention of power relations in an everyday environment.