Philosophy of Humour: New Perspectives (Value Inquiry Book, 389) 9004548807, 9789004548800

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Philosophy of Humour

Value Inquiry Book Series Founding Editor Robert Ginsberg Editor-​in-​Chief J.D. Mininger Associate Editors J. Everet Green, Vasil Gluchman, Francesc Forn i Argimon, Alyssa DeBlasio, Olli Loukola, Arunas Germanavicius, Rod Nicholls, John-​Stewart Gordon, Thorsten Botz-​Bornstein, Danielle Poe, Stella Villarmea, Mark Letteri, Jon Stewart, Andrew Fitz-​Gibbon and Hille Haker

volume 389

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​vibs

Philosophy of Humour New Perspectives Edited by

Daniel O’Shiel and Viktoras Bachmetjevas

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Venetian carnival mask, made available on pixabay.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: O’Shiel, Daniel, editor. | Bachmetjevas, Viktoras, editor. Title: Philosophy of humour : new perspectives / edited by Daniel O’Shiel and Viktoras Bachmetjevas. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2023. | Series: Value inquiry book series, 0929-8436 ; volume 389 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This volume aims to reignite interest in a sorely neglected field within philosophy: the philosophy of humour”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2023025922 (print) | LCCN 2023025923 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004548800 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004548817 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Wit and humor–Philosophy. Classification: LCC PN6149 .P5 P44 2023 (print) | LCC PN6149 .P5 (ebook) | DDC 801.957–dc23/eng/20230605 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023025922 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023025923

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. issn 0929-​8 436 isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​5 4880-​0 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​5 4881-​7 (e-​book) Copyright 2023 by Daniel O’Shiel and Viktoras Bachmetjevas. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-​use and/​or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents  Notes on Contributors vii Introduction 1 Viktoras Bachmetjevas and Daniel O’Shiel

Part 1 Humour and the History of Philosophy 1  Something Better Than Comedy 9 David F. Hoinski 2  Sublime, Beautiful, Funny: Humour in §54 of Kant’s Third Critique 26 David Sommer 3  The Comic as an Existential Category in Kierkegaard’s Thought 45 Viktoras Bachmetjevas

Part 2 New Theoretical Contributions 4  Prolegomena to a Revised Theory of Humour 61 Alberto Voltolini 5  ‘Aha!/​Haha! –​That’s a Good One!’ On the Correlation of Laughter and Understanding in Joke Reception 80 Mira Magdalena Sickinger 6  Hidden Congruities 92 Daniel O’Shiel

Part 3 Humour, Morality, Feminism and Politics 7  Fat Jokes and the Problem of Parody 113 Sarah W. Hirschfield

vi Contents 8  A Funny Taste: Immoral Humour and Unwilling Amusement 129 Zoe Walker 9  Feminism’s Look at Itself: Self-​Hygiene through the Prism of Laughter 142 Teodora Marija Grigaitė 10  The Carnival of Populism: Grotesque Leadership 158 Maura Ceci Index 177

Notes on Contributors Viktoras Bachmetjevas is an Associate Professor at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. He works in the field of continental ethics, with a special interest in its intersections with philosophy of religion. He has published on Kierkegaard, Levinas and 20th-​century French philosophy. Maura Ceci is a graduate student at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She is currently finishing her double Masters in Philosophical Anthropology and Philosophy Politics and Economy (ppe), the first element mostly focusing on the relationship between body and power in Michel Foucault’s philosophy, and the second with a final thesis on Wittgenstein and populism. She published an article in 2019 entitled ‘Between Indefinability and Usage: Towards an Understanding of Populism’, a topic that she is currently exploring extensively through the lens of Rabelais and Foucault. Teodora Marija Grigaitė is a Philosophy and Pedagogy programme graduate from Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. Her current research centres around the relationship between the philosophy and phenomenology of humour and laughter and various social movements, with particular focus on feminism. Sarah W. Hirschfield is J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in Philosophy and received an M.Phil. in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Her interests are in ethics, philosophy of law, and feminist philosophy. She is a failed comedian. David F. Hoinski is currently Teaching Assistant Professor at West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA. He is a co-​ organizer of the Summer Conference in Continental Ethics (scce) and a founding member of the Consortium for Classical and Contemporary Philosophy (cccp).

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Daniel O’Shiel is a researcher and teacher in philosophy, with main expertise and interests in phenomenology, existentialism, philosophical anthropology and philosophy of technology. He has numerous publications in these areas, with his first book entitled Sartre and Magic. Being, Emotion and Philosophy, appearing with Bloomsbury Academic in 2019. His latest main project, a three-​year one carried out for fondecyt and hosted by Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, is entitled The Phenomenology of Virtual Technology. Perception and Imagination in a Digital Age, and was published also by Bloomsbury in 2022. He has recently completed an M.Sc. (with merit) in Environmental Management at Brunel University London, and is currently working in the environmental sector. Mira Magdalena Sickinger is writing her doctoral thesis on the pragmatics of ‘deep jokes’. She investigates within the fields of analytic aesthetics, philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of humour, philosophy of literature, and philosophy of music. She guest edited a special issue on ‘Michael Ayers’ Knowing and Seeing. Groundwork for a New Empiricism’, in Grazer Philosophische Studien (2021), and has published ‘Musician’s (Don’t) Play Algorithms. Or: What makes a musical performance’, in Kriterion –​Journal of Philosophy (2020). David Sommer is a Ph.D. Student at University College London who researches Kantianism and German Idealism, with a focus on Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre. He is currently researching form and matter in early German Idealism, and has most recently published ‘General Logic and the Foundational Demonstration of the First Principle in Fichte’s Eigene Meditationen and Early Wissenschaftslehre’ in The Enigma of Fichte’s First Principles (Brill, 2021). Alberto Voltolini (Ph.D. Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa 1989) is a philosopher of language and mind working on intentionality, depiction and fiction, perception, and Wittgenstein. He is currently Professor in Philosophy of Mind at Turin University. He has visited the Universities of California, Riverside, anu Canberra, Barcelona, Institute of Philosophy London, Auckland and Antwerp. He belonged to the Steering Committee of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy and to the board of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology. He is now a member of the board of the International Society for

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Fiction and Fictionality Studies. His publications include How Ficta Follow Fiction (Springer, 2006) and A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction (Palgrave, 2015). Zoe Walker is a Career Development Fellow in Philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford University. She works on various issues at the intersection of art, language and morality, and wrote her Ph.D. on the philosophy of humour, comedy and joking, and their relevance to aesthetics, ethics, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. She is interested in when joking is not ‘only joking’, how sense of humour develops, and its connection to perception and cognition. Outside of her Ph.D. research, she has also written on Dave Chappelle’s stand-​up comedy about the lgbtq+​community, and spoken at the Forum for Philosophy about the relationship between comedy and philosophy.

Introduction Viktoras Bachmetjevas and Daniel O’Shiel Humour has traditionally been of marginal interest throughout the history of philosophy. Although a good number of authors –​including Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Bergson and Freud –​have all commented on, or even analysed, what makes us laugh and why, it has never received the attention of other topics. This is curious given its absolute centrality in all human life and culture. From the 1980s onwards the philosophy of humour began to receive more concerted attention, particularly through the work of John Morreall (1983, 1987 and 2009). He not only collated and edited various accounts of humour and laughter throughout the history of ideas, past and present, but also explicated what have come to be known as the three main theories –​the Superiority Theory, the Incongruity Theory, and the Relief Theory –​as well as providing his own. On top of this, there is also other significant work covering various theories throughout the history of philosophy and science, including play theories (Aquinas 1963; Aristotle 1941; Darwin 1965), as well as more mechanical ones (Bergson 1913) and a more ‘dispositional’ account (Levinson 1998). In this manner, although attention has been largely ‘marginal’, a wealth of different theories and accounts as to the myriad reasons for what makes laugh and how are still present in the philosophy literature, and they are somewhat ongoing. Nevertheless, a lot of this work was already quite some time ago and has somewhat stagnated. Considering this, and especially given the fact that both humour and what we consider to be funny is constantly varying and evolving, it is high time for some new analyses and accounts to reignite a more general and systematic discussion regarding many elements of this crucial human characteristic and trait. The topic is vast, especially considering the fact that what makes us laugh varies enormously depending on the personal and social situation, as well as culture, upbringing, taste, values and many other factors. Moreover, humour is operative all the way from entertaining and bringing people together on one hand, to the other extreme of stigmatizing, marginalizing and abusing groups on the other. Much more work, research and new ideas are thus needed if we are to further understand this crucial and intricate subdomain in philosophical anthropology. This book aims to kickstart some topics and discussions on this score. It will advance on existing research and theories by providing new perspectives on older theories and historical issues; it will present new and

© Viktoras Bachmetjevas and Daniel O’Shiel, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_002

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original theoretical elements and insights; and it will analyse a good number of the moral, ethical and political elements of various types of humour, both positive and negative. This edition is divided into three main parts. The first part is ‘Humour and the History of Philosophy’ and includes chapters with particularly erudite analyses and explanations of various important philosophical figures and themes with regard to various types of humour both past and present. The second part has chapters on ‘New Theoretical Contributions’ and indeed each one contributes to the ongoing theory or theories of humour in at least one significant way. The last part, ‘Humour, Morality, Feminism and Politics’ contains highly important and applied pieces within these domains, and indeed it discusses at quite some varied length as to how humour, both positive and negative, does and should work in certain social, moral and political areas. We can now give a brief summary of each chapter. Hoinski’s chapter ‘Something Better Than Comedy’ discusses the societal role of humour. He identifies the conservative role of humour, that is, its ability to return the outliers to the social norms or ‘common sense’ as a crucial function of humour in society. Having identified its negative aspects (common sense not always being a force for social good), Hoinski nevertheless argues that this aspect of comedy in essence is a societal force for good. Having said that, the author proposes an additional function for comedy –​the concept of laughter that is not only directed at someone else, but also is directed at itself. Hoinski terms this type of comedy a ‘deep comedy’ and argues that this type of comedy militates against taking oneself too seriously. Sommer’s chapter ‘Sublime, Beautiful, Funny: Humour in §54 of Kant’s Third Critique’ provides a contemporary reading and interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s theory of incongruous humour. Through a detailed analysis of Kant’s two well-​known types of aesthetic judgement –​the beautiful and sublime –​ Sommer investigates whether humour can be treated similarly or seen as akin or a modification of one or both of these. Sommer also analyses Kant’s comments on various types of humour and laughter (wit, naivety and caprice), discusses in depth four contemporary Kantians’ interpretations and reconstructions of Kant’s theory of humour, and also finds his own place amongst these. Ultimately it is argued that Kantian humour and laughter is a ‘species of pure aesthetic judgement in its own right’ where the understanding is given a healthy and pleasurable ‘shake up’ as to its own capacities and expectations, and our reason recognizes and even takes pleasure in this. Bachmetjevas in his chapter ‘The Comic as an Existential Category in Kierkegaard’s Thought’ sets out to re-​evaluate Kierkegaard’s theory of the comic, which for this author serves as the umbrella term for anything that

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evokes or invites laughter. In order to achieve this, he first provides a detailed account of Kierkegaard’s concept of irony, arguing that for Kierkegaard irony can serve either as an existential position which can be situated as a transitory phase between the aesthetic and ethical existence spheres, or as a controlled element within the ethical existence sphere. Second, he provides analysis of Kierkegaard’s understanding of humour. In the latter case, by analogy Kierkegaard argues that humour can serve either as an existential position, situated between the ethical and religious existence spheres, or as an instrument within the religious existence sphere. Ultimately the author argues that Kierkegaard’s concept of the comical, although carrying some characteristics of the incongruity and relief theories of laughter, should be seen as a unique theory, where it is seen as an essential existential category necessary for the development of the self. Opening the second part of the volume, Voltolini’s chapter ‘Prolegomena to a Revised Theory of Humour’ focuses on the incongruity theory of humour, showing its strengths and weaknesses and proposing an update to it. Indeed, although ‘incongruity’ on its own might not be enough for humour, Voltolini argues that paradoxical, absurd and nonsensical incongruities better fit the bill. He also argues for a central role of fictionality in humour, in that logical and moral disengagement thanks to the ‘fictional’ setup allows humour to arise in the first place. Ultimately Voltolini claims there are objective conditions for humour and failures in understanding or enjoying a joke or piece of humour stem from either a gap in a person’s belief or knowledge, or a (sometimes justified) ethical inability to disengage from reality and enter the fictional space of absurd incongruities necessary and sufficient for humour and laughter. Sickinger’s chapter ‘‘Aha!/​Haha! –​That’s a Good One!’ On the Correlation of Laughter and Understanding in Joke Reception’ argues that genuine laughter and understanding occur simultaneously in successful narrative jokes, as opposed to understanding preceding laughter, or understanding being an optional investigative aftereffect of finding something funny. This means both are required for successful joke making, that is, a narrative story which makes its audience laugh or amused with insight. By putting understanding and laughter in jokes on an ‘equal footing’ in this way, Sickinger shows that jokes are equally about entertainment and insight, and thus involve aesthetic and epistemological factors in equal measure working in a close and interesting dynamic. O’Shiel’s ‘Hidden Congruities’ argues for three types throughout phenomena of humour and comedy, as well as for a pluralistic account that does not see the three classical theories as opposing but actually complementary in a more dynamic and layered conception of what makes us laugh and why. On

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top of this, jokes, humour and laughter are seen as all part of a crucial social mechanism for providing necessary relief from daily and personal tensions and drives, and he argues this is best conceived under the rubric of Freudian sublimation. Finally, although superiority elements have been historically used to subjugate and abuse, O’Shiel argues that the tables are finally turning with a new wave of ‘activist’ comedians who are using a type of ‘inverted superiority’ to level the playing field as well as highlight important moral issues and rights. Hirschfield’s chapter ‘Fat Jokes and the Problem of Parody’ argues that a remaining type of morally acceptable prejudiced humour –​fatphobia –​should be viewed more carefully. By introducing a ‘problem of parody’ where the ‘butt’ of the joke can inherently go either way, either reinforcing or critiquing prejudiced humour and behaviour, Hirschfield installs and explains a mechanism of ‘prejudice creep’ with regard to fat jokes, which actually mask unacceptable moral stances (examples: sexism and racism) under one that still is seen as okay (fatphobia). Hirschfield then analyses the main arguments as to why fat jokes might be (more) morally permissible as opposed to sexist or racist jokes, but finds these arguments wanting. Her ‘workaround’ solution is to ‘know one’s audience’ and the context, namely know to which group you are speaking or broadcasting so that the inherent ambiguity of parody –​and the damage it may cause –​is minimized or even eradicated. Walker’s chapter ‘A Funny Taste: Immoral Humour and Unwilling Amusement’ focuses on the issue of finding various immoral jokes and pieces of humour funny. Navigating between two extremes that both overly focus on beliefs for Walker, namely the claim that one’s morals totally condition what one finds funny on one hand, as opposed to the claim that one’s morals have nothing to do with one’s humour on the other, Walker develops a subtle Aristotelian approach which sees one’s sense or taste of humour as a habituated disposition and sensibility developed over time, much like one’s erotic taste. This allows for a middle ground which includes ‘unwilling’ amusement and complicity –​namely finding morally problematic jokes funny –​as well as an argument that one’s taste may become more ‘egalitarian’ over time through a ‘habituation-​by-​representation model’, one which is empirically supported by some developmental psychology. Grigaitė’s chapter ‘Feminism’s Look at Itself: Self-​Hygiene through the Prism of Laughter’ gives an account of the liberating power of feminist laughter and humour. After setting the social ontological scene through some analyses of Judith Butler, where our social lives are a complex intertwinement of expression and non-​comprehension, both inside and out, Grigaitė goes on to

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analyse types of feminist laughter (Irigarary, Cisoux and Kristeva) and ultimately apply the findings to ‘transcendental laughter’, as well as show how a metaphysical version of the incongruity theory can provide the distance needed for a break and freedom from oppressive structural and patriarchal forces. This ultimately leads to the proposition of a ‘liberation theory’ of humour and laughter, which is described and promoted as one that unites rather than divides and destroys. Ceci’s chapter, ‘The Carnival of Populism: Grotesque Leadership’, shows how grotesque humour can be used in populism as a political tool and weapon, specifically embodying attractive and repellent qualities at one and the same time. Ceci first explains the ‘carnivalization of politics’ by focusing on a notion of the grotesque from the Renaissance and particularly a French epic poem Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais. By invoking Bakhtin’s analyses as well, Ceci shows how in carnival atmosphere the usual rules of the game are suspended for joyous and un-​or even anti-​hierarchical frenzy. Then, focusing on ‘the grotesque power of the sovereign’ Ceci shows certain types of kings and sovereigns (e.g. Trump) in fact use various types of mocking, scorn and humour for their advantage both in terms of their followers and detractors, meaning Ceci squarely shows the political force of laughter and various types of comedy, both aggressive and more playful, both externally and inwardly directed, particularly in the context of a now quite dominant populism in today’s political world and climate. Being such a vast topic, this edition by no means pretends to be a comprehensive compendium on the topic of the philosophy of humour, but instead aims to provide some ‘new perspectives’ through various historical, conceptual and moral analyses by talented scholars who come from or traverse both sides of the supposed analytic-​continental ‘divide’. Moreover, because humour is such a specifically human pastime, many of the chapters also broach on significant issues throughout other domains of philosophy (history of philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics), as well as themes and issues in philosophical anthropology more generally. The volume in fact grew quite organically out of a small but highly successful conference organized and held by the editors, and involved almost all of the contributors. It is a diverse group, and indeed it is believed a pluralistic mix of chapters, some of which even straightly disagree with each other, is the best way to get the reflective juices going again on this crucial human activity and subject. Lastly, this edition contains quite a lot of jokes. Some you may find funny, some not or even offensive –​and this is all part of the investigation.

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References

Aquinas T. (1963). Summa Theologica (trans. T. Gilby). New York: McGraw Hill. Aristotle (1941). The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House. Bergson H. (1913). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (trans. C. Brereton and F. Rothwell). London: Macmillan. Darwin C. (1965). The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York: Oxford University Press. Levinson J. (1998). ‘Humour’, in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. E. Craig). London: Routledge: 562–​567. Morreall J. (1983). Taking Laughter Seriously. suny Press. Morreall J. (1987). The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. suny Press. Morreall J. (2009). Comic Relief. A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Wiley-​Blackwell.

pa rt 1 Humour and the History of Philosophy

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­c hapter 1

Something Better Than Comedy David F. Hoinski Abstract This chapter situates comedy and humour in relation to both political life and philosophy. It further introduces two conceptions of comedy, which I call other-​directed comedy and deep comedy. Other-​directed comedy is, I argue, essentially conservative and promotes social cohesion by ridiculing deviations from communal norms. Because philosophy is committed primarily to the good and not to society as such, it follows that the stance of philosophy towards other-​directed comedy is ambivalent and depends upon the stage of the political process. If the social norms that other-​directed comedy serves to reinforce are good, then it is good; otherwise it constitutes an obstacle to political reform and progress. Deep comedy, meanwhile, contrasts sharply with other-​directed comedy because its ridicule is all-​encompassing, taking aim not only at others but at the self itself and its own most dearly held beliefs, customs and so on. Although philosophy has a close affinity with deep comedy, I argue that philosophy turns away from it precisely because philosophy also takes the ephemeral human community seriously and hopes to improve it.

Keywords Bergson –​comedy –​humour –​Hegel –​Nietzsche –​normativity –​Plato –​political philosophy

Le rire et les larmes ne peuvent pas se faire voir dans le paradis de délices. Ils sont également les enfants de la peine. baudelaire 1961: 978

…

There is no denying that in the long run every one of these great teachers of a purpose (of existence) was vanquished by laughter,

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10 Hoinski reason, and nature: the short tragedy always gave way again and returned into the eternal comedy of existence. nietzsche 1974: 75

∵ After a while the repeated caveats that appear at the opening of philosophies of comedy begin themselves to have a comic effect. It is so difficult, famously daunting, they tell us, to construct a philosophy of this protean practice comedy and such related phenomena as humour, laughter and jokes; the reader should adjust their expectations accordingly; it is going to be an uphill climb. Baudelaire (1972: 150) in the midst of his neglected analysis of laughter and comedy anticipates being confronted with an ‘insidious argument’ to the effect that laughter is a diverse phenomenon and that comedy does not admit of a simple account. Nor are the best of the authors on comedy unselfconscious about the comedic dimension of their attempts. Zupančič (2008: 10) refers to the near futility of trying to formulate a concept of comedy, which is ‘notoriously recalcitrant to conceptualization’, but like a good comic protagonist she –​ or something in her –​refuses to surrender the opportunity to engage in ‘philosophy’s most precious intrinsic comedy when it comes to comedy’. Philosophy itself can of course appear comical, and not only when it is dealing explicitly with comedy. Is it any different, after all, with time or god or any of the other topics to which philosophy returns again and again attempting to ‘nail them down’? One thinks of Robert Nozick’s comical characterization of the philosopher at work as frantically battling a bulging object (2013: xxii–​x xiii): You push and shove the material into the rigid area getting it into the boundary on one side, and it bulges out on another. You run around and press in the protruding bulge, producing yet another in another place. So you push and shove and clip off corners from the things so they’ll fit and you press it until finally almost every thing sits unstably more or less in there […] Quickly, you find an angle from which it looks like an exact fit and take a snapshot; at a fast shutter speed before something bulges out too noticeably. Of course this depiction of the philosopher’s activity as cartoonish or Chaplinesque belies the serious side of philosophy, which must also come

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forward to assert its rights against any one-​sided attempt to reduce philosophy to its comic dimensions. Each new author on comedy in any case also ultimately claims to get something right about the subject; and the phenomenon, diverse as it is, proves to be not altogether intractable. Philosophers have in fact managed to offer creative conceptualizations and insightful accounts of comedy. These studies have been far from fruitless and have indeed provided many of the elements that a proper philosophy of comedy would seem to require. In particular the growing literature on comedy –​Gimbel (2018: 81) speaks of ‘the philosophy of comedy community’ –​supports a key distinction that I will develop here between what I call other-​directed (or norm-​conserving) comedy and deep comedy, which is other-​directed, self-​directed and indeed all-​encompassing. Besides introducing these concepts, the main novelty of the present writing, if any, is that it places comedy and humour in relation to politics and philosophy. This approach seems justifiable and also desirable in light of what conceptualization or definition require, which is precisely that the phenomenon in question be defined in relation to other relevant phenomena or practices. It is reasonable to expect that any one concept will require others; phenomena do not exist in isolation; and definition itself requires distinguishing and indeed delimiting one being from (all) others. Although philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and beyond have tended to discuss comedy in relation to other forms of poetry such as epic and tragedy, other philosophers such as Plato and Nietzsche have indicated how the nature of comedy and humour can be brought to light by thinking about their relation to the political community and to philosophy itself. In particular, I place special emphasis on the social or political function of other-​directed comedy and how this conditions the stance of philosophy towards comedy. Other-​directed comedy is, I contend, essentially conservative in that it promotes social and/​or political cohesion by reinforcing communal norms. It will be noted how this thesis both resembles and differs from Bergson’s argument in Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, originally published in 1900. For while I broadly agree with Bergson that laughter as a response to the comic promotes social cohesion and (somewhat more questionably) the vitality of society, I call attention much more than he did to the negative side of laughter’s power because I question much more than he did the assumption that the cohesion of society is always a good. Although certain deviations from the norm such as types of vice or wickedness may deserve to be mocked, not every deviation from the norm is negative, and sometimes society really ought to be changed for the better. Critchley (2002: 11), who despite finding other potentialities of humour (messianic, phenomenological, ‘pure’,

12 Hoinski etc.), seems to indicate the essential characteristic of other-​directed comedy that I have identified when he observes that ‘most humour […] simply seeks to reinforce consensus and in no way seeks to criticize the established order or change the situation in which we find ourselves’. Hence, whether or not it is true that comedy possesses ‘a truly subversive edge’ (Zupančič 2008: 5), other-​ directed comedy appears first of all as a fundamentally conservative practice, which is the view I develop here. The familiar observation that comedy makes fun of the old-​fashioned as well as the newfangled does not detract from this thesis; on the contrary, it suggests all the more poignantly that other-​directed comedy functions to conserve social norms by mocking deviations from them. Here it is important to note that the ‘other’ of other-​directed comedy need not be altogether outside a given society but simply outside its sometimes explicit though often tacit norms. Northrop Frye has observed (1957: 43) that ‘the theme of the comic is the integration of society’, which has as its corollary, I contend, a fidelity to such integration and hence a certain hostility to change and difference. This hostility may be especially apparent in cases where the proposed changes to the political community are of a fundamental sort, as in the case of Socrates’ suggested political reforms in Republic Book 5. As I will argue, it is particularly in relation to political philosophy that the conservative function of other-​ directed comedy comes to light. It is, moreover, due to the conservative nature of other-​directed comedy that philosophy comes into conflict with it, at least initially. Admittedly the foregoing suggests a perhaps counterintuitive concept of comedy, since comedy might be thought to undermine social norms rather than reinforce them, especially in cases where comedians, comic poets, screenwriters and so forth take aim at the norms of their own societies. If other-​directed comedy is the most common kind of humour, it seems that it cannot be the only kind. Here I would like to introduce an extreme conception of comedy, which I call ‘deep comedy’. Deep comedy contrasts sharply with other-​directed comedy because rather than making only the other an object of ridicule it also mocks itself. This view of comedy was outlined by Nietzsche in The Gay Science and also has a profound affinity with what Critchley (2002: 111) calls ‘the highest laugh’, ‘the laugh that laughs at the laugh’, topics to which I shall return below. For now suffice it to say that deep comedy presupposes a standpoint outside all human norms including those that are most intimate to us. This is nevertheless a standpoint that we as human beings can occupy. Indeed, the possibility of self-​directed comedy points to a peculiar feature of human psychology or anthropology, namely the capacity of human beings for ‘reflection’ or, in other words, our ability to view ourselves and our situation

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as it were from outside. Whereas other-​directed comedy takes aim at people or practices that deviate from social norms, self-​directed comedy involves taking the self as another, one’s own self and social norms as objects of comedy. This involves an interesting twist to the well-​known superiority theory of comedy (see, e.g.: Gimbel 2018: 7–​10), namely that one assumes a position of superiority relative not only to others but also to oneself, to one’s own beliefs, customs and so forth. Nietzsche (1974: 74) notes the great difficulty in taking such a stance: ‘[t]‌o laugh at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh out of the whole truth –​to do that even the best so far lacked sufficient sense for the truth, and the most gifted had too little genius for that’. Bergson for his part seems to have believed it to be impossible (1956: 169), ‘for we are never ridiculous except in some point that remains hidden from our own consciousness’. However, it appears fairly clear that we are capable of mocking and laughing at ourselves. It is a remarkable feature of human subjectivity that we are able to take a position superior to ourselves from which we can laugh –​or at least smile –​at ourselves. Whereas other-​directed comedy serves merely to confirm us in our beliefs and prejudices, deep comedy spares neither the self nor the other, gets to the bottom of things and pulls the rug out from under them. In developing these two conceptions of comedy in relation to political life, I will also bring a certain concept of philosophy into play derived from Plato, who views philosophy as aiming to improve the polis, that is, the political community or society broadly understood. I argue that insofar as philosophy takes the ephemeral political community seriously it is ambivalent towards other-​directed comedy, and furthermore that philosophy’s stance towards this kind of comedy differs depending on the stage of the political project. If, however, other-​directed comedy has its valid (philosophical) uses, deep comedy appears more problematic and may be viewed as a defective stance in light of the goal of taking the ephemeral political community seriously and working to improve it. Deep comedy that knows no bounds is, moreover, inconsistent with the goal of ‘unity’ or ‘harmony’, both individual and social, posited by Plato. Comedy always involves a doubling and is hence to be mostly excluded from the harmonious soul and polis. In order to develop the view that deep comedy is a defective stance, I draw on the philosophies of comedy of two nineteenth-​century thinkers, Hegel and Baudelaire, both of whom argue that comedy is ultimately inconsistent with the best human life. This is not only because deep comedy appears to ignore the rights of the serious side of human nature, but also and more profoundly the problem is that deep comedy presupposes and indeed thrives on a split or doubling of human nature that is to be overcome, on Hegel’s and Plato’s account through philosophy, and on Baudelaire’s through a mystical redemption of human nature.

