Humour and/as liberation
The Bonnacon is a mythical creature found in many medieval bestiaries added as a source of comedy due to its scatalogical defense mechanism. It is a reminder that humour can be an invitation to joy, solidarity and liberation when directed against oppression.
This is an entry in the Anarchist Bestiary, an ongoing project which shares stories that enable us to learn with and from other species, with the aim of building a world together in which all can thrive.
Image: The Aberdeen Bestiary, see below for website.
The entry is available as a podcast above, about 6 and a half minutes long or a text below.
Information
Bestiaries in medieval times were illustrated collections of stories about the natural world that aimed to entertain and inform while showing how the natural world reflected the power and moral codes of the Christian god. In reimagining a bestiary from an anarchist perspective we aim to tell stories of the natural world that challenge hierarchy and domination and celebrate mutual aid, solidarity and the thriving of all species on earth.
Such an undertaking can benefit from a talisman that inspires us in our activism and thinking: a mascot that captures the playful and irreverent, challenging and anti-authoritarian nature of the enterprise.
Enter the Bonnacon.
The Bonnacon is a mythical creature that appeared in medieval bestiaries, the size and shape of a bison, with a mane like a horse and horns that curve back in towards its head. The horns are useless for self-defense, but the Bonnacon has another means for escaping hunters. From its anus, it can emit huge plumes of faeces which burn anything they touch.
There was no special moral or religious story to go with the Bonnacon entries in medieval bestiaries beyond the implication that its incendiary diarrhoea was a divine gift in recompense for its dubious cranial adornments. Instead, the Bonnacon seems to have been included in bestiaries for the humour inherent in the story and in the illustrations which always included soldiers or hunters in some measure of visible distress in the face of the Bonnacon’s toxic, anal effusions.
So could we adopt the Bonnacon as a mascot for an anarchist bestiary?
Insurrection
Humour is a powerful tool in the arsenal of anyone facing the forces of oppression.
Poking fun at figures of authority serves to undermine the aura of natural inevitability and deserved dominance that they cultivate. It reminds us of their common humanity and the contingency of their positions. They are people who eat and shit, just like everyone else and in no way deserving of any authority beyond what we chose to give.
Image: BBC see below for details
Satirising oppressive powers such as government bureaucrats, police officers or bankers helps us step back from taking the offices and rituals of power seriously and enable us to subject them to greater scrutiny and be far more open to imagining alternative non-hierarchical and non-oppressive ways of organising our lives.
Take Banksy’s graffiti of a High Court Judge beating a protester with a gavel, stencilled on the High Court building itself on the 8th of September 2025. It lampooned the judiciary the way the law was being used to suppress protest, and the rapidity with which the authorities removed it the very next day underlined both the fear of humour that those in authority feel as well as becoming itself part of the power of Banksy’s cartoon.
Caricaturing social norms, class identities and gender roles holds them up to ridicule and helps us to see them as provisional, changeable, anything but inevitable.
What you can laugh at has far less power over you, certainly less power over your mind, and laughing together creates a sense of solidarity. A poster I saw in the last demonstration I attended said: “joy is a radical”. This is a powerful message in a time when so much of the political discourse is about hate. Physical oppression and violence is not obviated by humour, but its power over our thoughts is loosened by ridicule, and the joy we take in each other’s company and care. I like the phrase “joy is radical” because it creates an identity between the two ideas which I choose to see as pointing to pleasure and laughter shared in inclusive community, leaving no space for oppression, hate or exploitation.
So the Bonnacon, facing the forces of oppression, arse-first and spraying them with scorching turds, is an invitation to laugh, to take a moment of joy, loosening the hold our dark times might have on your mental and emotional world.
Imagine the faces of the oppressors realising their scatological fate, smile with your fellow Bonnacons and picture for a moment the better worlds we draw towards ourselves after the shitstorm is over.
Inspiration
Bestiary website
The Bonnacon first appeared in the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder and this was the source for later bestiaries. A great resource for the different depictions of Bonnacons is this website:
https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery80.htm
Northumberland Bestiary
Banksy’s mural
Far More about the Banksy High Court Mural and the image used see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgrq0r0y878o
Chen Wenling
An art piece I considered adding to the entry was this by Chen Wenling who uses a farting bull as a satirical tool in some of his sculptures. The Bonnacon is depicted farting in some bestiaries.
Chen Wenling – What You See Might Not Be Real
More information and photocredits here: https://publicdelivery.org/chen-wenling-bull-fart-sculpture/
