A Dress of Dissent: normalisation and socialisation, comedy and the outsider

This study sought to explore normalisation and the process of socialisation in child development through the lens of comedy and the concept of being an outsider. Through a critical realist lens (Archer, 2003; Bhaskar, 2016), I have used a qualitative, retrospective analytic autoethnographic (Anderson, 2006). This generated exploratory knowledge of normalisation, socialisation, comedy, and the outsider. I used myself as the participant and analysed my data using experiential, inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2022). I found that one’s identity must be empowered within a given social environment, which for myself resulted in a discrete counter-normative identity of challenging ‘social boundaries’. This deviancy is similar to court jesters and comedians who choose what they present on stage.