14 Hoinski Finally, it is important to say a word about the similarity between political philosophy and certain kinds of comedies. If comedy, for example in the case of Shakespearean drama (Frye 1957: 163–​171), often depicts the replacement of a corrupt society by a better one, this nevertheless presupposes a normative vision of how things ought to be. The actually existing corrupt society at the beginning of the play is taken to be a deviation from the proper social norm, and the action of the play portrays the various means by which the corrupt society is supplanted by a proper one. Here we may see other-​directed comedy comes very close to political philosophy both in criticizing a bad society and in sketching a vision of a better one, which suggests that it may be difficult in some cases to distinguish between political philosophy and other-​directed comedies. Indeed, philosophy and comedy can sometimes resemble one another quite closely. 1

Remarks on Terminology

Due to the peculiar politics of our era, it is desirable to say a word about my use of the word ‘conservative’ to describe other-​directed comedy’s function. In the sense in which I use the term, conservatism need not be a negative or reactionary stance. On the contrary, if the society or the individual norms it seeks to conserve are good, then conservatism is also good. The idea of conservatism as conserving what is good about society (I am tempted to call this ‘true conservatism’) and its affinity with other-​directed comedy will become clearer in the discussion of the role of comedy in the imagined city of Plato’s Laws. For now we may simply observe that conservatism in the sense I use the term is essentially morally neutral, indeed very much like other-​directed comedy itself. What matters is whether these attitudes and the practices they engender serve the good or not. If conservatism is also psychologically (and metaphysically) necessary to the existence of society, this does not mean that conservatism is necessary or even desirable in every case. Sometimes societies ought to be changed in part or more comprehensively, in which case conservatism and other-​directed comedy can only appear as obstacles to progress. It is also necessary to say something about how I use the word ‘comedy’. In a recent and very engaging book on the topic, Gimbel draws a sharp distinction between comedy and humour. Amongst other considerations, he insists (2018: 78) that comedy proper requires a dedicated space, for example, a theatre or comedy club that is furthermore governed by a special social contract between audience and performers. Obviously I am not using comedy in this restricted sense, but rather in the broad sense in which Bergson speaks of ‘the

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comical’, which we can and do encounter anywhere and everywhere within society. Gimbel in any case recognizes a broader field within which humour as opposed to comedy may work. If his theory of humour nevertheless remains rather restricted it is because his approach is to define humour in itself rather than with respect to other relevant phenomena such as politics and philosophy, which is the approach I take. Analogous with Augustine’s worry about the ‘contagion’ of the theatre, furthermore, Gimbel is also (rightly) worried about the contagion of humour. In other words, he wants to demarcate a space for seriousness where one cannot simply have recourse to the justification that they were ‘just joking’ and where other kinds of extra-​comedic social contract obtain. Let us now turn to a consideration of comedy in Plato, which will show how philosophy relates to other-​directed comedy differently at different moments of the political process. This is a clear case, as we shall see, of adversaries becoming friends at the opportune moment. 2

Comedy in Plato

Plato’s dialogic universe comes into contact with comedy at many points and also occasionally employs the genres of comedy for its own purposes (Nightingale 1995: 172–​192). We know of the apocryphal tales about Plato’s special liking for comedy, for example (ibid.: 173) that he kept copies of Aristophanes at his bedside or ‘under his pillow’. At the same time the tradition suggests Plato’s ambivalence. Diogenes Laertius for example shares a report from Heraclides to the effect that ‘as a young man Plato was so reserved and decorous that he was never seen laughing immoderately’ (2018: 146). We may nonetheless imagine a smiling Plato in Critchley’s sense of the smile as ‘powerfully emblematic of the human, the quiet acknowledgement of one’s limitedness’ (2002: 109). At one crucial juncture in Laws, Plato has the Athenian remark that much of what is usually taken to be serious in human life is not essentially serious and that humans would do better to live their lives in play. Plato nonetheless suggests in Philebus that both tragedy and comedy are definitive of human existence. Political philosophy as developed by Plato relates to comedy differently depending on the stage of the political project, and we may distinguish two distinct moments. At first, when philosophers attempt to remake the political order in accordance with their orientation towards the good, comedy comes on the scene as inimical to progress inasmuch as it ridicules proposed changes to political norms. These changes certainly fall under the heading of ‘other’, since

16 Hoinski they differ from the established practices of the political community. At a later stage, however, once the new political order is founded, philosophy makes an alliance with comedy and for the same reason that it opposed comedy at the earlier stage, namely, because comedy contributes to shoring up the existing political order. It is worth remarking that Plato does not propose the alliance with comedy in Republic but only in Laws, generally acknowledged to be the last dialogue Plato wrote before his death. This is consistent with the idea that Plato’s thought developed in certain respects over the course of his career (see, e.g.: Bobonich 2002: 6), though it should be said that the function of comedy in Laws coheres perfectly with the understanding of comedy’s nature that we already find in Republic. Perhaps the most significant inimical encounter with comedy in Plato appears in the crucial fifth book of Republic, in which Socrates proposes the three major reforms of the political community. The comic poets emerge in Socrates’ mind as the foremost opponents of these reforms because he fears that they will nip them in the bud through ridicule. ‘Since we have started to discuss the matter, we must not be afraid of the various jokes that the wits will make […] about this sort of change’ (2004a: 452b). Here we may refer again to Bergson’s account of laughter. ‘Laughter is’, he contends (1956: 187), ‘above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it’. The philosopher as political reformer, however, must take certain ‘liberties’ with society. Bergson at one point in his famous essay seems to have recognized philosophy’s peculiar position in relation to society, and in one passage in particular he appears to take the side of society and laughter against the philosopher. ‘Each member (of society)’, he writes (ibid.: 148): Must be ever attentive to his social surroundings; he must model himself on his environment; in short, he must avoid shutting himself up in his own peculiar character as a philosopher in his ivory tower. It is not surprising, therefore, that Socrates should argue for a suspension of joking and laughter in order not to model himself on his environment but rather to search however gropingly for another standard. As everyone knows, fear of ridicule can stunt intellectual growth, and in order to proceed at all we must, he says, ‘ask these wits not to do their own job, but to be serious’ (2004a: 452c). Socrates believes that the comic poets, the wits and wisecrackers can be overruled in part by an appeal to history, adducing an example in which the comedians were overcome through arguments and a new norm was

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successfully introduced into Athenian society, namely the practice of naked exercise adopted from the Cretans and Spartans (ibid.: 452c–e): We will remind the jokers that it is not long since Greeks thought it shameful and ridiculous (as many barbarians still do) for men to be seen stripped, and that when first the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians began the gymnasiums, the wits of the time had the opportunity to make a comedy [kōmōdein] of it all […] But when it became clear, I take it, to those who employed these practices, that it was better to strip than to cover up all such parts, the laughter in the eyes faded away because of what the arguments had proved to be best. And this showed that it is a fool who finds anything ridiculous [geloion] except what is bad, or tries to raise a laugh [gelōtopoiein] at the sight of anything except what is stupid or bad, or –​putting it the other way around –​who takes seriously [spoudazei] any standard of what is beautiful other than what is good. The better practice can thus triumph despite the conservatism of other-​ directed comedy, and Socrates hopes this will be the case with respect to his own proposals. But the spectre of laughter nonetheless continues to haunt the discussion of Book 5, and Socrates remains aware of the threat of ridicule as he introduces the political reforms he believes to be required for the good city to come about. The first of these reforms is that women and men should receive the same education and have the same job opportunities, which was of course a far cry from the actual social arrangements of ancient Athens where women were virtually excluded from public life. One can easily imagine the field day ancient Athenian jokers would have had mocking this proposal, especially since for Socrates the education in question involved the naked gymnastics mentioned above. Socrates nevertheless offers arguments that attempt to prove that equal education and job opportunities for women would be best, which is certainly our own belief as well. Indeed, for us the question of women’s education can serve as a clear example of how other-​directed comedy can work to conserve inferior, unjust and irrational social norms. Socrates’ second reform requires the abolition of the nuclear family with the community as a whole holding children in common, which I will not comment on here except to say that this proposal is meant to call attention to the tension between private and public interests. As perhaps the most controversial part of Plato’s entire Republic, it remains unclear to us whether we should regard it with seriousness, laughter or horror; and perhaps some mixture of these three is the appropriate response.

18 Hoinski Finally, the last and biggest reform is the proposal that the rulers of the polis should be philosophers. The proposal that philosophers should rule or that the rulers should philosophize may appear especially ridiculous, and indeed it will be the burden of Books 6 and 7 to describe the true philosopher who would by no means be a laughable ruler. If philosophy recognizes comedy as an obstacle to political reform, comedy returns the favour by displaying hostility towards philosophy, classically exemplified by Aristophanes’ depiction of Socrates in Clouds. Aristophanes wrote two versions of the play with different endings, the first (now lost) in which the philosophers of The Thinkery triumphed and the second (which we have) in which their school was burned down and they were beaten and perhaps murdered. Despite these different endings, it is hard to imagine that the central characterization of philosophy differed greatly from one version to the other. It is clear in the version we have that Aristophanes depicted philosophy as ridiculously at odds with conventional views and practices. Suspended above the stage by a crane, Socrates proclaims that Zeus does not exist and that the Clouds are the true gods. However flexible ancient Athenian religion may have been, denying existence to the chief deity would have been shocking. Perhaps it is true, as Strauss claimed (1966: 5), that ‘the philosopher is necessarily ridiculous in the eyes of the multitude and therefore a natural subject for comedy’. If today some of us believe that so-​called public philosophy is possible and desirable, it is nevertheless the case that there is a side of philosophy which cannot but appear foreign to the concerns of most people and everyday life. A normal person magically transported to a paper presentation in analytic philosophy or a seminar on Hegel’s Logic would have difficulty making heads or tails of it. The speakers might be highly animated but their speeches would be for the most part unintelligible. Intellectuals in general, especially the absentminded professor, are a good subject for comedy and can easily be made to appear ridiculous in comparison to the down-​home, no-​nonsense wisdom of the average person. In a rather Bergsonian vein, Critchley suggests (2002: 18–​19) how comedy ‘returns us to common sense’. But it was ancient Greek ‘common sense’ that, for example, women should not receive the same education and job opportunities as men, which should suggest for us the dark potentials of common sense. In the US we recall the extremely offensive and derogatory portrayals of African Americans through the long history of minstrelsy, caricature and so on, which reinforced the ‘common sense’ that black people were inferior to whites and also specially laughable. Common sense is essentially conservative, and conservatism as I have argued is bad if the society it seeks to conserve is so.

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Yet once a reasonably good society is founded, Plato argues that philosophy should form an alliance with comedy, and in Magnesia, the city constructed in speech in Plato’s Laws, comedy has a special place. Although tragic drama is prohibited (just as it is in the Kallipolis of Republic), comic drama is permitted in Magnesia because it can serve as a means of ridiculing vicious behaviour, hence enforcing the good norms of the community (Plato 2004b: 816e): Now anyone who means to acquire a discerning judgement will find it impossible to understand the serious side of things in isolation from their ridiculous aspect, or indeed appreciate anything at all except in the light of its opposite. But if we intend to acquire virtue, even on a small scale, we can’t be serious and comic too, and this is precisely why we must learn to recognize buffoonery, to avoid being trapped by our ignorance of it into doing or saying anything ridiculous when there’s no call for it. Such mimicry must be left to slaves and hired aliens, and no one must ever take it at all seriously. Clearly this passage articulates a crucial philosophical point of method, stating that things cannot be understood merely in themselves but require contrast with their opposites in order to be comprehended. In this particular case, the citizens of Magnesia must be acquainted with stupidity, cowardice, licentiousness and vice in general not only in order to guard against them but also for the sake of understanding what seriousness itself actually is. Other-​directed comedy can thus serve a positive and indeed prosocial function provided it is properly regulated and only ridicules what is truly bad. In a curious twist, Plato has the Athenian insist that the greatest variety of comedies be performed, playing endless variations on the theme of human vice. The reason for this is that if the same or similar comedies were performed repeatedly, there is a danger that despite the lawgiver’s intention the citizens would acquire models of bad behaviour in their souls, which is also why Plato only permits ‘slaves and foreigners’ to perform comedies. In no case should the citizens of a good city even imitate bad actions for fear that they might themselves acquire harmful patterns of conduct. 3

Deep Comedy

In the first section of The Gay Science, Nietzsche proposes an extreme view of comedy, counterposing it to all human systems of norms, which are taken seriously for a while before being overcome by ‘Aeschylus’ eternal waves of

20 Hoinski laughter’. Elaborating on this theme, he contends that ‘there is no denying that in the long run every one of these great teachers of a purpose (of existence) was vanquished by laughter, reason, and nature: the short tragedy always gave way again and returned into the eternal comedy of existence’ (1974: 75). Nothing human appears serious from this perspective, which Nietzsche describes as ‘eternal’ and which may be identified with nature. Deep comedy would thus seem to be corrosive of all human norms, a kind of laughing nihilism; for how can we take seriously what we understand to be ultimately unserious? We may contrast deep comedy with the other-​directed comedy outlined above, because other-​directed comedy does take social norms seriously, works to conserve them, and militates against innovation. Deep comedy, by contrast, would appear to submit everything to a Dionysian riot which is nonetheless and indeed precisely for this reason divine. However, this ‘eternal comedy’ as Nietzsche realizes still has to be seen from a perspective, and this is crucial; there is simply no such thing as a ‘view from nowhere’ on Nietzsche’s (or my) account. Deep comedy would seem, moreover, to be very close to philosophy and indeed presupposes or is itself a philosophical view. Freud (2009: 253), for instance, gives the example of a man condemned to death who comments on the clement weather as he is being walked to the gallows: ‘the week is beginning nicely’. What is it in the man that is able to make this joke? In his analysis of Freud’s text, Critchley (2002: 94–​96, 102–​103) calls this element ‘superego ii’, which he describes as a consoling superego as opposed to the more familiar punishing superego or ‘superego I’. However this may be, there is something in us that can joke and smile even in the face of death (and other perceived disasters). Deep comedy thus resembles a properly philosophical stance towards the realm of finite, ephemeral beings. And yet despite its apparent affinity with deep comedy and the view of nature it presupposes, philosophy would nevertheless seem to resist identifying with it completely, and on my argument this is precisely due to philosophy’s care for and commitment to improving the ephemeral human order. Philosophy, in other words, takes the human things seriously in a way that deep comedy does not and cannot. In this respect, philosophy is tragic in the sense of the term elaborated by Nietzsche in Gay Science §1, that is, because it takes humanlife seriously and hence wants ‘to make sure that we do not laugh at existence, or at ourselves’, or at the philosopher as ‘teacher of the purpose of existence’. Here it ought to be said that if there are many modes in which the inhuman appears in humanity, the stance of always joking, of trying to find the humorous in every situation, is surely among them. This is perhaps the reason why we

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find such behaviour ultimately annoying, that is, because it does not recognize the rights of the serious side of human nature or life. Humans are also to be sure serious animals, and as Nietzsche further remarks we continue to live in the age of tragedies and presumably will continue to do so for a long time to come. Human beings, in other words, persist in viewing certain beliefs and situations as no laughing matter. As we all know, religionists including today the proponents of scientism can be very serious and passionate about their beliefs. Nietzsche, however, maintains that there is no serious in itself: the serious is only relative to groups and individuals, which is yet another meaning of the saying that ‘God is dead’. This view contrasts sharply with that of Plato who hence rejects deep comedy while considering other-​directed comedy as a potential ally in defending the truly serious goals of becoming a good person and forming a good political community. Comedy’s essential limitation is that it always does the same thing, regardless of whether the order it supplements is good or bad or regardless of whether it submits everything, existence itself, to ridicule. Repetition is thus essential to comedy in more ways than one, and indeed comedy is itself comical in its endless and indeed manic repetition of the joking stance. What distinguishes other-​directed comedy from deep comedy is only that the former recognizes a limit to its ridicule; it may joke just as endlessly, but always with regard to its norm-​conserving function. Deep comedy as the superlative manifestation of comedy is distinguished by knowing no bounds. Deep comedy might nonetheless seem to be in some sense fundamentally optimistic: despite human flaws and the limitations of our condition, everything works out in the end or in any case it was all much ado about nothing. This is perhaps a conception of comedy rooted in the ‘song of the village’, tied to cycles of nature which figure prominently in agrarian life and which underlie the changes of human life. Deep comedy, in other words, might be seen to point to a more fundamental order that underlies the shifting sands of human history and political life, and in this it would once again approach very nearly to philosophy. Philosophy is indeed conditioned by a fundamental duality between theory and practice, the eternal and the ephemeral. This persistent tension within philosophy itself may be brought out further in connection with deep comedy. Philosophy has an affinity with deep comedy inasmuch as it strives to understand and elucidate enduring patterns within nature. But insofar as philosophy is political, it must keep deep comedy at arms’ length and partner with tragic seriousness. The idea that things go on no matter what, that there is, in other words, something indestructible in the order of nature of which humans are a part, militates against taking ephemeral political matters seriously. In the

22 Hoinski history of philosophy, both ‘eastern’ and ‘western’, there has been and remains a strong tendency to go along with deep comedy in this respect. At the same time, and whether we are talking about Plato or Confucius, philosophy has never been able to entirely renounce the seriousness of ephemeral political matters or, in other words, to assume the political quietism that would seem to follow naturally from the standpoint of deep comedy. Relative to the project of improving the political community, perhaps no idea is more subversive than the belief that ‘it all works out in the end’, no matter what. Although philosophers have never been entirely sure whether or not in attempting to reform the political community they are banging their heads against the proverbial wall, the idea nevertheless persists within philosophy that a better political order is possible. It is for this reason that although he permits comedy in the Magnesia of Laws, Plato has the Athenian identify the city itself as a tragedy and indeed the greatest one, with both lawgivers and citizens as the consummate tragedians. Tragedy here means precisely the earnestness of human life, taking it seriously even despite the fact Plato also acknowledges that compared to the gods or nature it is not all that serious. 4

Beyond Comedy?

In his unfortunately much neglected essay on ‘The Essence of Laughter’, Baudelaire develops an essentially negative view of comedy, arguing that ‘the comic is one of the clearest marks of Satan in man’ (1972: 145). Citing the well-​known superiority theory of comedy, which ‘is not all that profound and does not take us very far’, Baudelaire asks rhetorically whether ‘there is a more deplorable phenomenon than weakness delighting at weakness?’ (ibid.: 146). Surely there is something pathetic about idiots laughing at other idiots, to say nothing of the even worse case in which idiots laugh at decent people merely because they are different. In contrast to this sorry spectacle, Baudelaire cites (ibid.: 141–​142) approvingly the saying that ‘the wise person laughs only with fear and trembling’ and notes that ‘the sage of all sages, the Incarnate Word, has never laughed’. Indeed, ‘in the eyes of Him who knows and can do all things, the comic does not exist’. This expresses a very different metaphysical view from the one Nietzsche calls eternal laughter, and indeed it takes aim precisely at the doubling of human subjectivity which Nietzsche’s view requires. Baudelaire’s conception in fact has much in common with Hegel’s philosophical view, in which comedy appears as the last moment of art prior to the transition to religion and then philosophy. Although art, religion and philosophy have the same content on Hegel’s account, namely ‘truth as the

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absolute object of consciousness’ (1975: 101), each one has a different form and it is only through the highest form, philosophy, that spirit is reconciled with itself and the world and thus comes to be beyond comedy and humour. Within the Christian context presupposed by Baudelaire, laughter and comedy appear as marks of a fallen humanity, and the Fall always means first and foremost division or doubling and hence loss of a postulated primary unselfconsciousness or unity. This fall is repeated in the development of human beings from childhood to maturity and one need not subscribe to any particular theology in order to accept this view. As Hegel puts the point, ‘in the spiritual nature of man duality and inner conflict burgeon’ (1975: 97). Baudelaire, however, imagines a simple person unaccustomed to the caricatures and other such features of the 19th-​century European press, who would simply not know how to feel superior and to laugh at such things. Baudelaire contrasts laughter with joy, the latter being ‘a unity’, whereas ‘laughter is the expression of a double or contradictory feeling’ (1972: 150). A sense of humour is a human accomplishment, even if on Baudelaire’s account it is a negative one. Humans are double in this sense, too: infinitely great in comparison to nonhuman animals and infinitely wretched in comparison to the absolute being. Interestingly nonhuman animals and the absolute being coincide perfectly in that neither the one nor the other laughs. It is only humans who laugh and are laughable, as Bergson too noted (see Emily Herring’s fine discussion of this theme, 2020). Yet if laughter is a product of the original doubling of humanity, Baudelaire also holds out hope that ‘the phenomena produced by the Fall will become the means of redemption’ (1972: 143) and admits that laughter ‘sometimes softens man’s heart’ (ibid.). Like Hegel, Baudelaire considers the goal of humanlife and history to be the redemption of unity albeit at a higher stage than that represented by the primordial unselfconsciousness. For both Hegel and Baudelaire, becoming like a child again is not the same thing as simply remaining a child. Perhaps with the ‘death of God’ we have also lost the hope or aspiration towards such unity, so that the best we can do is enjoy our doubleness as with Freud’s condemned joker. The ability of the human to transcend its own limitations through joking about and, as Critchley suggests, smiling at its fate is indeed a remarkable capacity even if it still bespeaks ‘the dark heart of humour, what an oddity the human being is in the universe’ (Critchley 2002: 50). Is deep comedy the highest standpoint that human beings can attain? Hegel suggests that it is ultimately the task of philosophy or cognition to heal the wound brought about by the doubling of human nature, while Baudelaire holds out hope for a miraculous redemption beyond our laughing, crying state.

24 Hoinski Laughing at others, as Baudelaire suggests, is not admirable. Nietzsche meanwhile suggests that one of the greatest abilities and one to which a human being can only aspire is to laugh at oneself ‘out of the whole truth’. This would require a doubling of the self perhaps along the lines of that we find suggested by Freud in ‘On Humour’. What is it in us that laughs at ourself in this kind of laughter? This would seem to be a self above the self; or is it really the case that, as Critchley suggests, the laugher and the object of laughter can be the same, ‘the laugh that laughs at the laugh?’ 5

Conclusion

To quote Bergson one last time, laughter as the response to the comic ‘undoubtedly exercises a useful (social) function’ (1956: 188), in particular ‘by checking the outer manifestations of certain failings’ (ibid.). There is simply no society possible in the absence of means of promoting social cohesion, of which comedy is one. Problems begin, however, when we begin to probe the phenomenon of society itself. Social cohesion may be a good, but it is clearly not good without qualification. Whatever criterion of goodness or justice we may subscribe to (I think we should adhere to the true one), it seems clear that actual human societies are imperfect with respect to the best we can think and imagine. And who decides who gets to count as a member of a particular society? The ridicule of people who do things differently is far from universally admirable. Plato, as Nightingale has so ably demonstrated, criticized comedy and its makers for precisely this reason, namely that they do not know what is actually deserving of ridicule. Insofar as comedians are simply comedians, they are like machines who either ridicule what is different or, as in the case of deep comedy, ridicule everything including themselves. Comedy as comedy does not know when and where to stop. Society itself may have some inkling of comedy’s lack of measure, which is why comedy is to some extent quarantined to certain dedicated spaces, comedy clubs, theatres, particular television shows or what have you. Humour may be intentional, conspicuous, playful and clever but still not good, for that would require it only to ridicule those practices which are truly deserving of mockery. Deep comedy I have suggested is related to other-​directed, norm-​conserving comedy in that both types aim to ridicule and provoke either laughter or a smile. However, deep comedy does not aim only at others whether internal or external to a given society; it also takes aim at oneself, at one’s own beliefs and practices. Deep comedy militates against us taking ourselves seriously. That this can be salutary is beyond doubt, but when it seeks an unlimited extension

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it does violence to the serious side of human nature that does not want to laugh but instead hopefully works for something better.

