Generous Laughs: The Comedic Plentitude of Maria Bamford

Abstract This essay positions the work of comedian Maria Bamford within the feminist and disability-justice traditions in which situated storytelling is a form of resistance and world-making. By narrativizing the process by which she came to terms with her neurodiversity within the context of stand-up comedy, Bamford also challenges transcendent and transhistorical definitions of comedy and capitalist notions of comedic success to make space for a diversity of voices and perspectives. Bamford’s work, particularly the 2017 special Old Baby, represents both the individual and social work necessary for—and the pleasure of—living a fully realized life regardless of both diagnostic status and the persistence of misogyny and ableism. By beginning her performance in front of a mirror and gradually expanding the audience, Old Baby dramatizes how the personal acceptance of neurodivergence can extend fractally to larger familial/social contexts to disrupt normativizing discourses, stigma, and the tendency to feminize mental illness by conflating it with weakness.