SARGASSO






 him, he explained that he had the
 head of a woman. The doctor gave
 him some medicine but the man
 refused to leave, insisting that
 the doctor also give him a shot
 So the doctor said, "All right,
 then, pull down your pants." The
 man said, "I didn't say I had the
 behind of a woman, doc, so don't tell
 me to pull down my pants--if I had
 a hat, you could tell me to take
 off my hat. I know what's the
 matter with me and what I need is
 a shot in the head."

 To sum up, then, we can see that the demands for
repression of unacceptable desires and wishes over the
years have changed aggression from direct assault into
wit. Wit lets us admit dangerous aggression since the
aggressive thought is repressed into the unconscious
where it is left to be elaborated on, only to reappear
later in our consciousness in disguised form, as a safe
form of resistance. It is obvious that assault for the
African slave was out of the question. Along with
carnival and flight into the hills (marronage), joking
patterns served, and still serve, as a counterforce
available to Creole peoples. The element of camouflage
here is significant. Masking in carnival is the extreme
example, of course, but we have seen that a similar
masking process can also occur in humorous language.
The phenomenon, moreover, is not unique to the French
Caribbean. Roger Abrahams has argued that the use of
nonsensical "broad" talk on the English-speaking islands
confounds "sweet" or "correct" talk and thus changes
the balance of power, producing a new sense of order,
based on a different logic (Abrahams 1983: 73).

 One last point still needs further clarification.
Central to Freud's theory of humor, as I have said, is
the notion of a saving of energy: "By making our enemy
seem small, inferior, despicable, or comic, we achieve
in a roundabout way the enjoyment of overcoming him--to
which the third person, who has made no efforts, bears
witness by his laughter" (Freud 1960: 103). Freud's