References

Baudelaire C. (1961). Oeuvres complètes. Paris: Bibliothèque de la pléiade. Baudelaire C. (1972). Selected Writings on Art and Literature (trans. P. E. Charvet). Penguin Classics. Bergson H. (1956). ‘Laughter’, in Comedy. Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Bobonich C. (2002). Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Critchley S. (2002). On Humour. London and New York: Routledge. Diogenes Laertius (2018). Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (trans. Pamela Mensch). Oxford University Press. Freud S. (2009). Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten /​ Der Humor. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Frye N. (1957). Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Gimbel S. (2018). Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. London and New York: Routledge. Hegel G. W. F. (1975). Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art (trans. T. M Knox), 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Herring E. (2020). ‘Laughter is vital’, Aeon. Accessed 28/​7/​2021 (https://​aeon​.co​/ess​ ays​/for​-henri​-berg​son​-laugh​ter​-is​-what​-keeps​-us​-elas​tic​-and​-free)​ . Last accessed on 19/​5/​23. Nietzsche F. (1974). The Gay Science (trans. Walter Kaufmann). New York: Vintage Books. Nightingale A. (1995). Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. Nozick R. (2013). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. Plato (2004a). Republic (trans. C. D. C. Reeve). Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company. Plato (2004b). Laws (trans. Trevor J. Saunders). Penguin Classics. Strauss L. (1966). Socrates and Aristophanes. New York and London: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers. Zupančič, A. (2008). The Odd One In: On Comedy. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The mit Press.

­c hapter 2

Sublime, Beautiful, Funny: Humour in §54 of Kant’s Third Critique David Sommer Abstract This chapter examines the role of humour in §54 of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in relation to reconstructive readings provided by Kantian scholars. While Kant claims that humour is primarily an irrational, corporeal phenomenon, these scholars have argued that his discussion of humour suggests otherwise and they have proposed readings according to which humour constitutes a pure aesthetic judgement akin to those of beauty and the sublime. This issue is investigated over the course of four sections. First, I briefly sketch Kant’s two types of pure aesthetic judgement. Second, I summarize Kant’s discussion of laughter in §54. Third, I debate some of the reconstructions that have been given in the scholarship that attempt to accord a more important role to humour within Kant’s project: John Marmysz’ interpretation of the funny as an unthreatening form of the sublime; Annie Hounsokou’s interpretation of the funny as a species of both the beautiful and the sublime; Peter T. Giamaro’s claim that the funny is the most basic aesthetic judgement; and James Creed Meredith’s suggestion that the funny should be seen as a third and distinct type of aesthetic judgement. I conclude by proposing a reconstructive reading that draws on Meredith’s and Giamaro’s accounts while avoiding the problems highlighted.

Keywords humour –​incongruity –​Kant –​transcendental idealism

1

Introduction

Traditionally, humour has had a rather bad reputation in philosophy, to the extent that John Morreall speaks of a rejection of humour in Western thought which is expressed both in the relative lack of scholarly attention that has been accorded to this subject as well as in the moral condemnations that we

© David Sommer, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_004

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frequently find when philosophers and theologians have turned their attention to it (Morreall 1989: 244). Morreall highlights three main objections that have been posed to the value of humour, of which I will mention two here. The first, and arguably most important, of these objections is the claim that humour is fundamentally hostile. Perhaps the most famous expression of this is found in Hobbes’s claim that ‘the passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly’ (Hobbes 1966: 46). This so-​called superiority theory of humour essentially reduces all humour to ridicule. Immanuel Kant is often cited as a pioneer of what we now call incongruity theories of humour, which posit that amusement and laughter are elicited by experiences that confound our expectations in an absurd manner (see also: Voltolini in this volume). Kant puts forward this theory in a brief section of his Critique of the Power of Judgement. Morreall claims that conceiving of laughter and humour in this way rendered this phenomenon and its study more acceptable, given that it severed its alleged essential link to antisocial feelings of hostility. However, even Kant diminishes the importance of humour with respect to the primary phenomenon of interest in the third Critique, namely pure aesthetic judgement, by ultimately rooting the pleasure we derive from it in bodily processes. In this manner, his account resembles so-​called relief theories which interpret laughter as some kind of hydraulic discharge of physical or psychological energy that serves to relieve tension from our strained nervous system. However, such theories fall prey to Morreall’s second major objection to humour, which claims that humour is an irrational phenomenon, residing entirely in our emotional, affective or corporeal constitution, and lacking any rational function or value (Morreall 1989: 249). Some Kantian scholars have since argued that Kant is hereby not only doing an injustice to humour, but he is also doing so by his own standards. These scholars have therefore proposed different approaches to conceive of the judgement that something is funny as a pure aesthetic judgement, akin to the judgement that something is beautiful or sublime. Since Kant ascribes rational and even moral functions to pure aesthetics judgements, these readings further seek to establish that humour can likewise be seen as playing an important role in Kant’s conception of human rationality. This chapter will examine the role of humour in Kant’s third Critique over the course of three main sections. First, I will briefly sketch Kant’s two types of pure aesthetic judgement, concerning the beautiful and the sublime (§2). Since aesthetic judgements constitute a species of judgement which Kant contrasts with determinative, or ordinary empirical judgement, this section

28 Sommer will first outline this type of judgement. Second, I will summarize Kant’s discussion of laughter in §54 of his third Critique (§3). Third, I will discuss some of the reconstructions provided in the scholarship which attempt to accord a more important role to humour within Kant’s project: John Marmysz’ interpretation of the funny as an unthreatening form of the sublime (§4.1); Annie Hounsokou’s interpretation of the funny as a species of both the beautiful and the sublime (§4.2); Peter T. Giamaro’s claim that the funny is the most basic aesthetic judgement (§4.3); and James Creed Meredith’s suggestion that the funny should be seen as a third and distinct type of aesthetic judgement (§4.4). I will conclude by proposing a reconstructive reading which draws on Meredith’s and Giamaro’s accounts while avoiding the problems highlighted in the previous section (§5). 2

Pure Aesthetic Judgement and Ordinary Cognition

Kant’s discussion of aesthetic judgement occurs in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, the third and final Critique. While the first Critique provides an account of the laws and principles of the theoretical employment of reason that concerns the empirical, sensible domain of natural law, the second Critique deals with reason in its practical employment and hence concerns the supersensible laws of freedom and morality. In the third Critique, Kant aims to bridge the gulf between these two seemingly incongruous perspectives by showing how we can experience nature as a domain which allows for both the mechanical law of theoretical reason, and the freedom demanded by our moral, practical rationality. He argues that judgements of beauty and sublimity concern such judgements. Before considering aesthetic judgements, I will very briefly sketch the cognitive activity which occurs in our standard empirical judgements, with which aesthetic judgements can be seen to contrast, as well as give a brief account of the theory of faculties in terms of which this activity is articulated. Kant depicts the different activities and products of our mind in terms of faculties, or mental capacities, and their interaction. These faculties are not only postulated to account for the possibility of different mental activities, but also have a normative function insofar as they prescribe a priori laws which govern their proper exercise and with which their representational products must accord. In the case of empirical cognition, Kant depicts an interaction between the faculties of sensibility, imagination and the understanding which, if carried out successfully, results in a judgement through which a perceived particular object is subsumed under a general conceptual rule. Sensibility is

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our receptive capacity to be affected by objects, whereby a manifold or multiplicity of sensations is ‘given’ to our perception. The imagination, a faculty which mediates between sensibility and understanding, combines this multiplicity of sensory impressions into a perceptual schema of a particular spatiotemporal but conceptually undetermined object. The understanding, our faculty of thought and judgement, grasps this particular as falling under a general rule, which Kant calls a concept. Concepts do not just label a given particular but serve as principles of unity through which our thought combines the sensible manifold as a determinate object of experience. Kant also calls this process ‘determinative judgement’. While the a priori laws of sensibility prescribe that all objects of empirical cognition must be determined as located in space and time, those of the understanding further determine them as persisting substances with changing properties, causally interacting with one another according to mechanical laws. There is consequently an a priori conceptual framework ascribed to our understanding that limits the domain of what constitutes an object of experience. Unless an object accords with the laws of our faculties, it cannot be determined by thought in the manner required for knowledge. In the third Critique, Kant introduces ‘reflective judgements’, which contrast with the above-​mentioned determinative judgements. Reflective judgement takes place when no conceptual rule can be found through which empirical unity can be given to a sensible particular, or when the unity exhibited by such a particular is underdetermined by the a priori concepts of the understanding. In the latter case, reflective judgement creates new concepts which are merely contingent with respect to the laws of the understanding, using supersensible representations of reason as a heuristic guide. In the former case, reflective judgement must operate with a law of its own, that of purposiveness, which gives rise to novel types of judgement. Aesthetic judgement is one species of reflective judgement and Kant introduces two main types of pure aesthetic judgement: the beautiful and the sublime. According to Kant, the beautiful is characterized by several very strange features. First of all, although the judgement that something is beautiful is based on a feeling rather than a concept, we demand universal assent to these judgements. That is, contrary to the merely subjective judgements that something is agreeable to my senses, such as the taste of olives, I expect that others will agree with me that something is beautiful. Second, since the pleasure of the beautiful is hence neither based on sensations, nor on concepts, Kant claims that it is neither grounded in the satisfaction of a sensible desire, nor a rational one, but is instead purely disinterested. Third, beautiful objects appear to have a lawlike, purposive character

30 Sommer that cannot be explained through some determinate purpose. This is what Kant calls purposiveness without purpose. These peculiar features can be explained through Kant’s account of what occurs in the perception of something we judge to be beautiful. Judgements of beauty are elicited by objects which present us with a lawlike form that cannot be captured by any determinate concept. The imagination apprehends the form of some object, and thereby engages the process which, in a standard empirical judgement, would issue in the cognitive determination of this form under a concept by the faculty of understanding. However, if no such concept can be found then ‘the powers of cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition’ (Kant 2009: 5:217). The perception of beautiful objects therefore does not terminate in cognition but perpetuates a state of mind that exemplifies the harmonious interplay between those mental faculties which are required for cognition in general. These objects animate our mind in a pleasant way, putting us into a contemplative state of reflection. Consequently, the pleasure we take in the beautiful lays claim to universal assent, as it is based on the same cognitive machinery operative in every being like ourselves: ‘we are conscious that this subjective relation suited to cognition in general must be valid for everyone and consequently universally communicable’ (Kant 2009: 5:218). Kant goes on to claim that the beautiful serves a symbol of the morally good. Here we must consider that Kant is primarily interested in the beauty of nature. Even though aesthetic judgement is not cognitive, it reveals to us that nature has a purposive relation to our cognitive faculties, appearing as if it was designed to bring about their harmonious exercise, and we refer the indeterminate lawfulness of its objects to a supersensible stratum, akin to our freedom and morality. Judgements of sublimity are elicited by objects which are so enormous that they either vastly exceed our powers of comprehension, or our physical powers (Kant 2009: §23). In the first case Kant speaks of the ‘mathematically’ sublime, in the second the ‘dynamically’ sublime. Contrary to the beautiful, the sublime is not immediately pleasant but instead confronts our minds with something threatening and counter-​purposive to our faculties. Here it appears that neither our empirical cognition nor our practical capacities can handle nature. However, in both cases there is a second, positive moment which is pleasant and linked to morality. While the imagination only deals in finite magnitudes and cannot represent something that appears limitless, reason can. Hence the very ability to think about the sublime demonstrates that we possess a capacity which goes beyond sensible perception, and which is superior to the domain

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of the senses. Likewise, although our physical powers are inadequate compared to the forces of nature, the very fact that we measure ourselves against them reveals to us that practical reason possesses a power which goes beyond our existence as a corporeal being striving for self-​preservation. Kant provides the following formulation: ‘That is sublime which even to be able to think of demonstrates a faculty of the mind that surpasses every measure of the senses’ (Kant 2009: 5:250). The sublime therefore reminds us of our moral vocation and calls forth the distinctively moral feeling which Kant calls esteem. Both species of pure aesthetic judgement consequently allow us to catch a glimpse of formal features within natural objects that are typically associated with practical rationality, thus bridging the gulf between nature and freedom. 3

Kant on Humour

Kant discusses humour in §54 of the third Critique, in the course of his taxonomy of the arts. The fundamental division between the arts here is between the beautiful and agreeable arts. This division involves a hierarchy since it is only the former which live up to the criteria of pure aesthetic judgement I have outlined, whereas the latter involve a kind of impure, sensible pleasure that is closer to the agreeable than it is to the beautiful: Agreeable arts are those which are aimed merely at enjoyment; of this kind are all those charms that can gratify the company at a table, such as telling entertaining stories, getting the company talking in an open and lively manner, creating by means of jokes and laughter a certain tone of merriment. kant 2009: 5:305

According to Kant, beautiful art is essentially intellectual. It pleases ‘merely in the judging’, whereas agreeable art is corporeal and ‘pleases in the sensation’, stimulating our physical health in the process. Humour, or ‘material for laughter’ as Kant refers to it, belongs to the agreeable arts: In everything that is to provoke a lively, uproarious laughter, there must be something nonsensical (in which, therefore, the understanding in itself can take no satisfaction). Laughter is an affect resulting from the sudden transformation of a heightened expectation into nothing. This very transformation, which is certainly nothing enjoyable for the understanding, is nevertheless indirectly enjoyable and, for a moment, very

32 Sommer lively. The cause must thus consist in the influence of the representation on the body and its reciprocal effect on the mind; certainly not insofar as the representation is objectively an object of gratification (for how can a disappointed expectation be gratifying?), but rather solely through the fact that as a mere play of representations it produces an equilibrium of the vital powers in the body. kant 2009: 5:333

That which elicits laughter is nonsensical or absurd, which, in its direct effect, confounds an expectation of our understanding and is hence initially unpleasant because of the latter. Kant contrasts this kind of disappointed expectation with a more distressing type, that is, the transformation of an expectation into its opposite, by emphasizing that the expectation here must be transformed into nothing. For example, it would not be funny to expect sunny weather and happily prepare for a picnic, and then be surprised by rain. There is also nothing absurd about our expectation being transformed into its polar opposite in this manner –​it ultimately makes sense to expect either type of weather. Kant claims that a joke must deceive us for a moment, create a kind of illusion which then suddenly vanishes. This transformation into nothing involves a ‘play of representations’ or ‘play of thoughts’ that are depicted by Kant as the puzzled understanding going back and forth between what it was led to expect, and the strange, incongruous result it got instead. Here we might object that this seems to be a matter of thought rather than sensations. Surely the rule-​ governed expectations of our intellect and the frustration of these rules are nothing sensible. While Kant admits that humour involves a ‘play with aesthetic ideas or even representations of the understanding’, he maintains that ‘in the end nothing is thought’ (Kant 2009: 5:332) by these representations, and it is only the unusual movement between these representations that causes us gratification. The rapid switching of standpoints between the expectation that is set up on the one hand, and its sudden thwarting on the other, causes ‘the successive movement of the mind in two opposite directions, which at the same time gives the body a healthy shake’ (Kant 2009: 5:335). It is this healthy effect rather than any intellectual component of the joke that is ultimately relevant to the pleasure of laughter. Kant is at his most Burkean in his claim that he here operates under the assumption ‘that all of our thoughts are at the same time harmoniously combined with some kind of movement in the organs of the body’ and that the relevant affect ‘constitutes the gratification in which one discovers that one can get at the body even through the soul and use the latter as the doctor for the former’ (Kant 2009: 5:332).

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Kant distinguishes between three types of material for laughter: wit, naivety and caprice. Kant has much to say about wit in other works, and its relation to humour has been discussed more thoroughly by scholars such as Clewis (2021). I will here only note that in this work, Kant seems to mainly link wit to the talent of playing with thoughts so as to make others laugh, as in the crafting and telling of jokes. As we have seen, this is an agreeable rather than beautiful art because this play with thoughts ultimately aims at corporeal effects. In this context, Kant’s comments on naivety are particularly interesting. Meredith has called them ‘by far the best in the whole section’ (Meredith 1911: 305) whereas Hounsokou refers to the treatment of naivety as ‘the most glaring injustice done to laughter in the Critique of Judgment’ (Hounsokou 2012: 326). Kant defines naivety as ‘the resistance of the uprightness that is originally natural to humanity against the art of pretence that has become second nature’ (Kant 2009: 5:335). In the process of maturation and socialization, human beings learn to disguise their real intentions and instead adopt what Kant refers to as the ‘art of pretence’ or ‘normal custom of artificial expression carefully aimed at beautiful illusion’ (ibid.). We aim to appear sophisticated, well-​meaning and so on, even when we are not, and hence we come to expect the same from others. A naive person, who fails to conceal their intentions in this manner, therefore confounds our expectations of how a person acts and expresses themselves amongst others. The laughter elicited by such naivety is not malicious; we do not laugh because we feel superior to a naive person but we are rather pleased by the ‘uncorrupted, innocent nature, which one was not at all prepared to encounter and which he who allows it to be glimpsed did not even intend to expose’ (ibid.). Here Kant makes a comment which seems to put this pleasure beyond mere gratification, and instead on the level of the moral feeling he calls ‘esteem’: ‘that something that is infinitely better than every assumed custom, namely purity of thought (or at least the predisposition to it), has not been entirely extinguished in human nature, adds seriousness and high esteem to this play of the power of judgment’ (ibid.). Kant thus claims that this is a ‘good-​hearted laughter’ which is combined with a feeling of endearment for the naive person, a feeling of regret concerning the dominance of human custom over uncultivated and unspoiled human nature, and even an esteem for the goodness of this nature. Kant’s third type of ‘material for laughter’ is caprice, which is defined as ‘the talent of being able to transpose oneself at will into a certain mental disposition in which everything is judged quite differently from what is usual (even completely reversed), and yet in accordance with certain principles of reason in such a mental disposition’ (ibid.). Kant tells us very little about caprice in this work, but we might perhaps characterize it as the ability to see the funny

34 Sommer side of things by taking up a humorous perspective. As Clewis puts it, ‘people with caprice detach themselves from situations in such a way that they become comical’ (2021: 35). Here, Kant merely notes that caprice is agreeable rather than beautiful because of its lack of seriousness and dignity. While it may seem odd to charge a type of humour with a lack of seriousness, we have seen that Kant raises no such criticism with respect to humour in naivety. Kant’s account of humour thus gives priority to the physical effects of laughter rather than to its intellectual aspects, and thereby demotes it to a merely agreeable art which does not involve pure aesthetic judgements. Despite resulting from a play of thoughts, humour is thus an irrational phenomenon. Nevertheless, Kant attributes various features to humour in the light of which this classification does not seem legitimate, as I will discuss in the next section. 4

Reconstructive Readings of §54

Several Kantian scholars have charged Kant with doing injustice to humour by classifying it as an agreeable art which merely gratifies the senses, and they have attempted to reconstruct a more elevated function of the funny from his remarks. Broadly speaking, any such attempt to construe the funny as a pure aesthetic judgement must be able to satisfy two criteria. (1) Negative: The pleasure of humour must not consist in gratification. This constraint can be satisfied by either disassociating the function of humour from its corporeal concomitants, or by giving these corporeal effects a rational role that goes beyond physical well-​being. Of the scholars I will discuss, Hounsokou is the only one who goes for the second option. (2) Positive: Humour must play a distinctive function in rational life. This constraint can be satisfied, for example, by showing how humour serves to bridge the realms of nature and freedom, relates to morality, or some other way in which it significantly aids the activity of reason. While all such projects will be reconstructive in nature, we might nevertheless demand them to introduce as few discontinuities and contradictions as possible with the remainder of Kant’s relevant claims. Before going into the positive proposals these scholars have made, I will note a few general analogies and conformities between humour and pure aesthetic judgement they have pointed out. This takes care of the negative aspect of the reconstructive project. First of all, most of these scholars highlight that the funny, like the beautiful and the sublime, is elicited by some kind of ‘discordant relation’ (Clewis 2021: 56; Giamaro 2017: 162) which renders these phenomena

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such as to confound our determinative judgement. Consequently, all of them require the work of reflective judgment. Of course, they do not mean to assimilate the indeterminate form of beautiful objects or the formlessness of the sublime to the incongruity characteristic of the humorous. The awe inspired by the sublime is different from the pleasure we find in beauty, and both are different from the pleasure which accompanies laughter. There is nevertheless something similar in the three kinds of discord. An incongruity or discord of the relevant kind can hence be minimally defined as a representation which engages our cognitive faculties without terminating in a cognitive achievement, but instead puts two faculties at odds with one another. As Meredith, Giamaro and Clewis highlight, the relevant discordant relation in the funny holds between the imagination and the understanding, similar to the case of beauty (Clewis 2021: 56; Giamaro 2017: 167–​168). Second, several commentators have argued that humour, like the beautiful and the sublime, is both disinterested and universal. Clewis points out that our judgement that something is funny has universality insofar as we expect intersubjective agreement to it (Clewis 2021: 58), while Meredith asserts that humour is a paradigmatic example of disinterestedness since it is a mark of a humorous attitude that one can laugh at a joke at one’s own expense (Meredith 1911: 264). Third, it has been frequently pointed out that Kant’s depiction of laughter and the sublime are analogous (Clewis 2021: 54; Giamaro 2017: 166; Meredith 1911: 304). Both involve pleasure arising from an experience that is counter-​purposive to the ordinary function of our cognition, both inspire esteem towards humanity and both are described by Kant as leading to a vibration or oscillation: The mind feels itself moved in the representation of the sublime in nature, while in the aesthetic judgment on the beautiful in nature it is in calm contemplation. This movement (especially in its inception) may be compared to a vibration, i.e., to a rapidly alternating repulsion from and attraction to one and the same object. kant 2009: 5:258

As Meredith points out, ‘in respect of its physical concomitants Kant certainly brings the sublime very near the ridiculous’ (Meredith 1911: 264). Nevertheless, Kant does not claim that it is the purpose of the sublime to stimulate our physical health through such vibrations, as he does with respect to the funny. Instead, he claims that such corporeal phenomena are merely ‘material for the favourite investigations of empirical anthropology’ (Kant 2009: 5:277; Meredith 1911: 278). We may therefore claim, as Meredith does, that Kant does not even attempt to treat the funny from a transcendental perspective, but rather he

36 Sommer only offers us some psychological, anthropological observations. From this perspective, Kant’s focus on the physical concomitants of our response to the funny may be superficially plausible, since there is no such general physical response accompanying our experience of beauty. However, even if it were the case that all humans got goosebumps when encountering beauty, even Kant would certainly find it implausible to suggest that the function of beauty is to gently massage our follicles. There is consequently plenty of reason to consider the pleasure of humour as more than mere sensible gratification, and thus be on par with the beautiful and the sublime. After providing an extensive list of the analogies that would support this reading, Clewis suggests that ‘whether or not these reasons are philosophically persuasive, at least they seem to have been available to Kant’ (Clewis 2021: 69). Now I will examine the way in which some scholars have drawn on those reasons, and assess the persuasiveness of their accounts. 4.1 Marmysz: the Funny as an Unthreatening Sublime In ‘Humor, Sublimity and Incongruity’ (2001) John Marmysz essentially takes the funny and the sublime to be two species of a common genus of incongruity. Contrary to the kind of incongruity which elicits judgements of beauty and which pleases immediately, the kind of incongruity that elicits the funny and the sublime requires a significant amount of interpretation and detachment on our part in order to be found pleasant rather than threatening. Hence, both consist in confrontations with an initially threatening and difficult incongruity, but differ with respect to the level of threat posed by such incongruity, the degree to which we can overcome this threat and consequently also the kind of pleasure evoked by the incongruity. Whereas the sublime poses a frightening threat to our well-​being which we cannot overcome, and which thereby inspires awe, that of the funny can be so interpreted as to be viewed as unthreatening and thus allows for a complete detachment that inspires laughter. This distinction does not seem correct, as Kant emphasizes that the experience of the sublime pertains to an ‘object of fear’ which is not immediately threatening to us (Kant 2009: 5:261). A raging storm at sea or a towering frozen mountain peak are sublime to the viewer at a safe distance, but not to the unfortunate traveller who is at their mercy. To be actually overcome by the danger of such phenomena is simply not the kind of situation suitable for inspiring esteem and awe. In this respect, the sublime is actually not too different from humour, as the famous formula ‘tragedy +​time =​comedy’, as well as the rejoinder ‘too soon’ in response to a joke about a tragic or otherwise threatening and upsetting subject, both seem to highlight. Laughter, like the

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sublime, requires a sufficiently safe distance from its object, whether spatial or temporal. As Regina Spektor notes, ‘no one laughs at God in a hospital […] but God could be funny at a cocktail party while listening to a good god-​themed joke’. Consequently, the funny and the sublime cannot be distinguished on the basis that the latter is an insurmountable threat which inspires fear whereas the former consists of a comparatively safe and manageable threat. In either case, the object is potentially, but not actually, threatening. Marmysz’ account thus locates the specific difference between these phenomena where we in fact encounter a common feature. Clewis further points out that Marmysz here only emphasizes the negative aspect of the sublime, while neglecting the positive uplift it offers (Clewis 2021: 56). The feeling of awe or esteem does not result from our mind’s surrender to the sublime, but from the pleasurable insight that we possess capacities greater than our sensible nature. Like laughter, this awe thus marks a positive response to the perceived incongruity. Hounsokou: the Funny as a Subspecies of the Beautiful and the Sublime According to Annie Hounsokou’s ‘Exposing the Rogue in Us: An Exploration of Laughter in the Critique of Judgment’ (2012), the funny is ‘a species of beauty and the sublime, and consequently [a]‌point of reconciliation between nature and freedom, sensible and supersensible, in its own right’ (318). More specifically, Hounsokou connects wit and caprice to beauty, and naivety to the sublime. The effect of wit is like beauty in reverse: whereas the beautiful affects the intellect through an effect on the body, the witty effects the body through an exercise of the mind. Both phenomena are disinterested in Kant’s sense, animate our mind, and thereby effect a play of faculties which relates to cognition in general. The disinterested nature of the funny is even more evident in the detached attitude that is taken up in caprice, since a capricious mindset allows us to find comedy in otherwise unpleasant situations. Here we also find the purposiveness of the beautiful, since caprice ‘allows us to act as if the world made sense, as if it were actually supposed to be funny’ (325). Naivety, on the other hand, is like the sublime in that it is ‘delight tinged with pain’ and reminds us of our moral vocation (327). Despite sharing these features with pure aesthetic judgements, Hounsokou does not attempt to disassociate the function of humour from its physical concomitants but takes these to be an important part of the gap that is being bridged between the sensible and supersensible realms. This is because laughter has both intellectual and sensible components that are in harmony and thereby cause us pleasure. However, as I have mentioned above, Kant assumes that all thoughts stand in harmonious relation with some bodily movements. Hounsokou 4.2

