Of power and laughter: Carnivalesque politics and moral citizenship in Lithuania

During Lithuania's 2008 parliamentary elections, National Resurrection Party members dressed up as vampires, insane people, criminals, and prostitutes to gain people's votes. They mocked the state and laughed at political elites and electoral politics. I argue that the 2008 electoral carnivalesque was a politics of becoming, a fluid and open-ended process that engaged communities of despair and promoted moral citizenship through laughter. It was a form of political opposition, grounded in future-oriented moral and affective reassemblages of social and political fields. This politics of becoming attracted new people to politics, reframed political debates, and challenged state policies, practices, and ideologies.