38 Sommer might here correctly point out that not all thoughts are perceived as such, whereas humour makes us aware of the connection. If this awareness was significant to Kant from a transcendental rather than empirical perspective, we may expect him to note it with respect to the sublime, which has a very similar corporeal effect. However, as we have seen, he deems these effects to be of interest merely to empirical psychology. More importantly, Giamaro and Clewis reject Hounsokou’s proposal as conceptually incoherent. As Giamaro states, ‘the beautiful and the sublime in Kant are highly specific judgements that differ in fundamental ways […] They do not constitute a single genus of which laughter could form a species’ (Giamaro 2017: 170). Although Hounsokou persuasively points out that humour bears significant similarities to both beauty and sublimity, it is certainly correct that we cannot collapse these two types of aesthetic judgement into one without significantly deviating from Kant’s text. Alternatively, we might read Hounsokou’s proposal not as asserting the unity of the beautiful and the sublime, but rather the disunity of the funny. That is, there might be types of humour which fall under the beautiful (wit and caprice) and others which fall under the sublime (naivety) without beauty and sublimity therefore constituting one genus. In this case, however, the funny would not be a species of pure aesthetic judgment, but rather possess a status akin to formal features such as disinterestedness which can characterize different types of such judgements. 4.3 Giamaro: the Funny as a Condition of the Beautiful and the Sublime In ‘Making reason think more: laughter in Kant’s aesthetic philosophy’ (2017), Patrick T. Giamaro argues that ‘the judgments of the beautiful and the sublime intersect and share a common root in the judgment of laughter’ (170), which therefore constitutes the most basic aesthetic judgement, and which serves as a condition for the possibility of the beautiful and the sublime. The funny can serve as such a root because the discord it detects is prior to those of the beautiful and the sublime. Giamaro posits that this basic discordant relation holds between the imagination and the understanding when the former plays with ideas in a manner that confounds the interpretative capacities of the latter. This discord can then be either further interpreted as harmonious, in which case it issues in the beautiful, or transformed into a higher discord between the imagination and reason, in which case it issues in the sublime. The funny can also have a value of its own besides conditioning these further judgements, insofar as it reveals an incapacity of the understanding that requires the aid of reason. Kant depicts this effect of aesthetic representations on reason in the following passage:

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Now if a concept is provided with a presentation of the imagination such that, even though this presentation belongs to the exhibition of the concept, yet it prompts, even by itself, so much thought as can never be comprehended within a determinate concept and thereby the presentation aesthetically expands the concept itself in an unlimited way, then the imagination is creative in this and sets the power of intellectual ideas (i.e., reason) in motion: it makes reason think more, when prompted by a presentation, than what can be apprehended and made distinct in the presentation. kant 2009: §49

Giamaro extends this depiction to assign a positive role to the basic ‘judgement of laughter’. When confronted with the imagination’s play of ideas, the understanding may simply surrender and elicit laughter, which ‘makes reason think more by prompting it to revise or generate new ideas about the world and how the subject ought to act in it’ (Giamaro 2017: 172). Giamaro is certainly on to something in these latter remarks. Given that funny incongruities confound our cognitive rules, the relevant concepts, or our grasp thereof, are revealed to be insufficient. It consequently seems plausible that the play of ideas or thoughts constitutive of the funny should likewise stimulate the activity of reason to account for this insufficiency. His claim that judgements of the funny condition those of beauty and sublimity, however, seems less plausible. The surrender of the understanding in the case of laughter is as much of a resolution of a perceived incongruity as is the pleasure we take in the beautiful and the sublime. Hence, if these latter types of judgement are always preceded by a silent ‘transcendental laughter’, as Giamaro calls it, then there is either no reason for a further, distinct resolution of the basic discord, or this further resolution is at the very least underdetermined by the basic discord. 4.4 Meredith: the Funny as a Third Species of Aesthetic Judgement James Creed Meredith rejects any attempt to classify humour as either a species of the beautiful or sublime and instead claims that the reconstructive task must establish the funny as a separate species of aesthetic judgement. He defines the funny ‘as a representation which provides the imagination with a pretext for making a sudden and forcible excursion into fields from which it is customarily debarred by the conditions of the understanding’ (Meredith 1911: 304). The unconstrained imagination can thereby produce results which cannot be determined by the rules of the understanding and remind us that these rules are themselves subject to a higher authority, the court of reason. Furthermore, the resulting incongruities remind us that the understanding

40 Sommer is limited to interpreting appearances of a thing-​in-​itself to which it has no access. Hence, ‘in everything that we say is laughable there is a play between appearances and reality –​between what has merely subjective validity and what is held true according to some standard’ (Meredith 1911: 305). The imagination’s transgression beyond the limits of the understanding exposes the subjective nature of our rules, and consequently has a positive function: From a teleological point of view a certain independence of the imagination –​a certain subjectivity and power to go wrong, has meaning for the whole province of the mind, provided it is subject to the control and correction of the higher faculties. To be able to send the imagination out, even on senseless errands, and whistle it back at pleasure, shows a relation of imagination and understanding which has advantages extending far the beneficial influence upon health. meredith 1911: 304

In light of Giamaro’s above-​considered account, we could take the stimulation of reason to revise its conceptual rules as one of these benefits. As Giamaro claims, a ‘joke is purposive from the perspective of reason because the laughter it generates stimulates reason to freely transform its principles for thinking about and acting in the sensible world’ (Giamaro 2017: 172). Meredith makes the brief but suggestive remark that if this notion of humour ‘needs to be a symbol of some moral idea as well, we may take it to be a symbol of our original sin’ (Meredith 1911: cxxxi). I assume that he is here referring to Kant’s notion of radical evil, that is, our natural propensity to act contrary to the moral law of practical reason. This comment can be quite easily made sense of in light of Kant’s comments on naivety. We have seen that naivety is funny because it confounds our expectations that people will generally disguise their real intentions and instead act in accordance with the art of pretence. In the anthropological writings in which Kant formulates the concept of radical evil, he also comments on the good-​natured laughter at naivety and remarks that the ‘art of pretence […] is evil, even though it is grounded in our already corrupted human nature’ (Kant 2006: 21). This type of laughter may hence remind us that even though our customs are often the result of radical evil, this evil has not entirely triumphed over the better angels of our nature. Like the sublime it therefore causes us to feel esteem for our power of reason. The similarities between the sublime and the funny can hence also be explained without collapsing the two notions. In the former case, our moral, rational nature is highlighted through its opposition with sensible nature outside of us, whereas in the latter case it is through

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opposition with our own evil second nature. The categorical imperative is the highest law of practical reason, but our human tendency to act contrary to the moral law in the pursuit of our own inclinations inevitably shapes our behaviour and customs. Thus, we expect the behaviour of others to express the art of pretence, and this expectation vanishes into nothing upon confrontation with naivety. Meredith suggests that we may thus feel ‘a sense of the superiority of reason to those artificial laws and restrictions which are thought to be necessary in order to enable us to realize our freedom in society’ (cxxxi). While Meredith thus provides a persuasive account for the humour found in the failure of our practical customs by the standard of reason, his account of humour in the analogous case of theoretical customs is less clear, and his general definition of the funny does not sufficiently distinguish it from judgements of beauty. As noted above, the funny is claimed to be ‘a representation which provides the imagination with a pretext for making a sudden and forcible excursion into fields from which it is customarily debarred by the conditions of the understanding’. However, a transgression of the standard conditions of the understanding by the imagination is arguably constitutive of all the incongruities associated with reflective judgement. The judgement of beauty is elicited by the representation of a form which cannot be determined by a concept of the understanding, and in the sublime the imagination strives to represent a totality which could only be satisfied by an idea of reason. Meredith’s definition accounts for the differentia specifica of funny incongruities with the qualification that these ‘excursions’ are ‘sudden and forcible’, or a ‘shock’ to the understanding. This distinguishes them from beautiful incongruities, which bring about a harmonious relation between the faculties. He elucidates this distinction of harmony and shock by claiming that whereas beautiful objects elicit an ongoing play of the faculties, a humorous incongruity both elicits and terminates it: ‘the play of the imagination in the case of the beautiful must be such that the understanding receives no shock. But in the case of what is laughable it does receive this shock by reason of something absurd, and the lively process of thought is suddenly stopped’ (Meredith 1911: cxxxi). Meredith hence locates the play of the imagination entirely in the expectation, and its sudden termination in the apprehension of the absurd disappointment of said expectation. Kant, however, appears to depict this ‘play’ as involving both expectation and disappointment, as we have seen above: ‘when the illusion disappears into nothing, the mind looks back again in order to try it once more, and thus is hurried this way and that by rapidly succeeding increases and decreases of tension and set into oscillation’ (Kant 2009: 5:334). The ‘disappearance into nothing’ hence does not terminate the play but rather constitutes that element of the representation by virtue of which the mind must engage with it. The

42 Sommer attempt to define the funny in terms of a ‘shock’ which stops the process of play therefore fails to locate the relevant difference between the funny and the beautiful. How then do we find humour in the failure of our theoretical, cognitive customs and habits, and in which way does it differ from the beautiful? Meredith gives a general depiction of the subjective standard and objective rule that are being opposed in a funny incongruity: ‘the laughable might be seen as always furnishing us with a playful reminder that the world of understanding is the mere phenomenon of the thing in itself’ (Meredith 1911: 305). If ‘the world of understanding’ here denotes the domain of experience as it is constituted and delimited by the a priori concepts of the understanding, then the funny is again insufficiently distinguished from the beautiful. In order to make this clear I will push the analogy between humour and beauty further by considering how the latter also confounds our expectations. Although Kant does not speak of beauty in these terms, it is not difficult to conceive of beautiful objects as disappointing our most general cognitive expectation, that the imagination’s apprehension of sensible objects as possessing a lawlike form allows us to determine these objects according to the basic categories of thought and judgment. That is, we expect that any perceptual object will conform to the minimal conceptual features which Kant attributes to the understanding. The failure to do so leads to a judgement of beauty, through which this sensible representation is instead referred to a supersensible domain, and nature in general is felt to be purposive for our cognition. Beauty thus also satisfies this depiction of humour provided by Meredith. Furthermore, it seems that this depiction is too general to account for the kind of incongruities constitutive of humour. Funny incongruities are not portrayed by Kant as leaving their object entirely undetermined from the standpoint of the understanding, but as concerning the absurd disappointment of more determinate rules. That is, the understanding does not fail in subsuming a given particular under even its most basic rules but rather subsumes it under some particular rule or set of rules which lead to wrong expectations concerning how this particular object will behave. For these reasons it is unlikely that funny incongruities oppose the laws of the understanding in general to a higher authority. 5

Conclusion

The preceding sections have shown that Kant’s account of humour offers various resources which allow for scholarly reconstructions that give a more elevated status to humour in Kant’s critical philosophy. While all of the above

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discussed proposals highlight important aspects of Kant’s depiction of humour that support the general reconstructive project, the most plausible of them is Meredith’s suggestion that the funny is neither a species of the beautiful or the sublime, nor their genus, but a species of pure aesthetic judgement in its own right. In particular, his depiction of the funny as a symbol of our original sin or radical evil lends itself to a plausible reconstruction of the laughter elicited by the contrast between our practical customs and our moral nature. As I have argued, his account nevertheless has problems insofar as it allows us to distinguish the funny from the sublime, but not from the beautiful, and in the course of this fails to give an account of the theoretical analogue of a humorous insufficiency of our customs or rules. I propose that his account can be remedied if we consider the subjective standard which is revealed to be insufficient in humorous breakdowns of our theoretical customs not as the understanding (in the sense of determinative judgement) as Meredith does, but rather as reflective judgement. The operations of reflective judgement are not only elicited by an object that is entirely indeterminate with respect to the understanding, but also those that are merely underdetermined by them. Since the a priori forms of our understanding cannot account for all the objects and their lawful behaviours that we encounter in the world, reflective judgement must create rules which are contingent from the standpoint of the understanding, and only have a subjective validity. In doing so, it is guided by ideas of reason that cannot themselves be determinate objects of experience. In light of this, we can formulate an analogous case for the failure of our theoretical customs. Like the potentially evil practical customs we adopt as our second nature, the contingent conceptual rules we adopt in reflective judgement constitute a kind of second nature of our empirical cognition. Letting the imagination roam free may keep the understanding on its toes to ensure that these contingent rules are not mistakenly treated like the rigid a priori concepts of determinative judgement, but rather that they have merely subjective validity and are always subject to revision. Our rules, whether they be the theoretical rules by which the power of judgement makes sense of the world, or the contingent practical customs according to which we engage with other subjects, always fall short in some respect of both nature within and outside of us. However, this is no reason to despair, but rather to reflect, and in this sense I agree with Giamaro that we may see the funny as giving reason an incentive or reminder to think more, or perhaps as reason telling reflective judgement to reflect again. From a transcendental perspective, laughter then does not serve to give the body a healthy shake, but the mind a healthy shake up. Although it is elicited by an incapacity of our understanding

44 Sommer or our moral character, this shake up is pleasant because it makes us also aware that our reason is capable of noticing our incapacities.

References

Clewis R. (2021). Kant’s Humorous Writings: An Illustrated Guide. London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi and Sydney: Bloomsbury. Giamaro P. T. (2017). ‘Making reason think more: laughter in Kant’s aesthetic philosophy’, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 22(4): 161–​ 176. (doi: 10.1080/​ 0969725X.2017.1406055). Hobbes T. (1966). The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Aalen: Scientia Verlag. Hounsokou A. (2012). ‘Exposing the Rogue in Us: An Exploration of Laughter in the Critique of Judgment’, Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 16(2): 317–​336. (doi: 10.5840/​epoche20121629). Kant I. (2006). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant I. (2009). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marmysz J. (2001). ‘Humor, Sublimity and Incongruity’, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 2(3). Meredith J. C. (1911). Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Oxford: Clarendon. Morreall J. (1989). ‘The rejection of humor in western thought’, Philosophy East and West 39(3): 243–​265. (doi: 10.2307/​1399447).

­c hapter 3

The Comic as an Existential Category in Kierkegaard’s Thought Viktoras Bachmetjevas Abstract The chapter discusses Kierkegaard’s concept of the comic and related concepts of irony and humour. By the analysis of Kierkegaard’s usage of these concepts, it is argued that Kierkegaard can not be ascribed neither to the incongruity theory, nor to the relief theory of laughter, although he makes use of the elements of both of these theories. Instead, it is argued, Kierkegaard should be seen as providing an original theory of the comic, which sees for the comic a crucial and fundamental role in dealing with one’s existential predicament.

Keywords the comic –​existence spheres –​humour –​irony –​Kierkegaard

1

Introduction

Although recently there have been different challenges to the view, the structure of the existence spheres remains a useful point of entry into the universe of Søren Kierkegaard. In this view Kierkegaard has a dynamic vision of the individual self, represented by the progression of the existence spheres or stages from the lowest (the aesthetic) to the highest (the religious), with the ethical stage serving as the intermediary. The crucial aspect of the transitions between the spheres is that the transition from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere is mediated with the help of reflection, while the transition from the ethical to the religious, to the contrary, requires the abandonment of the reflection in favor of the acknowledgement that mediation has its limits. The latter move famously is known as the ‘leap of faith’. Most lucidly the existence spheres are presented in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous work Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Kierkegaard 1992: 501).

© Viktoras Bachmetjevas, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_005

46 Bachmetjevas Curiously, though, immediately after proclaiming the three existence spheres the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus adds some important qualifications. In one passage he introduces irony and humour as transitory elements between the spheres: ‘There are three existence-​spheres: the esthetic, the ethical, the religious. To these there is a respectively corresponding confinium [border territory]: irony is the confinium between the esthetic and the ethical; humour is the confinium between the ethical and the religious’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 501–​502); and in another place he qualifies irony as ‘the incognito of the ethical’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 503) and humour as ‘the incognito of the religious’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 505–​506). Thus, it is evident that both irony and humour are extremely important for the theory of the existential stages both as the transitions between the spheres and the accompanying elements to them. Unfortunately, they have not received nowhere near as much attention as the existence stages themselves in the scholarship.1 This chapter will partly rectify this, by outlining the connection between irony and especially humour to the existence spheres. In what follows I will pursue several goals. First, I will contest a widely held assumption that Kierkegaard is a proponent of the incongruity theory of laughter. I will attempt to show that his view is both more nuanced and further reaching. Second, I will show that in addition to incongruity Kierkegaard also incorporates relief as an important element of laughter. And, lastly, I will argue that despite making use of elements of both incongruity and relief theories in his thought, Kierkegaard sees laughter first and foremost as existential instrument. By existential instruments I mean devices that, in Kierkegaard’s view, can be used to better one’s existential predicament. I will proceed by first clarifying some terminological issues in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, then will deal with Kierkegaard’s concept of irony and, finally, will turn to his concept of humour. I will conclude with some general remarks about the nature of the comical. 2

A Note on Terminology

Kierkegaard’s preferred term for everything that invites or elicits laughter is ‘the comic’. So, for example, in his Journals and Notebooks, no doubt following Kant’s conception of humour as the outcome of incongruity, Kierkegaard

1 The notable exception is John Lippitt‘s Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard‘s Thought (Lippitt 2000).

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writes: ‘Contradiction is really the category of the comic.’ (Kierkegaard 2008: jj:9) Further on, the same idea is repeated in stronger terms: ‘The comical always consists in contradiction.’ (Kierkegaard 2008: jj:276), while Climacus provides a more elaborate description in Concluding Unscientific Postscript: ‘Wherever there is life there is contradiction, and wherever there is contradiction, the comic is present.’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 513–​514) In addition to noting that these remarks show Kierkegaard’s affinity to the so-​called incongruity theory of humour, we can also note that ‘the comic’ here simply means ‘whatever creates the comic effect in the broadest sense’. This meaning is applied consistently throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship and can be noted elsewhere, for example, when Climacus contrasts the tragic and the comic: ‘The tragic and the comic are the same inasmuch as both are contradiction.’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 514) In other words, Kierkegaard prefers the term ‘the comic’ where traditional philosophical parlance perhaps would choose the term ‘humour’ (e.g., Morreall 2009). This specific usage of the term is important to keep in mind in order to avoid confusion, even more so, because Kierkegaard does not drop the term ‘humour’, but makes use of it in his writings, but, notably, not as a general umbrella term for anything that elicits laughter, but only as one, specific, type of the comic, which he associates with the religious existence sphere. So, for example, in Journals and Notebooks Kierkegaard provides the following progression: ‘In its immediate form, the comic is caprice, when it is reflected, it is irony, and the unity of both of these is humour.’ (Kierkegaard 2007: bb:23), while Johannes Climacus in Concluding Unscientific Postscript provides elaborate analysis of the relation between the comic and humour and the relation between humour and the religious existence sphere. I discuss these conceptual distinctions in Section 4. 3

Kierkegaard’s Definitions of Irony

In order to define irony Kierkegaard employs two definitions, both of which he borrows from someone else and reinterprets for his own purposes. The first one is the classical formula of irony as saying ‘the opposite of what is meant’, proposed by the Roman rhetorician Quintilian (Quintilian 1986: ix, ii, 44). It was clearly meant by Quintilian to describe a rhetorical device, but Kierkegaard broadens the scope of its application. After repeating Quintilian’s description of irony, by way of explanation he adds: ‘The phenomenon is not the essence, but the opposite of the essence.’ (Kierkegaard 1989: 247) What for Quintilian was merely applicable within the sphere of speech, for Kierkegaard becomes something infinitely broader and even metaphysical. Or to put it simply,

48 Bachmetjevas reframing irony as the tension between the phenomenon and the essence, rather than simply as the tension between the actual saying and what is meant by that saying, allows Kierkegaard to see irony not only within linguistic realm, but anywhere where outward appearance signals something opposite to inner essence. As a consequence, then, as ironic can be seen not only remarks, utterances and other linguistic devices, but also phenomena that are not linguistic as such, for example, situations, positions, pieces of art, buildings, and so on. The second consequence of this broadening is that Kierkegaard’s reformulation emphasizes the tension between inwardness (essence) and outwardness (phenomenon), which is not readily apparent in Quintilian’s original formulation. As we will see, the tension between inwardness and outwardness is of crucial importance for Kierkegaard in understanding both irony and humour. The second definition of irony Kierkegaard makes use of is borrowed from Hegel. In his Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel describes irony as ‘absolute infinite negativity’ (Hegel 1993: 75). Kierkegaard reiterates the formula, but again broadens its application. For Hegel this description of irony applies only in aesthetics and only in the context of German Romanticism. Specifically, he introduces it while discussing the uses of irony by a German Romantic Karl Solger. For Kierkegaard, however, this becomes a universal definition to all kinds of irony. Indeed, he proposes Hegel’s formulation as a definitive verdict on irony: ‘Here, then, we have irony as the infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity, because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something that still is not.’ (Kierkegaard 1989: 261) Let us unpack this. Irony, according to Kierkegaard, ‘only negates’, which means that negation is the only work that irony does. It, then, is always a reaction to something which is already posited (for example, a statement, utterance, situation, context, etc.), and that reaction is always the negation of that positing. ‘Only’ negation also indicates that by negating no other position is offered; in other words, in the work of irony nothing is added, nothing is posited –​it is a purely negative, one could say, destructive activity. This is manifest by the at first glance contradictory statement of ‘a higher something that still is not’. In order to function irony has to presuppose some outside position that is outside of the immediate context it ironizes. That position, in addition, has to be ‘higher’, i.e., has to be broader and encompass the position it negates. However, importantly, irony merely presupposes, but does not propose this new position. This negative work of irony is ‘absolute’ in the sense that it does not rely on anything outside of it –​the negative, destructive force of irony is produced by irony itself. The negation is generated by the irony itself without recourse to anything else and is not conditioned by anything else. Finally, the

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absoluteness of irony is related to its infinity. Irony does not negate ‘this or that phenomenon’ –​its target is everything or, more precisely, anything can become its target. As for itself it has neither goal, nor end –​no positive outcome results from its negating, destructive force. Let us discuss some examples. A British tourist in Los Angeles in the midst of a downpour remarks: ‘What fine weather you are having here.’ The weather is foul, he calls it ‘fine’, which is sufficient to make it clear to everyone that he is being ironic, which, in turn, suggests that, following Quintilian’s formula, he means the opposite of what he says –​the weather is terrible. This is perhaps as simple and banal case of irony as there could be. But let us consider another example. Actress Mae West explains why she is declining President Gerald Ford’s invitation to a state dinner at the White House: ‘It’s an awful long way to go for just one meal.’2 In the latter case, although it is undoubted that the remark is ironic (it is evident from West’s intentional degrading of the state dinner to a mere meal), it is much more difficult to know what West means. Having made the judgment that she is indeed being ironic, we can safely say only that she does not mean what she says, but, contra Quintilian, we are not so sure if she means the opposite of what she says and, even if she did mean the opposite, what this ‘opposite’ would entail. In truth, about the only thing we can surmise from her answer with some assurance is not what she means, but what she does not mean, namely, that ‘an awful long way to go for just one meal’ is not the real reason for her declining the invitation. For Kierkegaard, it is precisely this certainty of not meaning of what one says that is at the core of irony. And if Quintilian suggests that there is the opposition between what is said and what is meant, Kierkegaard would make a weaker claim: the phenomenon is not the opposite of the essence, but simply is not the essence. This allows us to return to our first example and correct our initial judgment. What we can surmise from the British visitor’s remark is, then, not that he thinks that the weather is terrible (we have no idea what he positively thinks about the weather), but merely that he does not think that the weather is fine. This might sound like too subtle a difference in the case of such a straightforward casual remark, but let us consider another example, namely, Vladimir Putin’s response to Larry King’s question regarding the tragedy of the 118 members of the crew trapped beyond reach of rescue in the nuclear submarine Kursk. To King’s question ‘So what really happened to that ship?’ Putin responds with a wry smile: ‘It sank.’ Although the smile serves as the signal of irony (it clearly indicates that there is something more going on than just a 2 Both examples in this paragraph are borrowed from Gregory Vlastos (Vlastos 1991: 21).

50 Bachmetjevas straightforward response to a straightforward question), it is not the smile that creates the ironic effect here. Putin here clearly is using the prior knowledge of his audience of all the circumstances surrounding the accident, but also the expectations of the audience regarding the response. In order for the ironic effect to take place, there must be a certain ‘community’ of ironists formed –​ Putin must know that his audience expects a rather different answer, while his audience must know that Putin knows that. Thus, the ironic effect is achieved by ably using the context: the knowledge and the expectations of the audience. A more difficult question is what this particular instance of irony achieves. If Putin means what he says, then one could conclude that a simple statement of the fact is all he is trying to convey. His meaning then would amount to something like ‘The matter of the fact is that the ship sank, as you all know’. But if that would be the case, this would merely be an example of a direct speech, while, clearly, in this particular case there is this and something more going on, even if one struggles to make out what exactly that is. It could be that Putin is mocking the sensationalism of contemporary media, it could be as well be that he is mocking only the dramatic style of King’s questioning, or it could be that he does not give the same significance to the accident as his audience and simply wants to demonstrate that. It might as well be that Putin himself does not know the meaning of his irony. It is hard to tell. Yet, significantly, once we are sure that the remark is ironic, we are in no doubt that the speaker does not mean what he says. Perhaps this is the only thing that we can be sure of. Finally, we have seen that in all three examples we have discussed, despite the various levels of sophistication of irony, we have noticed that in none of the cases we can be sure of the meaning of the speaker. Although in some cases (British visitor) we are tempted to follow Quintilian’s ‘opposite of what is said’ thesis, in other cases (West and Putin) this thesis fails to provide us with satisfactory answers. Significantly, all the cases do not merely evade proposing the speakers’ position. They share another common feature –​all of them seem to have a target: the weather in la, President Ford and his invitation, and Larry King’s question. The target of irony is not an interlocutor, but, rather, a context within which the ironist finds himself or herself. It is this context that Kierkegaard calls a ‘position’ and the work of irony seems to be to destroy it. In conclusion, irony not only attacks (i.e., negates) the position it encounters, but does so without proposing anything in return. Precisely this aspect of irony Hegel identified and Kierkegaard stressed as essential. It is important to stress that Kierkegaard applies both of the reformulations (i.e., reformulated descriptions of irony by Quintilian and Hegel) to all kinds of irony. In other words, in Kierkegaard’s view, his upgraded versions should be seen as definitions of irony. This, however, does not mean that there are

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no differences in the usages of irony. As a way of typology, we can find two kinds of irony in Kierkegaard. The first one is what Kierkegaard terms ‘irony as a position’ and associates first and foremost with the German Romantics (Kierkegaard 1989: 272–​323). This type designates irony that amounts to a dominant determination of individual’s existence –​a position –​and therefore can be seen and interpreted within the context of existential spheres. It is higher than aesthetic existence which, for Kierkegaard, is characterized by immediacy and spontaneity. The ironist is not an aesthete anymore, because he has created a distance between himself and actuality and his immediate surroundings, or as Kierkegaard puts it: ‘[h]‌e has made the movement of infinity’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 502). However, irony is not a proper existential position –​the centre of gravity here is not the self. Existence, instead, here is fully dominated and led by an outward phenomenon, i.e., irony itself –​it defines and orders one’s choices and preferences. Therefore, irony as a position is a confinium, a transitory territory between the aesthetic and the ethical. Examples of such an irony for Kierkegaard are plenty –​in The Concept of Irony he discusses such figures from the German Romantic movement like Friedrich Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, and Karl Solger (Kierkegaard 1989: 286–​323). The characteristics of such a figure for Kierkegaard are spontaneity, negative or at least negligent attitude towards one’s immediate social milieu and existential predicament, striving for paradox, misunderstanding, and confusion. The more negative aspects of such an existential position, perhaps, can be seen in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s character Nikolay Stavrogin in The Possessed, who pointedly is characterized as being tormented by the ‘demon of irony’ (Достоевский 2000: 176). Stavrogin famously is the figure that embodies nihilistic approach to all social conventions and norms and disregard for social contract. In short, then, the ironist in his existence is led by irony –​irony here is a goal in itself. The other type of irony is what Kierkegaard calls ‘irony as a controlled element’ (Kierkegaard 1989: 324–​329). Here irony is no longer a defining element of one’s existence, but merely a tool or an instrument. The purpose of this instrument, according to Kierkegaard, is to situate one properly in relation to his or her existence, to create a distance between the individual and his immediate predicament. The purpose of such distancing is similar to the role of doubt in science: ‘[w]‌hat doubt is to science, irony is to personal life’ (Kierkegaard 1989: 326). We know that doubt became the method of the modern science with Descartes. However, for Kierkegaard, unlike for Descartes, doubt does not serve as a means to undoubtable truth. Doubt for Kierkegaard does not have an end. It is infinite. Once employed, like a genie out of the bottle, it is never satisfied. Now one has to doubt everything. It becomes a necessary companion of all scientific thinking. By analogy, for Kierkegaard something similar takes

52 Bachmetjevas place in the relation between irony and personal existence. Once employed with its full negative destructive force, due to its absolute and infinite character, irony becomes a permanent companion to existence. ‘Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.’ (Kierkegaard 1989: 326) Like doubt in science, which does not eliminate convictions but merely changes their status or one’s attitude towards them, irony does not offer an alternative to existential commitments but merely reminds one of their relativity and limited validity. It is in this sense that irony for Kierkegaard is a disciplinarian (Kierkegaard 1989: 326). Controlled irony, or irony made into an instrument, helps to avoid two extremes. One is the position of a pure ironist, embodied in the Romantic figure, which I have discussed above. For him no external limitation is valid, his behaviour is motivated by the spur of the moment and the effect his irony has on his listeners. It is a purely and thoroughly negative figure. The other extreme, the opposite of the pure ironist is what Kierkegaard calls the enthusiast (Kierkegaard 1989: 247). Such a character, contrary to the pure ironist, passionately agrees with every social convention and norm. While a Romantic ironist avoids any social commitment whatsoever and is sceptical or even antagonistic towards social conventions, the enthusiast, to the contrary, is fully immersed in society. While the enthusiast embodies the aesthete, and the pure ironist embodies the confinium between the aesthetic and the ethical, the ethicist is characterized by irony as a controlled element. Controlled irony helps to find balance between the two extreme cases. It allows to create distance from disparate details, trivia and circumstances and to question the meaning of one’s existence itself. It is in this sense that irony is the ‘beginning of personal life’ (Kierkegaard 1989: 326). It teaches to engage with actuality and to take part in everyday life with the right attitude. As Kierkegaard puts it, ‘irony as a controlled element manifests itself in its truth precisely by teaching how to actualize actuality, by placing appropriate emphasis on actuality.’ (Kierkegaard 1989: 328) Therefore, as Brad Frazier puts it, the one who manages to control irony ‘neither divinizes her social order nor carelessly deconstructs it in order to disengage from it’ (Frazier 2004: 471). There is another contradiction that Kierkegaard’s ethicist has to deal with, namely, the one that is emphasized by Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author Vigilius Haufniensis. In the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety Haufniensis emphasizes the disparity between the ideality of ethical norms and what he calls actuality of sin, in other words, the inescapable fact that no individual is capable to completely adhere to those ethical norms (Kierkegaard 1980: 17).

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In summary, the aesthete or the enthusiast is superseded by pure ironist, who in turn is superseded by the ethicist. The pure ironist is a slave to his irony, while the ethicist employs it as a balancing instrument, for it helps one deal with the essential contradiction of the ethical reality: the incongruity between the ideality of the ethical norms and the incapacity of the ethicist to adhere to those norms in actuality. 4

Kierkegaard’s Concept of Humour

Having discussed the two roles of irony within the framework of existential spheres, we can now proceed to humour. The parallels and interconnections between humour and irony are evident. Indeed, in his Journals and Notebooks Kierkegaard describes humour as ‘irony taken to its maximum vibration’ (Kierkegaard 2007: dd:36), while elsewhere he provides the only definition of humour in his oeuvre, which, again, emphasizes the direct connection to irony: ‘[i]‌n its immediate form, the comic is caprice; when it is reflected, it is irony; and the unity of both is humour’ (Kierkegaard 2007: bb:23). Let’s unpack this. It is clear that humour for Kierkegaard is a continuation of irony and, at least in some sense, its culmination, but also is a qualitatively different category. The formula of humour as the unity of caprice (and immediacy) and irony (and reflection) mirrors the formula of the existence spheres, where the religious sphere is the unity of the aesthetic and the ethical spheres. Like the religious sphere in regard with the other two, humour both takes up some elements of the other two instruments of the comic and dismisses other elements. Humour does not possess the purely negative power of irony –​it does not aim at anything and is much more lighthearted. In this it is much closer to caprice. However, it differs from caprice, because it has the consciousness of ethical failure (or consciousness of sin in Kierkegaard’s terms) behind it. In Rhetoric Aristotle remarks that ‘the ironical man makes a joke for his own amusement, the buffoon for the amusement of others’3 (Aristotle 1991: 3, 18). Kierkegaardian humorist does neither –​he jokes neither to amuse others, nor to amuse himself. Rather, his modus operandi is to make fun of the way the world is set up. If the ironist is an ethicist, the humorist is a metaphysician. As we already noted, while irony is situated between the aesthetic and the ethical, humour is situated between the ethical and the religious. In a very similar fashion, there are two types of humour or humorous approach to 3 Translation altered.

54 Bachmetjevas existence for Kierkegaard. The first type is designated as simply the ‘humorist’. The humorist mirrors the pure ironist, as he is also fully motivated by the comical effect, but here, according to Kierkegaard, the contradiction is generated not by the idea of ideality of ethical norms, but by the concept of God. ‘The humorist continually joins the conception of God together with something else and brings out the contradiction’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 505). In other words, the humorist possesses the concept of God (and for Kierkegaard the God amounts to a Christian God –​almighty, omniscient creator of the world) which, contrasted with actuality, creates the incongruity necessary for the comical. Importantly, though, such a humorist lacks religious faith: ‘he does not relate himself to God in religious passion (stricte sic dictus [in the strict sense of the word]). He changes himself into a jesting and yet profound transition area for all these contradictions, but he does not relate himself to God’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 505). Similarly to irony as a position, humour here also becomes the determining factor for one’s whole existence. And, as in irony, pure humour is a quasi-​existence sphere, for, once again, the centre of gravity of existence is not within the individual, but external to him. Humour is self-​ serving here. For the humorist, everything is funny, for no external reason, but merely for the sake it. Let us consider as an example a famous bit from Ricky Gervais’ show Humanity. In a short bit Gervais takes up the notion of the ‘act of God’, used in the insurance industry, and makes a series of jokes, making an assumption that if God exists, then everything is an act of God, including a fallen tree on someone’s car and aids epidemic in Africa. In other words, Gervais draws out the contradiction between the concept of almighty God and the fact that evil exists. His solution is not to suggest a theodicy, but simply to create a comic effect out of this contradiction. Importantly, Gervais does not speak here as a believer –​God here remains only a conceptual possibility, while the only goal Gervais has is to create a comic effect. There is another existential type that is characterized by humour. It is what Kierkegaard calls a religious person. In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Climacus says that ‘[t]‌he religious person does the same, joins the conception of God together with everything and sees the contradiction, but in his innermost being he relates himself to God’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 505). While in the case of the ethicist, controlled irony served to guard against what Kierkegaard called the enthusiast, in the religious sphere we have a similar figure, which Kierkegaard calls a revivalist or, in other words, a religious enthusiast. ‘Revivalist impertinently employs God to be present where he is, so that if one only sees him one can be sure that God is there, since the revivalist has him

The Comic as an Existential Category in Kierkegaard’s Thought

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in his pocket’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 506). This, for Kierkegaard, of course, is not an authentic religiosity. By contrast, an authentic relation with God is characterized by the intimacy of the relation, which is brought about by an absolute inward passion. Humour is invoked here in order to deal with the contradiction that is brought about by the inward absolute commitment to one’s faith and the complete ignorance of the outside world towards this commitment. Humour here, similarly to irony in the ethical sphere, helps guard one against zealotry. It also allows to compartmentalize one’s inward religious faith and one’s outward social interactions. One might ask why religiousness has to remain inward. The answer is twofold. Climacus points outs that ‘[t]‌he religious person discovers that what engages him absolutely seems to engage others very little’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 506). The absolute passion of faith is exclusively individual, as is eloquently demonstrated by the silence of Abraham in Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard 1983: 1–​123). As Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silentio remarks: ‘Abraham can not speak.’ (Kierkegaard 1983: 118), not because he cannot express in words the commitment of faith he possesses, but because this commitment will not transmit to the one he speaks to. It is bound to remain inward. In addition, according to Climacus, absolute passion as such is incommunicable in principle: ‘[a]bsolute passion is the boundary for mutual understanding’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 508). This also is the difference between the humorist and the religious person. The humorist is guided by the humour itself –​like Gervais he cares only about the comic effect. The religious person is guided by the absolute passion of his faith that is within him, which can not be understood by a third party. Climacus goes as far as to say that religiosity cannot be shared between two religious people: Even if two religious persons speak with each other, the one would produce a comic effect upon the other, because each of them would continually have his inwardness in mente [in mind] and now hear, together with this, what the other said and hear it as comic, because neither of them would dare to express directly the hidden inwardness. kierkegaard 1992: 511

The denial of any religious communion between individuals might seem paradoxical, even allowing for the fact that Climacus (and Kierkegaard) are concerned much more with one’s relation with God rather than one’s relation with another human being. However, the analogy with erotic love might be helpful here:

56 Bachmetjevas Someone absolutely in love does not know whether he is more in love or less in love than others, because anyone who knows that is definitely not absolutely in love. Neither does he know that he is the only person who has truly been in love, because if he knew that, he definitely would not be absolutely in love –​and yet he knows that a third party cannot understand him, because a third party will understand him generally in relation to an object of passion but not in relation to the absoluteness of passion. kierkegaard 1992: 509

In other words, in love, as in religious faith, the passion one possesses might, of course, be put into words –​people talk about love and faith all the time, yet the one in possession of that passion is always aware of the inadequacy of the spoken words in relation to the passion that they attempt to express. Indeed, the incongruity between the passion and the words is what produces the comic effect in the first place. To summarize, humour, like irony, has two functions for Kierkegaard. First, it is the borderline category between the ethical and the religious. It is a quasi-​ existence sphere, because the individual in question is not concerned with one’s self, but with the outward phenomenon, namely, the humour itself. Second, it is the veil or the incognito of the religious. In this case humour serves as the instrument to deal with the contradictions of having a religious faith that binds one absolutely and the fact that this binding is of no importance to the rest of the world. Humour here helps to deal with this contradiction by helping one not to revert to one of the extremes, by trying to rectify the contradiction. One option is to try to rectify the world into faith –​that is the figure of the revivalist, which leads to martyrdom. Another option is to lose faith. Both in Kierkegaard’s eyes are undesirable, and humour therefore provides a possibility to avoid these extremes and to cope with the contradiction by acknowledging it and creating a comical effect out if. 5

Conclusions

From what has been said, it becomes apparent that the comical (Kierkegaard’s umbrella term for caprice, irony and humour) plays a crucial role in individual existence. Whatever the number or interrelations between the existence spheres, the comical is always present, as the contradiction is always present. As Climacus says in the already used remark: ‘Wherever there is life, there is contradiction, and wherever there is contradiction, the comic is present.’

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(Kierkegaard 1992: 513–​514) In other words, what Kierkegaard tries to remind us is that our existence is essentially contradictory. What might change is our understanding of the nature of this contradiction: we might see it as merely accidental and make inconsequential jokes for someone else’s amusement (caprice), we might see it as ethical in nature (irony), or we might see it as metaphysical or religious (humour). Thus, the comic is a means of coping with this contradiction that is at the core of individual existence. To be sure, for Kierkegaard this is not the only means of dealing with it –​the other possibility is what Kierkegaard calls ‘the tragic’. In his Journals and Notebooks he also makes a significant division of their tasks: ‘The tragic wants to elevate, the comic to ameliorate.’ (Kierkegaard 2010: Not12:4c) Thus, the role of the comic for Kierkegaard is therapeutic –​it helps one to deal with the contradiction. Climacus makes a similar point and elaborates on the distinction between the comic and the tragic: ‘The comic interpretation produces the contradiction or allows it to become apparent by having in mente [in mind] the way out; therefore the contradiction is painless. The tragic interpretation sees the contradiction and despairs over the way out.’ (Kierkegaard 1992: 516) In other words, the comic not only highlights the contradiction that one has in his existence, but somehow proposes a solution to that contradiction. To conclude, it is evident that contradiction is at the heart of the Kierkegaard’s understanding of the comic. As I have shown, Kierkegaard surely would agree that incongruity, or as he prefers to say, contradiction is the necessary condition for any comical effect to take place. However, it would be grossly reductive to simply assign Kierkegaard to the incongruity theorists of laughter. It is evident that for Kierkegaard the comic plays a crucial role in dealing with the existential tension and this brings Kierkegaard’s understanding of the comic closer to the relief theories of laughter. As I have shown, Kierkegaard would surely agree that relief, or as he prefers to say, amelioration is a crucial function of the comic in individual’s life. However, once again, it would be grossly reductive to simply assign Kierkegaard to the relief theorists of laughter. Having said that, both of these theories do not exhaust Kierkegaard’s conceptual contribution to our understanding of the comic. Kierkegaard would surely agree that the comic originates in contradiction and also would surely agree that the main function of the comic is a relief of tension, however, his originality lies in seeing the comic as essential to the whole existential predicament of the individual self. Kierkegaard’s idea that contradiction is an essential attribute of human existence and, in turn, that the comic is an essential, crucial instrument for dealing with that contradiction, significantly expands the role and the scope of the comic in our lives. This, in turn, demands to see

58 Bachmetjevas humour not merely as a psychological or physiological, but primarily as an existential phenomenon. Acknowledgements Thank you to all who participated in the conference that spurred this volume on, and in particular to Daniel O’Shiel, without whom this would have not come to pass.

References

Aristotle (1991). On Rhetoric (trans. G. A. Kennedy). Oxford University Press. Frazier B. (2004). ‘Kierkegaard on Mastered Irony’, International Philosophical Quar­ terly 44: 465–​479. Hegel (1993). Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (trans. B. Bosanquet). Penguin Books. Kierkegaard S. (1980). The Concept of Anxiety (trans. R. Thomte and A. B. Anderson), in Kierkegaard’s Writings, Volume viii. Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard S. (1983). Fear and Trembling. Repetition (trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong), in Kierkegaard’s Writings, Volume vi. Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard S. (1989). The Concept of Irony (trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong), in Kierkegaard’s Writings, Volume ii. Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard S. (1992). Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong), in Kierkegaard’s Writings, Volume xii.1. Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard S. (2007). Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 1 (trans. B. H. Kirmmse et al.). Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard S. (2008). Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2 (trans. B. H. Kirmmse et al.). Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard S. (2010). Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, Volume 3 (trans. B. H. Kirmmse et al.). Princeton University Press. Lippitt J. (2000). Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought. Palgrave Macmillan. Morreall J. (2009). Comic Relief. A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Wiley-​Blackwell. Quintilian (1986). Institutio Oratorica. Harvard University Press. Vlastos G. (1991). Socrates. Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Cambridge University Press. Достоевский, Ф. (2000). Бесы. Эксмо-​пресс.

pa rt 2 New Theoretical Contributions

∵

­c hapter 4

Prolegomena to a Revised Theory of Humour Alberto Voltolini Abstract In this chapter, I claim that a revised version of the classical theory of incongruity and its resolution may provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for humour. If the revision worked, it would be a great result, for it would show that being humorous is an objective property, though a relational, actually mind-​dependent, one; namely, a response-​dependent property of perceived incongruity. More precisely, something (a story, typically a pun or a joke, or even a picture as well as the apprehension of an actual piece of behaviour) is humorous if and only if it makes one entertain, within a fictional representational model, a representation that is perceived, or better realized, as paradoxical or absurd with respect to another representation. This representation was previously entertained, possibly implicitly, within the same model. Putting together the first representation with the second one, since they are located in that model, allows for one’s disengagement. Primarily, this disengagement is moral: morally implausible representations can be entertained with other incongruous representations (at least, up to a certain extent), since they are located in a fictional, not a real, model.

Keywords absurd –​fiction –​humour –​incongruity –​representation

1

Introduction

In this chapter, I claim that a revised version of the classical theory of incongruity and its resolution may provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for humour. If the revision worked, it would be a great result, for it would show that being humorous is an objective property, though a relational, actually mind-​ dependent, one; namely, a response-​dependent property of perceived incongruity. More precisely, something (a story, typically a pun or a joke, or even a picture as well as the apprehension of an actual piece of behaviour) is humorous if and only if it makes one entertain, within a fictional representational

© Alberto Voltolini, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_006

62 Voltolini model, a representation that is perceived, or better realized, as paradoxical or absurd with respect to another representation. This representation was previously entertained, possibly implicitly, within the same model. Putting together the first representation with the second one, since they are located in that model, allows for one’s disengagement. Primarily, this disengagement is moral: morally implausible representations can be entertained with other incongruous representations (at least, up to a certain extent), since they are located in a fictional, not a real, model. 2

The Incongruity Theory and Its Resolution as the Best among the Classical Theories

Pretheoretically speaking, one may think that the property of being humorous (or of being funny, at least in a particular meaning of the term, as we will see later) is only a subjective property, along the model of the so-​called secondary qualities. Some people have a sense of humour, some others do not; and those who have a sense of humour have it in different ways. However, first of all this suspicion would have an annoying consequence, for if this were the case, we might be entrapped in a so-​called faultless disagreement: what is humorous for me is not so for you, just as what is delicious for me is not so for you, and so none of us may turn out to be wrong. Moreover, a subjective property is harder to detect; looking in this direction, one may find a mere similarity among different experiences. Compare colour: if one searches for what makes a colour coloured, better to look for reflectance, dispositional or even response-​dependent yet still objective properties, rather than for a property from subjectivity, for this raises the problem as to whether my experience of red (for example) is the same as your experience. In order to avoid these problems, one may examine the alternative option by claiming that being humorous is an objective property of something. This option has more chance of being successful if one takes into account the fact that a property may be objective even if it is not an intrinsic but a relational property of something; in particular, a mind-​dependent property, that is, a property whose instantiation depends on the existence of some mental factor. Granted, a world with no minds would not be humorous. However, this does not mean that being humorous is a property of subjects and not of worldly objects. This claim finds even more support if, in order to settle what humour is, one appeals to a so-​called essentialist theory of humour (Attardo 1994), for in trying to grasp what makes humour humorous, such a theory goes in the direction

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of looking for humour as a property in the world rather than as a property of subjects. As is well known, the universally acknowledged essentialist theories of humour (Carroll 2014; Morreall 2009) are the relief theory (Freud 1963; Spencer 1911), the superiority theory (Aristotle 1941; Hobbes 1839), and the incongruity theory and its resolution (Kant 1892; Schopenhauer 1964).1 According to the relief theory, humour is the product of discharging nervous energy either used to repress unconscious drives or generated by the confrontation between something serious and deep on the one hand and something frivolous and shallow on the other. According to the superiority theory, humour is the outcome of detecting infirmities in others (or in our previous self) that prompts or reinforces one’s own sense of superiority. According to the incongruity theory and its resolution, humour results from entertaining a representation, typically an expectation, or better an implicit belief (Dennett et al. 2011) that is subsequently perceived or better realized to be incongruous until it is replaced by another representation, that is, a perception, or again better, a realization of how things actually stand. Such a replacement generates amusement. All these classic essentialist theories of humour have their pros and cons. However, first of all there is a factor which preliminarily suggests that the incongruity theory is more promising than the other two, especially if one looks for an objective conception of humour, as Carroll (2014: 19–​20, 57) maintains. As Carroll himself (2014: 62–​63) stresses, this theory best accounts for the formal object of a humorous experience taken as an intentional experience (possibly an emotion of amusement), that is, what makes for a humorous experience. Just as the formal object of any experience of fear is for the feared object to be believed as dangerous –​if one fears an object that one does not believe to be dangerous, one’s fear is irrational –​the formal object of any humorous experience is for the object of that experience to be perceived as incongruous. In other words, being incongruous is what something given in that experience is perceived as being. Furthermore, ascribing a formal object to a humorous experience explains how humour can be an objective, even though a non-​intrinsic but relational, property. Given such a formal object, the property of being humorous turns out to be a mind-​dependent property, in particular a response-​dependent one 1 Of course, this trio does not exhaust the field of the essentialist theories of humour. At least three other such theories deserve to be mentioned, the play theory (Aquinas 1963; Darwin 1965), the theory of mechanical humour (Bergson 1913) and even the more recent dispositional theory (Levinson 1998). However, scholars of all kinds acknowledge pride of place to the aforementioned trio.

64 Voltolini (Carroll 2014: 40): what is humorous is the representational pair involved in the humorous situation eliciting a perception of incongruity. Two famous jokes, the first from Oscar Wilde and the second from Groucho Marx, having to do with lexical and structural ambiguity respectively, may show how the theory seems to account nicely for humour: (1) To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. (2) One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got into my pyjamas I’ll never know. In (1), the second token of the verb ‘to lose’, which is assumed to be used in the same way as the first, raises the expectation that the second parent is dead as well. However, accompanying that token with the noun ‘carelessness’ prompts a perception of incongruity: what has parental death to do with carelessness? The incongruity is solved once, by realizing that such a token is actually used in another way, namely as meaning misplacement, one realizes that the situation involving the parents is a different, definitely less tragic, one, and therefore one can react with amusement. Likewise, syntactically parsing the first sentence of (2) in its lectio facilior prompts the rather trivial expectation that the speaker is wearing his pyjamas. However, then (2)’s second sentence immediately raises a perception of incongruity: how can the fact that the speaker is wearing his pyjamas be consistent with the fact that the elephant got into them? Again, this incongruity is removed by reparsing (2)’s first sentence in its lectio difficilior by realizing the unlikely fact that the elephant is wearing the speaker’s pyjamas (cf., for example: Suls 1972). This theory certainly has various merits, primarily because it seems to fit the spectator’s situation involving her epistemic background nicely. To begin with, the first representation involved is typically a sort of implicit belief, often having to do with the spectator’s unconscious biases. If a belief of that sort were explicit, the humorous effect would risk being lost (as when one explains a joke). Second, humorous stories must be told in the cognitively right order, with a (normally final)2 punchline, otherwise the humorous effect is again lost. First, in the following example the last sentence is precisely what must be omitted in telling the joke, for otherwise it makes the implicit belief that must be revised untidily explicit for humorous purposes:

2 Attardo (2001) calls a jab line a sentence that plays the same role as a punchline although it is not the final sentence of the relevant story.

Prolegomena to a Revised Theory of Humour



65

(3) A man walks up to a hot dog vendor and says ‘make me one with everything’. Oh, and the man is a Buddhist. dennett et al. 2011

Second, one may easily see how the following famous joke

(4) ‘Honey, be careful, there is a madman driving on the wrong side of the freeway. I just heard this on the radio’. ‘Not just one honey, I see hundreds of them, they are all driving on the wrong side’.

would no longer be humorous if it were told in the reverse order:

(4*) A madman is driving on the wrong side of the freeway and his wife...3

Thus, it seems that the incongruity theory suggests itself as the best standard theory of humour in the philosophical market. Yet, as we will see in the next sections, there are some problems that must be addressed in order for the theory to be properly accepted. 3

Problems with the Incongruity Theory and Some Possible Solutions

Notwithstanding the advantages of the incongruity theory, it also has well-​ known disadvantages. To begin with, it does not seem to provide necessary conditions for humour. First, according to Levinson (1998), not all forms of satire, sarcasm, and texts based on sexual jokes rely on a perceived incongruity. More specifically, caricatures and comical forms of behaviour sometimes take not the incongruity but the congruity of that form of behaviour to extremes. Second, in the same vein, Gibbs et al. (2014: 585–​586) stress that a person who behaves according to stereotypical manners is comical without prompting any incongruity. Indeed, repetitions can be humorous but not incongruous. However, first of all it is doubtful whether the above counterexamples are really so. If they seem to be so, it is either because a higher-​order incongruity is 3 Some maintain that the theory is also empirically corroborated. Brain studies would show that the left hemisphere understands the story’s setting up to a perception of an incongruity, while the right hemisphere grasps that incongruity itself and its resolution (McGhee 1983). Yet this empirical evidence has later been questioned (for a review see: Forabosco 2008: 53–​ 55). More recent studies seem rather to sustain the hypothesis that, as far as their different neural implementation is concerned, a cognitive component related to the incongruity detection and resolution must be distinguished from an emotional component related to humour appreciation (Vrtička et al. 2013; Silva et al. 2017).

66 Voltolini at stake (in the extreme case), or because we do not expect the person involved to fall into the stereotype (hence again, incongruity is still at play), or even because humorous repetitions actually stress an incongruity (Carroll 2014: 60). Nevertheless, a revision to the necessary conditions is required anyway. This is because, regarding some cases at least, it may be improper to say that the perceived incongruity must be resolved, at least if by ‘resolution’ one means a dissolution of the incongruity (Attardo 1994: 143–​144). As Attardo specifies, even if there is a resolution, it does not have to be either complete (hence, no dissolution) or plausible. One may even say that what counts is not the dissolution, but the grasping of an incongruity (Forabosco 1992; Levinson 1998) holding between the two relevant representations, of interpretations the humorous situation involves.4 Properly speaking, it is not that the first representation is perceived as inducing an incongruity which the second representation resolves. In point of fact, putting things this way somehow meshes the incongruity theory with the relief theory, insofar as the dissolution of the incongruity may be taken to be a sort of relief of the tension that the perception of an incongruity in the original representation created (Gibbs et al. 2014: 578; O’Shiel in this volume). Rather, the point is that such an incongruity arises insofar as another representation comes to mind that is precisely incongruous with the first. In fact, in various cases the incongruity can be kept by wavering between the representations. Here are some cases. In general, one-​sentence puns are cases in which contrasting representations are kept together. In fact, in the case of syntagmatic puns, where understanding requires no extrasentential context, no linguistic context prompts a disambiguation replacing a first representation with a second:

(5) Without geometry, life is pointless.



(6) Did you hear about the fellow whose whole left side was cut off? He’s all right now.

voltolini 2012

dennett et al. 2011

4 One may say that if there is something like a congruity in the incongruity that yields the specific cognitive mastery which humour requires (Forabosco 1992: 57–​59), it just lies in the background metarepresentational awareness of having been fooled: ‘it’s a joke’ (Forabosco 1992, 2008; see also O’Shiel in this volume). However, as we will see immediately below, humour involves fiction and this in its turn can be seen as involving a certain metarepresentational awareness of the kind ‘it’s all make-​believe’ (Voltolini 2016, 2021), so I wonder whether the metarepresentational component should be ascribed to humour in general rather than to its fictional constituent specifically, thereby leaving the mere perception of an incongruity (of a particular type, as we will see again immediately below) to humour in general.

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In the case of paradigmatic puns, where understanding requires an extrasentential context, the linguistic context invites one to accompany a sentence with one interpretation with another similar sentence with an another interpretation, possibly as if there were a sort of literary quotation (e.g. one movie scene echoing another one). Indeed, humour arises out of the confrontation between these interpretations:

(7) A cardboard belt would be a waste of paper.



(8) The interpreter takes a break: toast in translation.



(8*) Obviously echoes the title of the film Lost in Translation (2003).

dennett et al. 2011

volpe and voltolini 2011

In some further cases, sylleptic zeugmas and spoonerisms, humour prescri­bes that the two interpretations are both present and contrasting.5 Here are the respective examples:

(9) I called her a whore and myself a cab.



(10) The Conquering Kings Their Titles Take /​The Kinquering Congs Their Titles Take.

voltolini 2012

Some more serious problems arise also with the sufficiency conditions for humour. To begin with, irony typically involves two sentential meanings, a literal and an intended one, which is somehow contrary to, and hence incongruous with, the previous one. However, although ironic discourse often prompts amusement (cf. for example: Gibbs et al. 2014: 577–​578), discovering that one is talking ironically is not eo ipso humorous. Indeed, in talking ironically the speaker may have no expectation that her audience should react with amusement (ibid.: 590). This is shown by the following dialogue, where irony may communicate one’s sense of disappointment or even frustration, but not humour (as anyone knows, London is not a seaside resort):

(11) ‘Where will you spend your next holidays?’ ‘I will stay in London, which is a sea town’.

5 This phenomenon may also happen when the relevant one-​sentence pun is embedded in a longer story, as in the following joke: ‘Bassompierre was a prisoner at the Bastille. While reading, he flipped the page of his book hastily. The warden asked him what he was looking for, and Bassompierre replied: “I am looking for a passage, but I cannot find it.”’ (Attardo 1994).

68 Voltolini More generally, not any revision of implicit beliefs is humorous, even when there is a perceived incongruity between past and present representations (as Bain (1875) originally noted) –​for example, on seeing there is snow outside we discover that we erroneously believed it was summer. This may induce astonishment, bewilderment, or perhaps anxiety or fear in us, but not hilarity (Kulka 1993). This criticism prompts another revision of the theory. The perceived incongruity must occur not in a real but a fictional context, that is, the kind of context which primarily affects any fictional tale by representing what the tale describes in a fictional representational model that is distinct (and recognized as such) from the real representational model, the latter representing what a story describes from the actual world (Voltolini 2016, 2021). As Dennett et al. (2011) originally pointed out by speaking of a specific frame for the representations involved, the implicit beliefs to be reconsidered in virtue of new representations must be entertained in a fictional model that represents a fictional world or space. This model is clearly distinct from the real model that represents (a portion of) the actual world. The opening of a fictional space guarantees what Morreall (1999) takes to be one’s non-​involvement, hence not only one’s theoretical disengagement about logical matters (incoherent reasoning is allowed), but also one’s practical disengagement concerning moral matters (moral extravagance is allowed as well), all of which allows humour to arise. In this respect, in comical amusement there is no lack of control over the world (Morreall 1987), for belief reconsideration takes place not in a real but a fictional representational model. This situation can already be seen in the basic cases of humour. An unknown person who pulls faces at a child prompts anxiety in him, while a familiar person amuses him. In the first (but not in the second) the child feels he is in some danger because he is not able to detach himself from the real situation (Carroll 2014). We can find someone else’s fall (e.g. slipping on a banana skin) funny when we are not involved in the fall (i.e. we do not know the person, or we know the person but we are able to detach ourselves from that person somehow), or even in an event that does involve us but nevertheless prompts detachment in us.6 We may find even our own fall funny, but only when we are able to detach ourselves from ourselves, a bit like when we laugh at discovering that the glasses we were looking for were on our head all along (Carroll 2014; Dennett et al. 2011). This revision has a first advantage. It enables one to explain why humour may be taken to be both similar to a close phenomenon (what Dennett et al. 6 If we do not practice that detachment, what we feel is Schadenfreude, i.e. pleasure at someone else’s misfortunes (Dennett et al. 2011).

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2011 label funny-​huh), and yet different from it. Funny-​huh occurs in situations we find odd, as with unexpected discoveries (e.g. finding the lights on when we come back home), or when tackling riddles or puzzles. As one can easily see, the above counterexample by Kulka (1993) is a case of this kind. Now, both humour (which is opportunely called funny-​haha by Dennett et al. (2011) following Morreall (1987)) and funny-​huh can be seen as responses to cognitive problems. Regarding the latter, amusement arises out of a solution to a real cognitive problem (Morreall 1987), whereas regarding funny-​haha hilariousness arises out of a solution to, or better (in terms of my first revision of the theory) merely the grasping of a fictional cognitive problem. Both the similarity and the difference between funny-​huh and funny-​haha are vividly shown by the following joke, which contains an answer to a fictional, not a real, problem:

(12) ‘George Bush has a short one. Gorbachev has a longer one. The Pope has it, but does not use it, Madonna does not have it. What is it?’ ‘A last name’. attardo 19947

The revision also has another advantage. Insofar as it allows for moral disengagement holding within the fictional model in which one implicit belief is reconsidered in the light of another morally dubious one, this kind of revision explains why we can allow for racist, sexist or bad jokes generally involving a derision of an ethnic or social group. By bracketing our moral sensibility this fictional shift accounts for what Bergson (1913) called a ‘temporary anaesthesia of the heart’ because the morally repellent extravagant reconsideration is presented in a fictional, not real, model. As an example, one’s real religious convictions and esteem for religious people are not shaken by the fictional mocking in this joke:

(13) A young Catholic priest is walking through town when he is accosted by a prostitute. ‘How about a quickie for twenty dollars?’ she asks. The priest, puzzled, shakes her off and continues on his way, only to be stopped by another prostitute. ‘Twenty dollars for a quickie’, she offers. Again, he breaks free and goes on up the street. Later, as he is nearing his home in the country, he meets a nun.

7 Of course, there may be borderline cases. Wittiness involves an intellectual fascination before inducing the sort of amusement that mirth prompts. There is a sort of line of continuity from the Voltairean motto ‘I don’t agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ to Dennett et al.’s (2011) joke ‘Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace’.

70 Voltolini ‘Pardon me, sister’, he asks, ‘but what’s a quickie?’ ‘Twenty dollars’, she says, ‘same as it is in town’. dennett et al. 2011

The revision has a third advantage. Opening a fictional space explains why we continue to be amused by a joke we already know. According to the standard version of the theory, since we already know what cognitive revision is at stake, we should lose our interest in the joke. Now, pace Morreall (1987), it is implausible that in order for us to be amused again we must always find some hitherto hidden incongruities in the joke. Rather, the point is that in opening a fictional space we operate a suspension of knowledge (Forabosco 2008: 56): we make as if we did not know the joke already in order to put ourselves once again in the situation that it describes.8 This may explain how, instead of prompting satiation, recurring gags increase appreciation (Zajonc 1968).9 However, even reconsidering implicit beliefs as holding in a fictional representational model is not enough to account for humour, because this kind of reconsideration also holds in non-​humorous yet fictional cases, as in the assumption we have understood a story but it must be revised by the story’s end. A vivid example of this situation is given in Alejandro Amenábar’s film The Others. In watching it, up to the last shots the main characters are erroneously taken to not be what they really are, namely, what they are fighting against throughout most of the story. Clearly enough, this epistemic revision prompts no hilarity. In order to address this problem, one must look for a criterion of incongruity. Not all forms of perceived incongruity are humorous. In order for a perceived incongruity to be such, what counts is that, in a fictional model, the different representations involved are not only opposed to each other but the second is paradoxical or even absurd, either in a theoretical or in a practical sense, with respect to the first one. It must not only be a novelty but also a nonsensical novelty in the sense of being paradoxical or even absurd (Morreall 1987). The diversion that the second representation induces us to follow with respect to the first (Forabosco 2008: 48) must be a sort of road to nowhere, as

8 Appealing to this suspension of knowledge accords with Walton’s (1990) solution of the so-​ called paradox of suspense (Carroll 2001; Yanal 1996). According to that solution, we can re-​experience suspense (or fictionally re-​experience suspense?) by re-​reading a story insofar as we are merely fictionally uncertain as regards the story’s development. 9 As a reviewer has suggested to me, another possibility is that the element of novelty stands in the fact that, in listening to a joke again, we share it with some new interlocutor and enjoy her amused reaction.

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Kant himself (1892) originally grasped: ‘Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing’ (as Carroll 2014: 49 and Yablo 2019 also underline). In a nutshell, the joke must floor us. This situation can be shown by the following jokes:

(14) Two muffins are in the oven. The first one says, ‘Boy is it hot in here!’ and the second one responds, ‘Wow, a talking muffin!’ (15) Two pilots and one stewardess survive a plane crash and drift for days in the ocean until they reach a small remote island, in the middle of nowhere. After some days, they get the idea that no one is coming to rescue them. It’s a sad moment but life goes on, and the survivors set up camp, eat fish, drink coconut milk, and fall asleep under the beautiful sky. Some weeks pass. One day, the stewardess says: ‘Okay guys, we know we’re here for a long time, possibly for ever. I know you have needs, and I have needs too. We are good friends, we know each other well … I think we can do something: I could have sex everyday, one day with one of you, and the next with the other one, etc. And if anything goes wrong, if one of us wants to stop for any reason, we just stop without asking any questions. What do you think?’ The two pilots look at each other shyly and finally approve. It’s the beginning of a new life. They make love every other day, everyone is satisfied, and they all live happy together. Sadly, one day, the stewardess gets sick. And after a few weeks of painful fever and headaches, she dies. The two pilots are strongly affected. But they decide to be strong, and try to keep on living as well as they can. One day, one of them tells the other: ‘You know … we’ve known each other for a long time, and after all we’ve been through, I think we could try’. The other pilot answers. ‘Man, I was thinking the same thing. Let’s try, and if one of us wants to stop, no questions, we just stop’. And then, they have sex again, and everything is fine again. Until one day, one of them tells the other ‘Hey … I’m sorry but, you know, I feel bad about it, it’s not as good as it was, it’s against nature. We said that we could stop at any time, so, yeah, I think I want to stop’. ‘Oh boy, I totally agree, it’s not the same, we can stop, no problem’. ‘So … should we bury her?’

In the case of (14), the muffin’s response floors us because it is paradoxical in the context. Muffins in an oven should be worried by the fact that they are going to die, not by the fact that they are anthropomorphized. In the case of (15), the use in particular of the phrase ‘against nature’, which notoriously is often biasedly

72 Voltolini applied to homosexual relationships and hardly makes one think (at least in Catholic countries) of necrophilia, prompts us to form an implicit belief that the two men are having sexual intercourse. This is very curious, since in point of fact the phrase indisputably applies to the necrophiliac practice the men are performing on the poor dead stewardess. However, we need the punchline in order to revise the original belief in terms of the new representation of how things really stand with the men and the stewardess’s corpse. This representation of the necrophiliac practice ultimately sounds completely absurd to us: ‘What nonsense!’ will typically be our amused reaction.10 A first advantage of this way of putting things is that it may allow for degrees of humour (Carroll 2014; Schopenhauer 1964) insofar as the contrast between such representations gradually approaches the point of paradox or absurdity. As Forabosco puts it, ‘a humorous stimulus is more effective […] the stronger the final perception of incongruity’ (1992: 60). This may clearly be seen if we compare a series of jokes that are all variants of the same kind, that is, mockery of an ethnic or social group (Attardo 1994):

(16a) How many Poles [policemen, etc.] does it take to change a light bulb? Five, one to hold the light bulb and four to turn the table he’s standing on. (16b) How many Poles does it take to change a light bulb? One hundred, one to take his shoes off and jump on a table to hold the bulb and ninety-​nine to turn the ceiling. (16c) How many Poles does it take to change a light bulb? Five, one to take his shoes off and jump on a table to hold the bulb and four to spray deodorant all around.

Both (16b) and (16c) are more humorous than (16a) because (16b) is an exaggeration of (16a), while (16c) involves a violation of moral norms concerning how to regard an ethnic group. (16c) may even be more humorous than (16b) if the violation of moral norms sounds more absurd than the violation of an operational routine (for a similar analysis, see: Forabosco 2008).11 Moreover, the following one is probably the most humorous variant of the series, for it paradoxically turns the tables with respect to the very point of the joke (mockery of a group), so as to both floor us and make us think at one and the same time:

10 11

I will later discuss the problem of whether one may not find this joke humorous for it apparently violates moral norms concerning discriminated groups. In Forabosco (1994), Forabosco provided a criterion for classifying joke variants.

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(16d) How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? It’s not the light bulb that needs changing. langton 201312

A second advantage of this way of putting things is that it enables us to understand why humour is comparable with religious sense and acceptance of what cannot be understood (Cohen 1999). By being involved with absurdity, humour helps us to cope with the nonsense of life and death, or more in general with the nonsensicality of all inevitable events. The following joke (Cohen 1999) puts the two things together nicely, namely the absurdity of life and the absurdity of the joke itself:

(17) Abe visits his doctor for a routine examination and gets the devastating news that he is mortally ill, with no treatment possible, and that he will die within a day. He goes home, tells his wife, Sarah, and after they have absorbed the shock of the terrible news, Abe says to Sarah, ‘Since it is my last night, Sarah, do you think we could go to bed and fool around?’ ‘Of course’, says Sarah. And so they do. Later, at about 1 a.m., Abe wakes up, prods Sarah, and asks, ‘Do you think we could do it again?’ ‘Certainly, Abe, it’s your last night’. And so they do. At 3a.m. Abe is awake again, and again he asks Sarah for her attentions. ‘For God’s sake, Abe, you don’t have to get up in the morning’.

This concludes my amendment of the incongruity theory. 4

Objections and Replies

One may think that the incongruity theory and its resolution, even revised, still does not provide either necessary or sufficient conditions. First of all, one may say that humour does not necessarily have to do with the discovery of an 12

That in humour incongruity points towards absurdity does not mean that, in revealing paradoxes to us, a joke cannot be deep, as Wittgenstein originally underlined regarding what he called grammatical jokes (2009: I §111). As is well known, he ended up claiming that a book of philosophy might be made up entirely of jokes (Malcolm 2001: 29), thereby revealing the nonsensicality of certain philosophical theses, for example the claim that one knows that one is in pain (2009: I §246). As Yablo (2019) remarks, this Wittgensteinian stance entirely agrees with Lewis Carroll’s, as the following joke notoriously stresses by mocking those philosophers thinking that ‘nothing’ and its cognate expressions are referential terms: ‘King: “Who do you see on the road?” Alice: “I see nobody”. King: “What eyes you have, to see nobody; at this distance, it’s all I can do to see somebody”’.

74 Voltolini incongruity, even a paradoxical one; sometimes we laugh simply because what has been uttered is meaningless, as in:

(18) See you in a while, crocodile! carroll 1999: 154

This objection is easy to dispense with. In such cases, humour arises out of a second-​order incongruity, by discovering, still in a fictional representational model, that our implicit belief that there is an affinity between the things we are talking about is wrong, for we paradoxically realize that there is only an affinity between the words we have used. This occurs in all jokes in which we mistake use for mention, as the earlier joke (12) about last names vividly recalled. Moreover, one may recognize that the standard theory does not provide sufficient conditions for humour but think that the extra factor must be searched for in another direction which does not have to do with absurdity. According to Carroll (2014: 64), what is funny-​haha prompts a particular experience of levity, that is, ‘a mild sensation of joy or lightness’ (ibid.: 31), which merely somehow goes along with the recognition of absurdity, for it is ‘an experience that accompanies the disappearance of a cognitive demand into nonsense’ (ibid.: 58). We grasp an incongruity, we understand that it is not dangerous; this induces an emotion of amusement that is manifested in an experience of levity (and possibly also by a smile).13 However, as Carroll himself (2014) implicitly admits, once one recognizes that grasping an incongruity occurs in a fictional representational model (which explains why that incongruity is not dangerous), there is no more need to postulate the sui generis experience of levity for the purposes of humour. That experience may occur also in non-​humorous yet fictional situations, in particular those which are tied to the pleasure in contemplating something that may sound incongruous. For example, the paintings René Magritte labelled The Human Condition induce one to the realization that they contain partial trompe-​l’oeils regarding the depicted fictional scenes. One thinks one sees a landscape through a window only to realize that this landscape is partially occluded by a canvas hung on an almost invisible easel depicting the occluded part of the landscape. Now, such a realization may involve exactly the same experience without the painting as a whole being captured as a caricature or as anyway humorous. Finally, along with the standard version, the revised theory of incongruity may continue to dispense with the idea of looking for an essential connection 13

As a reviewer makes me note, this experience can also relate to the relief theory, in that the energy reserved for reasoning is not needed and thus expelled as laughter.

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between comical amusement and laughter, as happens in many theories of humour, with Levinson’s (1998) dispositional theory included.14 Here, by failing to appeal to laughter when accounting for humour, the theory shares the standard ideas and criticisms that laughter is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for humour (see: Carroll 2014; Morreall 2009). As various people have underlined (for example: Dennett et al. 2011; Gibbs et al. 2014), laughter is not necessary for humour since humour may involve other forms of behaviour besides laughing. For example, neither puns nor wordplays more generally often prompt laughter even in the above minimal sense. It is not sufficient either, for there are many forms of laughter –​social non-​spontaneous laughter (Duchenne 1990), nervous or affiliation-​promoting contagious laughter (Provine 2000, Gibbs et al. 2014) –​that do not prompt humour at all. One may wonder whether in this perspective even emotional amusement, as the standard version of the incongruity theory claims, is necessary for humour. If funny-​haha were the mere fictional counterpart of funny-​huh, one might be ready to accept this necessity claim, for one might say that solving a cognitive problem, whether real or fictional, is rewarding, hence amusing, in itself. Clearly, amusement is what we expect in telling a humorous story. However, since I said that resolution of an incongruity is not necessary for humour, perhaps amusement is merely part of one’s affective involvement with the story (Forabosco 1992: 63) that is not strictly speaking required for the purposes of humour. This is seemingly confirmed by some recent empirical studies on the different kinds of neural implementations of humour-​related factors, that is, incongruity grasp plus resolution versus emotional appreciation, which explain the deficits of appreciating humour (in certain social jokes at least) in autistic people (Silva et al. 2017; Vrtička et al. 2013; Weiss et al. 2013) as well as the opposite dissociation in schizophrenic patients (Tsoi et al. 2008). All in all, it seems that the amended theory ultimately provides both necessary and sufficient conditions for humour. Something (a story, typically a pun or a joke, or even a picture, as well as the apprehension of an actual piece of behaviour) is humorous if and only if, within the very same fictional representational model, it makes one have a second representation that is perceived, or better realized, as paradoxical or absurd with respect to another representation previously entertained, typically implicitly. Entertaining such representations in that model ultimately allows for one’s disengagement, notably as regards one’s or one’s community’s moral convictions. 14

According to Levinson’s theory, the emotion of amusement is epistemically identified in terms of a disposition in normal human beings to a (possibly minimal) reaction of laughter.

76 Voltolini 5

Conclusion

If I am right, revising the incongruity theory and its resolution in the above direction allows one to preserve the claim that I defended at the very beginning of this paper: being humorous is an objective though relational property, namely a mind-​dependent property, and more precisely a response-​ dependent one. It consists in the perception, or better the realization, of a paradoxical or absurd incongruity between different representations as occurring in a fictional representational model that allows one to be disengaged, primarily morally, regarding such representations. Granted, a representation is perceived to be incongruous only with respect to the other representation involved. However, once such representations are at stake, their incongruity is not relative to one subject but not to another. In other words, the perception of incongruity between them is factive. If this claim is correct, then from the definition it follows that those who do not grasp the humour in a story (or joke, or pun) or any comical situation, whether depicted or real, are not people who disagree with us because of subjective reasons (possibly, because they have a different sense of humour), but because of certain objective reasons. These reasons may be collected into two main groups, a cognitive and an ethical group. On the one hand, either those subjects are people who lack the background knowledge relevant to understanding the beliefs originally involved in the story or comical situation, and hence are unable to perceive the relevant incongruity; or they are people unable to activate not the first but the second representation in the fictional representational model. For obviously, the activation of this representation displays the incongruity with regard to the first representation, as in the case of someone who fails to activate the lectio difficilior in (2).15 On the other hand, they are people failing to activate moral disengagement, because the morally repellent claims that are involved in the joke affect individuals or groups who are actually discriminated, or who are more generally unable to reciprocate, which makes it morally unelegant (to say the least) even to fictionally mock of them.16 The following examples are intended to respectively show these failures. First, anyone who fails to know that in the binary ‘10’ means two cannot grasp the following joke: 15 16

Granted, this way is cognitively interesting: it may be seen as a form of what Wittgenstein (2009: ii, xi §§261, 272, 294) labelled meaning-​blindness. This failure is what Szabo-​Gendler (2000) labels imaginative resistance. However, pace Szabo-​Gendler this resistance does not depend on one’s rejection of the joke’s own intended request to export morally repellent claims from the joke’s fictional world to the actual world, but on one’s refusal to open a fictional space when this space would be morally opposed to some actual moral convictions of one’s own.

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(19) There are only 10 kinds of people in the world –​those who read binary and those who don’t. dennett et al. 2011

Second, the fact that women actually constitute a socially discriminated group, thereby being unable to reciprocate even mockeries, may lead one to disactivate an even fictional representational model in which woman are mocked (typically, but not exclusively, on sexually relevant matters). What I previously took to be the paradigmatic example of a successful joke (15) may be discarded precisely because one cannot fail to reproach the morally disgusting, even if fictional, behaviour of two guys copulating with a dead woman, notwithstanding its being fictional. Or take the following bad sexual joke:

(20) A man asks a woman, ‘Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?’ She considers her situation and reluctantly replies, ‘Yes, I would’. He responds, ‘Would you sleep with me for five dollars?’ ‘What do you think I am?’ she replies in disgust. He answers, ‘We have already established what you are. Now we are negotiating your price’.

Of course, thoroughly discussing these consequences, especially the one involving ethical aspects, would deserve another paper. Let me just conclude by saying that a proper account of such repercussions certainly indicates another merit of this amendment to the glorious incongruity theory. Acknowledgements First of all, let me first thank two reviewers for their deep and insightful comments. Moreover, I thank Fabrizio Calzavarini for the interesting discussions had with him on the cognitive bases of humour. Also Carola Barbero, Marta Benenti, Greg Currie, Giulia Martina, Andrea Tortoreto and Stephen Yablo for their important suggestions, as well as Sandro Volpe for the countless conversations had with him on the chapter’s themes.

References

Aquinas T. (1963). Summa Theologica (trans. T. Gilby). New York: McGraw Hill. Aristotle (1941). The Basic Works of Aristotle (ed. R. McKeon). New York: Random House. Attardo S. (1994). Linguistic Theories of Humor. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Attardo S. (2001). Humorous Texts. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

78 Voltolini Bain A. (1875). The Emotions and the Will, 3rd ed. London: Longmans and Green. Bergson H. (1913). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (trans. C. Brereton and F. Rothwell). London: Macmillan. Carroll N. (1999). ‘Horror and Humor’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57: 145–​160. Carroll N. (2001). ‘The Paradox of Suspense’, in Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 254–​270. Carroll N. (2014). Humor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen T. (1999). Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Darwin C. (1965). The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York: Oxford University Press. Duchenne (de Boulogne) G. B. (1990). The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression. (trans. R.A. Cuthbertson). New York: Cambridge University Press. Forabosco G. (1992). ‘Cognitive Aspects of the Humor Process: the Concept of Incongruity’, Humor 5: 45–​68. Forabosco G. (1994). ‘“Seriality” and Appreciation of Jokes’, Humor 7: 351–​375. Forabosco G. (2008). ‘Is the Concept of Incongruity Still a Useful Construct for the Advancement of Humor Research?’, Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 4: 45–​62. Freud S. (1963). Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 5 (trans. J. Strachey). New York: W.W. Norton. Gibbs R. W. Jr., Bryant G. A. and Colston H. L. (2014). ‘Where is the Humor in Verbal Irony?’, Humor 27: 575–​595. Hobbes T. (1839). Leviathan. English Works, vol. 3 (ed. W. Molesworth). London: Bohn. Hurley M. M., Dennett D. C. and Adams R. B. (2011). Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-​Engineer the Mind. Cambridge, MA: The mit Press. Kant I. (1892). Critique of Judgment (trans J. H. Bernard). London: Macmillan. Kulka T. (1993). ‘The Incongruity of Incongruity Theories’, Estetika 30: 1–​10. Langton R. (2013). ‘The Disappearing Woman’. The New York Times, Sep. 4 (https://​opin​ iona​tor​.blogs​.nyti​mes​.com​/2013​/09​/04​/the​-disap​pear​ing​-women​/)​. Levinson J. (1998). ‘Humour’, in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. E. Craig). London: Routledge: 562–​567. Malcolm N. (2001). Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McGhee P. E. (1983). ‘Humor Development: Toward a Life Span Approach’, in Handbook of Humor Research, volume 1: Basic Issues (eds. P. E. McGhee and J. H. Goldstein). New York: Springer: 109–​134. Morreall J. (1987). ‘Funny Ha-​Ha, Funny Strange, and Other Reactions to Incongruity’, in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (ed. J. Morreal). Albany: State University of New York Press: 188–​207.

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Morreall J. (1999). Comedy, Tragedy, and Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press. Morreall J. (2009). Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Provine R. R. (2000). Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. New York: Viking. Schopenhauer A. (1964). The World as Will and Idea (trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Silva C., Da Fonseca D., Esteves F. and Deruelle C. (2017). ‘Seeing the Funny Side of Things: Humour Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders’, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 43–​44: 8–​17. Spencer H. (1911). ‘On the Physiology of Laughter’, in Essays on Education, etc. London: Dent: 298–​309. Suls J. (1972). ‘A Two-​Stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons’, in The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues (eds. J. H. Goldstein and P. E. McGhee). New York: Academic Press: 81–​100. Szabo-​Gendler T. (2000). ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’, The Journal of Philosophy 97: 55–​81. Tsoi D. T., Kwang-​Hyuk L., Gee K. A., Holden K. L., Parks R. W. and Woodruff P. W. R. (2008). ‘Humour Experience in Schizophrenia: Relations with Executive Dysfunction and Psychosocial Impairment’. Psychological Medicine 38: 801–​810. Volpe S. and Voltolini A. (2011). Mai ali che volano alto. Duepunti: Palermo. Voltolini A. (2012). ‘Puns for Contextualists’, Humana Mente 23: 113–​140. Voltolini A. (2016). ‘The Nature of Fiction/​al Utterances’, Kairos 17: 28–​55. Voltolini A. (2021). ‘Beliefs, Make‑beliefs, and Making Believe that Beliefs Are Not Make‑beliefs’, Synthese 199: 5061–​5078. Vrtička P., Black J. M and Reiss A. L. (2013). ‘The Neural Basis of Humour Processing’. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 14: 860–​868. Walton K. (1990). Mimesis As Make-​Believe. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Weiss E. M., Gschaidbauer B. C., Samson A. C., Steinbäcker K., Fink A. and Papousek I. (2013). ‘From Ice Age to Madagascar: Appreciation of Slapstick Humor in Children with Asperger’s Syndrome’, Humor 26: 423–​440. Wittgenstein L. (2009). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. Yablo S. (2019). ‘Deep Jokes’. Unpublished ms (https://​www​.acade​mia​.edu​/42179​ 228​/Dee​p​_Jo​kes)​. Yanal R. J. (1996). ‘The Paradox of Suspense’, British Journal of Aesthetics 36: 146–​158. Zajonc R. B. (1968). ‘Attitudinal Effect on Mere Exposure’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 6: 1–​27.

­c hapter 5

‘Aha!/​Haha! –​That’s a Good One!’ On the Correlation of Laughter and Understanding in Joke Reception Mira Magdalena Sickinger Abstract In this paper I analyze the relation between understanding a joke and laughing about it. To be more explicit, I seek to investigate whether one of them comes first, and if so, which, or whether they come jointly. I elaborate my position by defending the claim that performed jokes, in successful cases, elicit a response in which laughter and understanding occur simultaneously. To develop this theory, I determine the conditions that must be met in order to allow for a joke performance to be successful. This ideal situation of ‘successful joking’ is given if and only if the recipient both understands the joke and laughs about it. By putting laughter and understanding on an equal footing in my model, I support the idea that the pleasure we experience in joke reception is based both on insight and entertainment. By establishing my model of simultaneity (l/​u ), I challenge two other positions. The first one suggests that laughter, as a triumphant expression of successful ‘data integrity checking’ in the reception of a joke, is based on and follows understanding (u-​l ). The other position regards laughter as the primary phenomenon of the joke and insights only as potential side-​effects (l-​[ u]‌).

Keywords joke –​laughter –​performance –​performative conditions –​reception –​understanding

I analyze the relation between understanding a joke and laughing about it. To be more explicit, I seek to investigate whether one of them comes first, and if so, which, or whether they come jointly. I elaborate my position by defending the claim that performed jokes, in successful cases, elicit a response in which laughter and understanding occur simultaneously. To prepare my argument I define the type of jokes I am talking about. I do so by describing their form in section one, and their performance in section two. The latter includes my

© Mira Magdalena Sickinger, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_007

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description of the situation in which jokes are told and received. To develop this theory, I determine the conditions that must be met in order to allow for a joke performance to be successful. This ideal situation of ‘successful joking’ is given if and only if the recipient both understands the joke and laughs about it. The conditions for it are based on background conditions the participants have to provide, such as prior knowledge (see section three); and on performative conditions, such as familiarity with joke performances, expressiveness on behalf of the narrator and attentiveness on behalf of the recipients, as well as engagement and the establishment of an alliance between the participants (see section four). By putting laughter and understanding on an equal footing in my model, I support the idea that the pleasure we experience in joke reception is based both on insight and entertainment. I claim that laughter is not sufficient but necessary for a successful joke performance (see section five). By ‘understanding’ I mean a direct recognition that depends on preconditions in the moment in which the punchline has been told and received. I deliberately refrain from trying to define ‘funny’, since I am convinced that such a definition can never be completely satisfying and valid. By establishing my model of simultaneity (L/​U ) in section seven, I challenge two other positions (section six). The first one suggests that laughter, as a triumphant expression of successful ‘data integrity checking’ in the reception of a joke, is based on and follows understanding (U-​L ). The other position regards laughter as the primary phenomenon of the joke and insights only as potential side-​effects (L-​[U]‌). 1

Form

The type of jokes I will investigate in the following are narrative jokes, which are often considered the ‘classical’ form of jokes. The narrative joke is a fictional micro-​story, following a certain scheme which, in most cases, contains information about the main characters, their actions and often their location (who/​what/​where). Although there are written collections of narrative jokes, traditionally they are transmitted orally; they are told, and retold, similar to fairytales. From this oral tradition, it also follows that jokes have the particularity of openness to diverging versions and slight adaptations. Jokes, like other fictional stories or representations, do not necessarily deliver truth. It is rather the case that everything is allowed in a joke; and when we hear a joke, we are ready for anything. Yes, talking animals, but also wives who lay eggs. Of course,

82 Sickinger jokes can be realistic, and their storylines are often embedded in, or start from, everyday situations, but they are indifferent to how things really are and can therefore be neither true nor false (see: Voltolini in this volume). In the same sense, jokes also do not necessarily deliver morality –​see above: everything is allowed. Being a short form, the number of the joke story’s active characters is limited. Most cases, however, feature at least two in order to allow for dialogue. These characters may have names but are often merely presented as prototypes by their profession, nationality, religion or similar. The joke teller reports the storyline from a neutral narrative perspective and typically supplements it with the characters’ direct speeches. The story told serves to build certain expectations (set up) and leads towards a sudden but still anticipated end –​ the climax, the punch(line). These two elements need to be connected and coherent (see: O’Shiel in this volume), just not in the expected way. 2

Performance

Let me explain why I assume that the telling and receiving of a joke constitutes a performative practice. I understand a performance to consist of the following elements: time and space, the performer’s body which expresses the performative content, and a relationship between audience and performer. Joking takes place in an appropriate setting, and may sometimes be introduced with a sentence, like: ‘I’ve got a good one, listen to this’. Deciding on the appropriate time and place for a joke performance is a risk the joke teller has to take. The ideal setting might be a table of friends after a good meal. However, a joke performance may also be welcome or even beneficial in less comfortable settings –​ think of lectures and talks, or when a joke serves to break the ice at a formal gathering. In fact, there seem to be very few situations where it is not considered appropriate to tell a joke, examples of which could be funerals or termination interviews. The participants need to be present and involved throughout the performance in order to be able to follow the story and respond directly to it, as the joke teller’s performance depends on the presence and feedback of the audience. Let me stress that the participants’ involvement regards the performance, not necessarily the story and its content. This is an important distinction, especially when we consider cases in which joke stories display content that we do not approve of (morally, socially, politically or for any other reason); we are however still engaged in the performance of it, and we may still be amused. The teller herself should ideally be easily perceivable for the

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recipients, but, in ordinary cases, she does not have to take up an exposed position, such as a stage, or use amplifying aids, such as a microphone. Once initiated, the joke performance works according to certain rules that need to be followed, as in a game. These rules must be learned. As joking is an everyday social practice, most people easily come to be familiar with it, more easily than with theatre performances for example. In principle, anyone can tell and listen to jokes. In many cases, one becomes a recipient of jokes at an early age. Among these might be many jokes one does not understand, however one still tries to (re)tell or perform them oneself. It would certainly be interesting to study how children learn how to deal with jokes. I think I am not alone in the observation that children tend to like jokes and enjoy trying to tell them themselves. It may be due to the performative nature of joke telling. Potentially, one gets attention and applause for it. They may also enjoy the aspect of being allowed to say, for example, obscene or provocative things in this setting. The rules of joke performance are rather complex, however. They consist in more than catching a ball and throwing it back. The joke teller is supposed to tell the story right. Telling it wrong by messing up the set up or punchline results, in the worst case, in disappointed shameful silence. Ideally, the joke is also recited with emphasizing expression. You may have heard the very same joke, recited by different people, evoking different reactions: one time you found it highly entertaining, another time all it took from you was a faint smile. The recipient is supposed to listen attentively, to make it to the end, and, ideally, express her comprehension, amusement and appreciation through applauding laughter. Usually, it is the recipient who can react more or less directly to the content of the joke, whereas the joke teller is of course already familiar with it. She quite likely might have previously been in the position of the recipient, reacting to the very joke she is telling, which is where she has heard and learned the joke. In a simplified thesis, one could assume that jokes are always performed with the intention to entertain, which would be fulfilled by the recipients’ laughter. The motivations or reasons for telling a joke can still be quite different. As mentioned above, to break the ice, but also to provoke, to create a state of intimacy or connection. For the purpose of this investigation, I will introduce the prototype of the ‘successful joke performance’, which involves both laughter and understanding on behalf of the audience. This does not imply that the successful joke performance ends with laughter. It may very well be the case that the recipients think or talk about the joke’s meaning or reflect on their reactions to it right after they have heard it; and even if they do not, the joke has created an

84 Sickinger atmosphere in the room that lasts for a while. Finally, there seems to be some kind of code of honour that the joke teller should not explain her joke, as it is for the audience to react to the joke. And if it does not resonate, then maybe it has just been told wrong. 3

Background Conditions

In addition to the information provided by the story, the successful joke performance also builds upon prior knowledge or belief. Cohen claims that jokes are always conditional, in the sense that ‘the audience must supply something in order either to get the joke or to be amused by it. That something is the condition on which the success of the joke depends’ (1999: 12). Here we have exactly the two elements I am concerned with, and it might seem a very obvious claim. Still, in an earlier essay (‘Jokes’ 1983) Cohen divides jokes into pure and conditional ones. Nevertheless, in the book I am quoting here (1999) he comes to the conclusion that a pure (universal) joke, which presupposes nothing in the recipient, is only an ideal and does not exist (see: Cohen 1999: 12). I agree with this. The ‘something’ condition is whichever background condition the joke presupposes. Cohen classifies jokes that presuppose knowledge or belief as ‘hermetic’, whereas jokes that require certain prejudices or dispositions are considered ‘affective’. Proficiency in the language the joke is told in may be the minimum requirement. Moreover, jokes that presuppose knowledge of the topics or the jargon of a certain profession, for example, are then ‘strongly conditional hermetic jokes’. So far, I agree with Cohen’s account. That said, one thing I find questionable is that Cohen divides successful joking into two separate possibilities of either getting the joke or being amused by it, probably to emphasize that they do not necessarily happen together. However, being amused by a joke seems to imply that you got it –​that it got to you; what else could be the reason for your amusement? Therefore, I suggest a slight rephrasing of the sentence quoted above: ‘in order either to get the joke or to get the joke and be amused by it’. I assume that understanding does not guarantee laughter (and also amusement does not necessarily manifest in laughter), and that there are situations in which laughter occurs although one has not understood. However, in these cases I want to rule out that the behaviour or expression concerned results from amusement by the joke. Remember that I am only concerned with the situation of successful joking which requires the genuine expression of laughter elicited by the joke, and understanding.

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Instances of unsuccessful joking are then such cases in which we either simply do not understand a joke, simply do not laugh about it, or we understand it (understand what is supposed to be funny about it) but are not amused by or laugh about it. There are always reasons for this: either it just does not meet our sense or taste of humour; or we simply have little sympathy for the joke teller and do not wish to grant her the recognition she seeks. One could also feel inhibited to laugh about a joke that displays or plays with images that violate one’s values or beliefs. Nonetheless, I assume that our values and what amuses us in the framework of a joke do not necessarily coincide or necessarily create a problem when they conflict. As mentioned in section one, jokes are fictional representations (for an elaborated discussion of this notion see: Voltolini in this volume) that do not display truth, reality or how the world should be. One may object that there appear to be cases of joking where there is understanding and laughter, but the understanding is not properly connected (for the joke’s success) to the laughter. Unimaginative, clichéd puns are sometimes understood and laughed at, not due to comprehension of the particular joke’s content, but due to the recognition of the joke’s derivative and cliché features.1 I rule out these cases as ones of successful joking, because the recipient here is neither laughing about the particular joke and its performance, nor recognizing the particular joke’s display of a ‘funny’ fictional representation. She is only laughing at a type of joke content. The aspect of direct understanding and spontaneous reaction is lost in these cases, since the recipient derives her amusement only via activating the idea of a type and not directly from the reaction to the token. 4

Performative Conditions

In section one I have pointed out that traditionally jokes are transmitted orally, and that joking is a shared and performative practice. I have also referred to the classical situation where a joke is recited to an audience when I described the performance of a joke in section two. These aspects also indicate the performative conditions for successful joking. Let me recall the main points. Joke practice requires certain skills and familiarity with it. Its performance takes place in an appropriate setting and works according to rules that must be followed, as in a game. There are conditions that apply to the individual role of the participants. The joke teller is supposed to tell the story right. The recipient 1 I thank Philip Letts for bringing this possible objection to my attention.

86 Sickinger is supposed to listen attentively, to make it to the end, and, in the case of success, give the according feedback. In addition to the individual conditions, interactive performative conditions must be met, since my account of successful joking, very obviously, is not an internalist theory. The participants need to actively enter into the mode of joking. All participants in a joke performance carry responsibility for its success. It is not the joke teller alone who takes a risk in exposing herself with the performance, but all committed participants do so if they understand and laugh. The shared experience of this alliance also implies a shared aesthetic experience, a shared response, a shared taste, a shared judgement in the sense of sensus communis as a subjective principle, ‘which determines what pleases or displeases only by feeling and not by concepts, but nevertheless in a generally valid way’ (Kant 2009: §20, 95). If both the background conditions that I have discussed in section three and the performative conditions are fulfilled by the participants, then there is a possibility for joking to be successful, manifesting in the recipients’ understanding and laughter. 5

Laughter

The laughter I am concerned with is a spontaneous expression of amusement and recognition (of what is ‘funny’). I want to add that while laughter may function as a form of applause at the end of a joke performance, it does not necessarily imply a judgement which equals the utterance: ‘That’s a good joke!’, or ‘That’s a good one!’ One may very well understand a joke, be amused by it in whichever way, and express this through laughter. Still, one may not necessarily be of the opinion that the joke is a particularly meaningful one. What could be the case is that we have a deeper appreciation for a joke which stimulates us far beyond laughter. This is where one might start if one wants to engage with the ‘deep’ or philosophical joke that Wittgenstein ([1958] 1977) or Stephen Yablo (2019) speak of. I find this consideration relevant and intriguing, but I cannot address it here. Naturally there are theories that explore the link between comic amusement and laughter, including Levinson’s (1998) dispositional theory. According to this theory, the emotion of amusement is epistemically identified in terms of the disposition in people towards a (possibly minimal) laughter response. It has also been pointed out by various authors (e.g., Hurley, Dennett and Adams 2011) that laughter is not necessary for humour, as humour can involve behaviours other than laughter. However, I am not analyzing humour as a broad

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phenomenon but the situation of successful joke performances. It requires both the recipient’s or recipients’ understanding of the joke (and their understanding of the joke teller), and laughter about the joke and its performance, in order to regard the performance as successful. When a joke is performed and there is no laughter involved, then something has clearly gone wrong. Laughter is a necessary feedback for the joke teller; it confirms the engagement and commitment of those involved in the performance and completes it. Cases in which laughter does not occur force the joke teller to ask questions like ‘Did you not get it?’ or ‘Don’t you like it?’; or force her to end the performance with either an explanation of the joke (which, to some, implies ruining it), or a discussion about why it is or is not a good joke, or whether it has been told wrong. My definition for laughter is not restrictive; it also contains expressions like a chuckle –​as long as they can be understood as spontaneous expressions of amusement. I claim that laughter is not sufficient but necessary for a successful joke performance. 6

Two Models of Understanding-​Laughter Correlation: u-​l and l-​[u]‌

The pressing question now regards the correlation between understanding and laughter. How do they relate, are they interdependent, and is there a sequence to their occurrence? I address these questions by referring to two different accounts. The first is a cognitive approach proposed by Hurley, Dennett and Adams that investigates how our mind responds to humour. What the authors show is in line with incongruity and surprise theories on jokes. They understand incongruity as a ‘way to lead one into either making or discovering a mistaken commitment’ (2011: 288). Surprise, on the other hand, is the response to a broken expectation. What we are surprised about is the discovery of a commitment to a false belief –​and if it is not ourselves who have this commitment, then it is our former selves or even the protagonists in the joke story with whom we may momentarily identify. The authors argue that humour points out failures and mistakes in a mental model. It is part of a mechanism to encourage the process ‘that keeps data integrity in our knowledge representation’ (2011: 289). It is not incongruity itself that makes us laugh but ‘incongruity in a stimulus often plays a part in the discovery of a faulty mental space and its deconstruction’ (2011: 293). In this sense, the pleasure we experience in, for example, a joke that makes us laugh, may be understood as a reward for success in the task of ‘data-​integrity checking’ (2011: 292). This is how the authors also explain why we do not simply detect jokes but get joy from debugging the mistakes that jokes create.

88 Sickinger Let me outline how the process that the authors are implying could unfold. Someone is telling you the following joke. A and B are neighbours in a village and A borrows a copper kettle from B. After he returns it, however, he is sued by B because the kettle was returned with a big hole in it, which makes it unusable. A argues his defence thus: ‘First, I never borrowed a kettle from B; second, the kettle had a hole in it already when I got it; and third, I gave him back the kettle undamaged’. You are listening to it; you follow the story step by step. There comes the incongruous punchline. You are hit by it because you have also followed the mistaken belief, but you also become aware of that fact, you detect the mistake. Following and committing to the mistaken belief in a joke story (in the joke above this would be the belief that the three listed reasons are not mutually exclusive) is not a mistake itself, it is indeed an essential factor for the joke to even work for you. It has to mislead, and it can only mislead the recipient who is willing to be momentarily misled. However, you reorient yourself and understand that you have been misled. That realization and the realization that you have overcome the commitment and restored order might make you laugh. If this is how it goes, then I would say this laughter is laughter of relief rather than amusement (and I am concerned with the latter). The process is actually very close to solving riddles and I am not saying that this is necessarily wrong; I agree that joking and solving riddles are similar or related in some respects, but not all, for example not in their performance and their aim. Also Wittgenstein lists solving riddles and making or telling a joke right next to each other in his example list of language games (see: [1958] 1977: §23, 28). How should we now conceptualize the sequence of these events? If there is a causal chain, what is its form? The model outlined above seems to advocate that understanding is followed by laughter. This model also implies that there is a slight delay between the individual steps: telling and receiving of the incongruous joke; integrity-​checking; surprise about the mistaken commitment; detecting and debugging; reestablishment of coherence; and finally laughing. The process of responding to the joke is broken down into a somewhat mechanical sequence, with spontaneity not playing a very important role. Based on my own experience in the reception of jokes, this does not seem right. The spontaneous expression of laughter comes to the forefront in the second position I am referring to, which advocates the opposite order and argues that laughter comes before understanding. Raatzsch, a proponent of this position, claims that laughter is the primal phenomenon of the joke (see: 2000: §27,

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49). Insights only follow once we ask ourselves ‘What were we laughing about? What was funny here?’ (ibid.). Raatzsch suggests that the joke itself is not actually aimed at that realization; according to him it is only a possible ‘side effect’ (2000: §27, 50). Nevertheless, here we must ask ourselves how this is supposed to work. Why am I laughing in the first place, if there is nothing yet that I have realized or discovered? In this case, it could only be a feeling –​‘I feel this is funny’, ‘funny’ in the full breadth of its meaning: comical, odd, peculiar, incongruous etc. –​that evokes my intuitive reaction of laughter, and afterwards I might reflect on what I have heard and laughed about, in order to try and make sense of it all, try and understand what it means. Obviously, this cannot be the same understanding that Cohen has in mind. His conditional requires background knowledge or belief. It is slowly but surely becoming clear that we will have to make a distinction between different forms and degrees of understanding a joke. I propose the following: (a) a direct recognition that depends on preconditions at the moment of the punch(line); and (b) a further ‘after effect’ reflection initiated by the joking process, which extends to the recovery phase and may manifest in something like: ‘How does this work? Why am I laughing about this? Why is this funny to me?’ Raatzsch, without specifying this himself, seems more interested in the extended effect of the joke practice, something like (b). My assumption is based on the fact that he goes on to argue the following thought: the mind can only find what it is looking for. However, as the joke is meant to surprise us, it only allows ‘innocent searching’; from the viewpoint of the mind, we discover –​through the joke –​that which is not sought (cf. 2000: §28, 50). Through this Raatzsch ascribes to the joke a rather powerful (he calls it ‘philosophical’) potential2 that enables its practitioners and recipients to discover something new (in its most empathetic sense) by stumbling over it (ibid.). Understanding does play an important role for the author after all, but he still does not consider it the primary cause for laughter. As I am interested in the spontaneous response to a joke, I can easily reject Raatzsch’s position from my account. 7

Model of Simultaneity: l/​u

This leads me to defending my own model of simultaneity. Firstly, both the background conditions as well as the performative conditions have to be

2 Raatzsch might be interested in the concept of the ‘deep/​philosophical joke’ that Wittgenstein ([1958] 1977) and Yablo (2019) are concerned with.

90 Sickinger fulfilled to make laughter and understanding feasible –​to allow for a ‘successful joke performance’. I do not believe that the response to a joke is the same as the response to a riddle. Our main interest is not to discover a mistake and find a solution, but to be entertained. Yes, if we understand then we realize that there is something wrong, we recognize the funny or nonsensical or absurd within the joke story, but we do not have to solve the problem in order to feel joyous about the successful task. I find it plausible that we recognize rather than detect the funny aspect and laugh about it in a spontaneous, simultaneous response. There is neuroscientific research by Coulson and Kutas (2001) that analyzes joke comprehension and arrives at results that are in line with my hypothesis. The authors challenge the two-​stage thesis that joke comprehension is decomposed into two major components: ‘registration of surprise followed by re-​establishment of coherence’ (2001: 71; the emphasis is mine). The latter involves a process of ‘frame-​shifting’ ‘in which the recipient activates a new frame from long-​term memory to reinterpret information already active in working memory’ (ibid.). The results of the research show that these components all occur within the same timeframe (see: 2001: 74) –​there is overlapping –​and thus disprove the two-​stage model with surprise and reestablishment of coherence engaged in sequence. Although laughter is not explicitly dealt with in this research, it seems reasonable that it could easily be incorporated into the result. I do not laugh because understanding leads me there, nor do I understand because laughter leads me there. Instead, in cases of success, understanding and laughter are an interwoven spontaneous response to a joke within a joke performance. 8

Conclusion

I have discussed what constitutes the performance of a joke and defined the conditions for its success. I have argued that a successful joke performance involves the recipients’ response of both laughter and understanding. This has provided the grounds for analyzing the correlation between the two elements. In order to establish my own position of simultaneity l/​u, I have critically discussed two accounts of understanding-​laughter correlation: u-​l , which suggests that laughter, as a triumphant expression of successful ‘data integrity checking’ in the reception of a joke, is based on and follows understanding; and l-​[ u]‌, which regards laughter as the primary phenomenon of the joke and understanding only as a potential side effect. I have pointed out that there are discrepancies in the use of the term ‘understanding’ and identified two

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different notions: (a) a direct comprehension that depends on preconditions at the moment of the punch(line); and (b) a further ‘after effect’ reflection initiated by the joking process. I have shown that u-​l and my own model are more concerned with (a). l-​[ u] and (a) proved to be incompatible, therefore I rejected this model for the given purposes. The discussion of u-​l on the other hand has shown that this model leaves out the aspect of spontaneity and presents the reception of a joke as a mechanical sequence, where the main aim is to ‘solve a problem’. I have argued that something essential is lost in this view. I concluded that our main interest in joke practice is not to discover a mistake and find a solution, but to recognize the ‘funny’ element and be entertained. Laughter in that sense is not just the manifestation of relief that follows the undertaken task of understanding, but a spontaneous expression of recognition and amusement elicited within the performance of a joke.

References

Cohen T. (1983). ‘Jokes’, in Pleasure, Preference and Value: Studies in Philosophical Aesthetics (ed. E. Sharper). Cambridge University Press: 120–​136. Cohen T. (1999). Jokes. Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press. Coulson S. and Kutas M. (2001). ‘Getting it: human event-​related brain response to jokes in good and poor comprehenders’, Neuroscience Letters 316: 71–​74. Hurley M., Dennett D. and Adams R. (2011). Inside Jokes. Using Humor to Reverse-​ Engineer the Mind. Cambridge, London: mit Press. Kant I. [1790] (2009). Kritik der Urteilskraft. Hamburg: Meiner. Levinson J. (1998). ‘Humour’, in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. E. Craig). Routledge: 562–​567. Raatzsch R. (2000). Philosophiephilosophie. Stuttgart: Reclam. Wittgenstein L. [1958] (1977). Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Yablo S. (2019). ‘Deep Jokes’ at Philosophy Club Lunch Talk mit.

­c hapter 6

Hidden Congruities Daniel O’Shiel Abstract This chapter argues that the three old classical theories of humour –​the Superiority, Incongruity and Relief Theories –​should not be seen as three separate theories but all as important elements in a fuller and more dynamic conception of humour. Alongside this, the chapter also argues for a number of ‘hidden congruities’ not only between these elements but also regarding the social-​cultural context of humour, as well as the mechanism itself. There are eight main steps. First will be a brief summary with regard to the three main classical theories of humour. Second I will also present what some of the best contemporary comedic minds say about humour. Thirdly I will look at incongruity a bit closer and pointedly ask about the possibility for ‘hidden congruities’, of which there are three: social-​cultural contexts; an essential ‘matching-​up’ mechanism; and harmony and complementarity between the classical theories themselves. Seventh I explain and emphasize humour as a crucial social form of sublimation, and lastly I finish with the ongoing significance of superiority with regard to some normative elements of humour, truth and social activism.

Keywords humour –​incongruity –​jokes –​laughter –​philosophy –​relief –​sublimation –​superiority

1

Introduction

This chapter argues that the three old classical theories of humour –​the Superiority, Incongruity and Relief Theories –​should not be seen as three separate theories but all as important elements or aspects in a constantly developing and dynamic conception of humour. Alongside this, the chapter also argues for a number of ‘hidden congruities’ not only between these elements but also regarding the social-​cultural context of humour, as well as the mechanism itself. It aims to do this in the light of contemporary comedy, some of

© Daniel O’Shiel, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_008

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my own reflections, as well as some perhaps underemphasized elements from Freud and the Relief Theory, not least the idea of humour and laughter as a crucial and everyday form of sublimation. Indeed, we will see that the main insight or emphasis (‘hidden congruities’) can somewhat merge two of the classical theories (Incongruity and Relief), and also have consequences for the other (Superiority). There are six sections to this chapter. After this introduction I will secondly provide a brief summary with regard to the three main classical theories of humour. Thirdly I will briefly present what some of the most well-​known contemporary comedic minds say about humour, in order to show the theories’ ongoing relevance even today. On the back of this I will then look at incongruity a bit closer and ask about the possibility for ‘hidden congruities’. This will be spelled out in three forms: first (Section 4.1) ‘congruity’ as providing crucial social-​cultural contexts that are often overlooked or underemphasized; second (Section 4.2) as a ‘matching-​up’ mechanism that can lead not only to laughter but also understanding as well as social appreciation and validation; and third (Section 4.3) as showing the three classical elements to humour often operate in surprisingly close (i.e. ‘congruous’) unison. Related to relief I will then, fifth, explain and emphasize humour as a crucial social form of sublimation as propounded by Freud. Ultimately the idea of ‘hidden congruities’ will show that all three elements have their place in a more complete and dynamic picture of humour, and thus the argument is it should never have been about one theory over another, but rather a pluralistic approach especially given the vast, dynamic and constantly evolving field of human behaviour and activity in question. With reference to this last point, I will finish with the ongoing significance of the Superiority Theory with regard to some normative elements of humour, truth and social activism in some final remarks. In this manner, this chapter, along with many others in the volume, should augment the philosophical discussion regarding this essential human aspect, including its ongoing evolution. Before I proceed I need to make a small linguistic disclaimer. Although there can and even should be distinctions made between ‘humour’, ‘comedy’, ‘jokes’ and so forth (see, for example: Freud [1905] 2001b and [1927] 1981), in this chapter I take all of them as one family of things that make us laugh, and thus use them quite interchangeably. This does not however exclude possible further differentiations which are beyond the scope and focus of this particular chapter, but which may turn up and be discussed in other chapters from this volume, as well as in other works altogether.

94 O’Shiel 2

A Brief Summary of the Three Main Classical Theories: Superiority, Incongruity and Relief

John Morreall (1983, 1987 and 2009) has already carried out much invaluable work in collating the main classical philosophical and other theories of humour, as well as presenting his own theory and suggestions on the back of these. Here I briefly summarize the main three theoretical categories. The Superiority Theory is one of the oldest theories of humour and was touched upon by many Ancient, Medieval and Modern philosophers, for example Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Thomas Hobbes (see: Morreall 1983: 10–​20). The basic idea is that humour and laughter are essentially about feeling ‘superior’ to the thing, person or group being laughed or joked about, and thus it automatically makes humour about hierarchy. Indeed, the Superiority Theory emphasizes humour as laughing at something, someone or a collective, and in doing so it makes those who laugh feel ‘superior’ and those who are laughed at ‘inferior’. Because it was conceived in this rather negative way, in that it almost necessarily includes derogation in its structure, humour generally was met with scepticism and dislike by many philosophers. This could have been a chief reason why it never really became a mainstream topic throughout the history of philosophy. The Superiority Theory is still –​and perhaps even more so today –​highly problematic considering it can basically be a social weapon to abuse and marginalize whole groups of people, as is evident in many cases of racist, sexist and ageist jokes, amongst a plethora of other phenomena. In this manner, the Superiority Theory often highlights the darker side of some types of humour, where our hostile, aggressive and ignorant tendencies are taken up and put into laughter as mocking, scorn and even hatred. Although this is definitely an element to some humour, it certainly does not cover all cases and it moreover remains morally very problematic. I will return to its place and a kind of novel reinterpretation as we proceed. Over the years, even with marginal interest the Superiority Theory did not hold water, especially not in all cases of humour and laughter. From around the time of Immanuel Kant (but also present somewhat in Aristotle already –​ see: Morreall 2009: 11), what is now known as the ‘Incongruity Theory’ came to the fore. Here, instead of just laughing at something or someone and thereby belittling the object while simultaneously inflating yourself, this newer theory focused more on the mechanism of humour that essentially involves elements which do not really ‘match up’ (logically or otherwise) and are thus ‘incongruous’, with laughter the concomitant realization or expression of this (see: Sickinger in this volume). The ‘not matching up’ is the essential element of

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incongruity in the strict sense, although the theory was also loosely expanded (see: Morreall 2009: 10) to generally include us laughing about anything and everything absurd, illogical, irrational, ludicrous, fantastical and so on (see also: Voltolini in this volume). It thus became very broad and perhaps this is one of its main strengths as a general theory of humour. In all of this, the crucial idea is that something is funny and ‘incongruous’ because the joke or piece of humour often does not meet up with our (more logical) expectations, and laughter is the result. For example, Arthur Schopenhauer relates a joke (Schopenhauer in Morreall 1987: 58) about prison guards letting a prisoner play cards with them and then kicking him out of jail when he cheats. This contains ‘incongruity’ and is apparently humorous because the guards forget their overarching duty, namely to keep the prisoner, due to their anger at his cheating in a card game, which presumably they should not have been surprised by either. In short, their naive or absurd expectations and actions did not match up with more run-​of-​the-​mill reality. To my mind, the Incongruity Theory is particularly interesting because it necessarily includes a temporal element to joking and humour, where our often quite automatic and ingrained logical and practical expectations are flouted, broken or bemused in cases of humour and laughter through the joke, punchline or piece of comedy. This can occur in a generally expected setting such as a comedy club, where we actually go to laugh and be entertained, and yet we still do not know the precise incongruities that will arise; or it can happen (and perhaps even more funnily because of this) in an unexpected context or environment (e.g. a friend cracking a joke at work), and thus even in a contextually incongruous manner too. The last classical theory is the Relief Theory and it can be associated with Sigmund Freud ([1905] 2001b) among a good number of others (notably Herbert Spencer –​see Morreall 1987: 99–​110). This takes the human psyche as a kind of pressure cooker holding various aggressive, sexual and illogical ‘drives’ (Triebe), tendencies and thoughts that need quite habitual release through various patterns of behaviour, with humour and laughter being a key one –​that is, ‘relief’ as a reduction in psychophysiological tension. A premise here is that human being, life and society create quite a bit of tension, not least between more drive-​like parts of our nature on one hand, and more socially constructed norms, rules, pressures and taboos on the other. Humour and the relaxation brought about by a good laugh walk this tightrope (see: O’Shiel 2021). The Relief Theory can also explain how humour is very different across different cultures, as well as constantly evolving within any given one precisely because of our different and changing cultural norms, values and restrictions. In other words, the tensions and boundaries one has to traverse, including any

96 O’Shiel culture’s taboos and prohibitions, are evolving as the values and norms of our societies evolve too. Moreover, above these details of content, formally laughter is seen as excess nervous energy (see: Spencer in ibid.: 99 ff.) that can be released in a largely socially acceptable way in the right context and with the right group. It is therefore a powerful and intuitive element to a lot of humour, with relief often being the ‘end goal’ or effect of humour, and thus it rings true with many of us, at least in this general feeling and insight. For my part, I will argue that it is not incongruous with the two other main classical theories, as well as point out that it includes a key Freudian concept –​‘sublimation’ –​ that should be emphasized in the context of humour and laughter as a crucial social tool and mechanism we need to understand, accept and even strive for, lest our societies implode from too much repressed tension. 3

What Some Contemporary Comedians Say about Humour and Comedy

Before we get further into the nitty-​gritty of the various theoretical elements, I think it would be very worthwhile to contemporize the discussion a bit by seeing what some of the contemporary shining lights say about humour and comedy, as well as how they actively use many elements of the afore-​described theories. For of course, thinking and talking about what humour is or might be is by no means restricted to philosophers and other intellectuals and academics, who are moreover often quite unfunny themselves. It is therefore useful to see what some actual experts say about their own craft, and how they use it. We will see that what is said and done often blends very well with a number of elements in the classical theories. I will start with Hannah Gadsby’s quite revolutionary Netflix special Nanette (2018). In it she reviews comedy as ‘balancing’ humour and laughter with tension in the room, with both sides created and managed by the comedian. The gift of the comedian is to build up this tension and then it let out through a good joke or observation, and here I hope the reader already recognizes that this is very akin to the Relief Theory. The twist here is that her and many comedians’ humour, not least women’s, are built upon self-​deprecation, and although she can release tension for many, she ‘flips the script’ in this special when she turns serious and says that she is stuck with the tension and shame herself, as well as, crucially, the traumas that have been feeding all of this, and is moreover quite sick of it. She thus ‘quits’ comedy to treat herself better only to return with what for me is a masterpiece in ‘comedy as scholarship’ in her special Douglas two years later (2020).

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Along with providing relief for her audience at least, many of Gadsby’s jokes also show the incongruity mechanism at work, with one joke being about how a man said he would beat her up for being gay, but he is a gentleman and thus ‘doesn’t hit women’. Here is a moral incongruity between a supposed “gentleman” being terribly homophobic. Another master at this is Dave Chappelle, who has a wonderful narrative style (like Billy Connolly and many others) that always keeps you on your toes and often courts (intended?) controversy for flirting, or even outright attacking, socially divisive topics of his time (e.g. transphobia), with Chapelle often on the more risqué or provocative side, as evident in recent disputes with Gadsby’s fans as well. I cannot address these complexities here; the main point to highlight is that Chapelle, as with many of the best comedians, also has all of the classical theories at work: incongruity in many of the jokes, relief regarding release of socially risqué subjects and taboos, and elements of superiority too. Indeed, regarding the latter Chapelle opens his Equanimity & The Bird Revelation (2017) humorously bragging ‘he’s so good at writing jokes’ that he has a fishbowl full of punchlines at home and can just do them backwards, no matter how difficult the punchline, with ‘so I kicked her in the pussy’ the one he gives as an example and then proceeds to do in the show. For me, this is him taking superiority over his audience (and perhaps other comedians?) while describing a way how he comes up with jokes of incongruity that give relief. With humour constantly evolving and new and old taboos, repressions and oppressions waxing and waning, you would think certain subjects have been off-​limits, others are currently so, and yet others will become so in the future. Many racist and sexist jokes used as superiority are now rightly seen as reprehensible and totally unfunny. On this note a number of disgruntled and seemingly frustrated people even complain that ‘you can’t joke about anything anymore’. Ricky Gervais however denies this, saying you can joke about anything at all still, and it is precisely the talent of the comedian who can do this in the right way for a still significant portion of people. However, there are still many moral groups and dynamics in cultures and comedies and thus some will look likely to always remain offended by a certain comedian, whose craft is precisely to navigate the line between social taboo and offence for many on one hand, and releasing rather primitive drive pressure on the other. Gervais explains this a bit further in his Humanity special (2018), when he says people are often quick to offence when they do not understand the difference between the target and the subject of the joke –​namely who or what the joke is aimed at (the target), and what it is (superficially) about (the subject). He explains further regarding a joke he made about Caitlyn Jenner that had caused controversy as transphobic, with Gervais denying the target was a trans woman.

98 O’Shiel The latter, according to Gervais, was what the joke was about; he argues the target was a celebrity killing someone in a car accident, while simultaneously playing with an old sexist stereotype about women drivers. Gervais himself extols –​with superiority, we might say –​the joke as a great one. Be this as it may for the particular joke, it shows that jokes by famous comedians are often, as Gervais also points out himself, complexly layered, and moreover they can seem to have all three elements of superiority, incongruity and relief involved. One last comedian I would like to highlight is Ali Wong because of her very clever use of what I would term ‘inverted superiority’. In both her first two Netflix specials, namely Baby Cobra (2016) and Hard Knock Wife (2018), she is heavily pregnant and enters into the power dynamics of money in a marriage or relationship. She ironically bemoans the fact that all she had ever dreamt of was finding her Ivy League man so she could become a ‘kept’ woman and then supposedly have it on easy street. Feminism has got it all wrong she intimates because being kept at home and provided for was actually a delicious luxury and pleasure; working for a living is the real pain. Now, unfortunately, it turns out she is a very talented comic and so she must work and ‘bring home the bacon’ (not her expression), all the while being pregnant too. It thus means she has been duped and it is her husband who is now in fact on easy street. This comedy takes a serious issue in feminism, equality and equity relations in couples and turns it on its head. It not only shows that humour and a profession can lead to a platform where previously and continued oppressed groups (in this case women) can now show their talent and thus also their superiority in a craft; it also shows how the superiority mechanism previously used to crush or keep oppressed groups down is now often used to liberate and even draw attention to these important issues, albeit in a humorous manner (see also: Grigaitė in this volume). This happens with Chappelle and Gadsby too, thereby demonstrating that humour and serious issues like racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia do not need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, it even hints that some serious issues can be uniquely and powerfully expressed through humour and comedy, thus making some comedians social activists too, as I will return to at the end of this chapter. In societies where political correctness issues are never far away, humour often has to tread carefully. One can take the tactic of Gervais and rely on one’s talent and accept that humour is always going to provoke and offend some, basically put their moral noses out of joint. On top of this though, like Chappelle, Gadsby and Wong one can use humour to ‘punch up’ and turn the tables on the ruling class and group –​still straight white males, and this does not seem like abating any time soon. Here humour is used as a kind of inverted superiority in order to equalize where previously it had been used to belittle,

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subjugate and crush by the ruling group. As said, I will develop this theme regarding the moral superiority in much good contemporary humour, and thus its important role as a kind of contemporary activism in many key social issues, at the end of this chapter. 4

Hidden Congruities?

I think it should now be clear that all three of the classical theories still have relevance in any discussion of contemporary humour and comedy, and thus these elements are not lifeless and stuck in the past but are breathing in many of the best and funniest comedic acts. Having said this, there is a nagging issue in my mind as to the concept of incongruity. Dictionary defined, if something is ‘incongruous’ it means an element is not in harmony or does not at all match up with the elements around it –​it is totally incompatible. We can see this in a bizarre and surprising punchline that might make us laugh. However, the point cannot be that the various elements in a joke or piece of humour are completely incongruous, which is to say utterly incompatible. This more likely happens precisely when one does not ‘get’ or like a joke in that the main punchline or mechanism has remained detached from your general knowledge or understanding, or it does not fit your values and taste –​one’s ‘sense of humour’ –​ and thus it is when a joke does not work that the elements are fully incongruous. Considering these points, then, there must be some kind of ‘congruity’ or connection that needs to be maintained or operative if jokes and humour are generally going to work, and indeed in the next three sections I argue for three types of ‘hidden congruity’ in humour. The first concerns the fact that there usually, if not always, must be some social-​cultural context or affinity if humour is going to work in the first place. The second concerns the mechanism of humour itself, which through build-​up and tension creates a distance that then can be brought together –​i.e. made congruous –​through the successful joke or piece of humour accompanied by laughter. Here, in short, there needs to be a structural ‘matching-​up’ dynamic or moment if the joke and the laughter is to come together. And lastly is the idea, as I have already implied, that the three supposed ‘theories’ can actually be better seen as crucial elements to many types of humour, sometimes more to do with relief, sometimes more with incongruity, and sometimes more to do with superiority. The ultimate argument is all elements are crucial for a fuller conception of humour, contemporary and past, and thus it is an argument for a pluralistic approach to this vast and intricate human domain and activity.

100 O’Shiel 4.1 First Congruity: Social-​Cultural Context or Affinity First is the rather simple but crucial and often overlooked observation that humour is incredibly dependent on personal and social-​cultural contexts, values and references. Watching comedians from very different cultures often leaves you at a loss not only because the language and references are often utterly different and foreign, but also because the system of norms and taboos and what one laughs about –​and can laugh about –​can all vary enormously as well. This means your own sense of humour can indeed be ‘incongruous’ –​ basically not match up with –​their sense and culture of humour, which also implies there must be a basic matching up in values and taste with those things and comedians one finds funny. Even further, groups of people with different or even radically different belief systems are not only going to not ‘match up’ with each other’s humour at all; they will even find opposing types of laughter deplorable (e.g. racist humour), stupid (childish humour), disgusting (toilet humour), just not interesting (intellectual humour), depressing (dark humour) and so on. With humour as an essentially social activity, even just watching a show at home alone still requires some basic affinity between you and the object’s ‘sense of humour’. This is not to say that a new and edgy comedian cannot challenge you and make you laugh at things you have never laughed at before, and perhaps even all the harder for it; it is however to say that some overlap –​ and thus not utter incongruity –​needs to be present in a social-​cultural way for humour and laughter to be facilitated and arise in the first place. All of this depends on upbringing, culture, values, emotions, thought patterns and beliefs, as well as systems of behaviour and interactions. Generally when we turn on a comedy, or go to a stand-​up show, or even enter a humorous mood, we are preparing and setting the scene to be entertained and amused through laughter –​what Morreall (2009: 50) characterizes as entering a ‘play mode’, or Voltolini (in this volume) emphasizes as entering a ‘fictional space’. There is a general willingness and enough overlap to create that right balance between offence and boredom or non-​comprehension. Indeed, having a comedian you hate or dislike is normally because they either offend or bore you, and on the other side we often value others with ‘our sense of humour’ because it can be quite rare, even to the extent that with our favourite comedians and shows we can feel less alone in the world because someone out there ‘gets you’ and is not afraid to say it. In this wider social-​cultural context one’s personality and sense of humour have to step into and match up with –​in short be (somewhat) congruous with –​the object and content of entertainment. At the root of our humour is the willingness and even the expectation to laugh or be amused, although we can too be caught off guard by an unexpected

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joke in an incongruous setting and manner, which although rarer might provoke even more laughter precisely because of its unexpectedness. This is an interesting issue and presents a slight challenge to what is being argued here: perhaps the most incongruous moments and settings are precisely when we laugh the most and hardest (e.g. at school in class when told not to). There is something to be said for a brilliantly absurd joke or a piece of humour in a very incongruous setting. However, this ultimately does not threaten the idea of some minimal kind of social-​cultural context or affinity because this latter is a more basic congruity that in fact makes the incongruity arising therefrom possible as such. In short, one cannot have discord (and resolution, as we will see next) without some basic plane of harmony with a more or less common rule book or play sheet holding the whole context and situation together. This underlying factor is the more or less congruous social-​cultural context or affinity as I have just described. 4.2 Second Congruity: Matching-​Up Mechanism Second of the hidden congruity elements is the mechanism of incongruity itself. The idea here is if two elements or parts of the joke (for instance, the build-​up and the punchline) were completely incongruous then they would remain apart. This can even be so from the listener’s side, like when one simply does not find a joke funny –​there is a matching-​up comprehension but no match with one’s sense of humour –​on one side; or one does not get it –​ there is no matching-​up comprehension –​on the other. The trick then, as we have already seen with Gadsby, is the right balance between creating distance, uncertainty and non-​comprehension –​namely incongruity in structure or mechanism and even in content –​and then bring all this together in a joke and its laughter. This ‘bringing together’ can and often does retain or create incongruity with regard to content (‘so I kicked her in the pussy’), but the point is that it cannot be utterly incongruous and the mechanism itself needs to have ‘congruity’ between the listener’s understanding and sense of humour and what is being told. If the punchline falls foul of your values you are not going to find the joke funny and it will remain completely incongruous in content and mechanism in the bad sense, but also when you simply do not ‘get’ the joke, which is to say you have a piece of crucial information or reference missing from your understanding (see: Sickinger in this volume). In this manner, a joke or piece of humour needs a kind of ‘resolution’ in order to work, a kind of matching up or ‘click’ with both your understanding and sense. I do not think it needs to be that explicit or rational, and it can, as in visual humour and memes, even be a matching up of simple opposing phenomenal elements (like a Myanmar woman exercising to energetic music

102 O’Shiel as military jeeps of a coup roll on in behind). For me this is done masterfully in Gadsby’s second special Douglas, where she even outlines how she is going to make you laugh and then proceeds to do it. The key remains punchlines, elements and flourishes that you do not expect, or in the case of Douglas ones you have forgotten or do not know the details of. Here, just because these are incongruous with certain normal, everyday and non-​funny expectations does not mean the mechanism is completely incongruous. In fact, I do not think it can be: one always has or even needs a separation followed up by a ‘matching up’ that is the realization of the joke or piece of comedy through laughter. Otherwise, again referring to Gadsby, we would in fact ‘break comedy’, namely achieve perfect or complete congruity or incongruity and thus return to either seriousness or non-​comprehension respectively. So, as Schopenhauer (see: [1819] 1969: 452–​453) says about melody, and from an analogy we have already seen in the social-​cultural context, comedy works, much like a lot of music, by sowing discord in order to build tension, emotion and expectation, and then it gives us, in the case of comedy that works, what we were precisely expecting, namely a good joke and our spontaneous laughter with or about it –​a kind of re-​established harmony if you will, although often of a different, incongruous order at least in terms of content. In sum, a joke often makes us laugh because the answer we get is not one we were expecting –​incongruous in the classical sense, i.e. in content and effect. However, there is, I would contend, a general ‘matching up’ of content from before as well as in the structure or mechanism of our understanding and sense. Here congruity for the listener provokes laughter because they have understood and value the piece of comedy. Moreover, because we are complex individuals with many opposing and often contradictory drives, tendencies and thoughts, if a joke is incongruous with regard to logic or reason in content this is often because it is precisely ‘congruous’ –​matches up with –​our anti-​ logic and unreason, or even with truths and feelings on a reputedly deeper level. Thus, along with a basic congruity in the mechanism and structure of matching up, and even sometimes in content, jokes, humour and comedy allow our socially repressed drives and tendencies to see some light of day and share with other elements of our being in a pleasurable and –​usually and for the most part –​a socially accepted and acceptable way, which is ultimately the mechanism of sublimation that I will get to shortly. By entering a personal and social-​cultural context to laugh, we are expecting to be entertained humorously by things and observations which we are not logically expecting, but which we are humorously expecting and with which we ‘match up’ –​are congruous with –​if the comedy works for us. This mechanism is dependent on our more general sense of humour and its values, which

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can also change and evolve over time, as well as change in one person in different moods and with different people and groups. 4.3 Third Congruity: Pluralism of Classical Theories At this moment the issue of relief can be brought in. It is precisely because humour can match up with deeper, often not straightforwardly rational or logical parts of our selves which are not governed by pragmatics and facts that it can provide strong, emotional and unique relief in a way reason and reflection cannot. Think of Pascal’s famous line that the ‘heart’ has its reasons which reason does not know (see: Pascal [1669] 1999: §680). In this manner, relief is often the after-​effect or even the goal or aim of humour –​namely what the process sets out to achieve as well as the feeling one is left with after a good laugh. Thus, while logical incongruity with non-​logical congruities are often the contents of much humour, relief seems to be the aim that instigates a lot of it, as well as the lasting, therapeutic and even soulful effect if the humour and laughter have been successful, deep and enduring. This ties into mechanism too, with the hydraulic model (see: Morreall 1987: 111) of the psyche as a kind of a pressure cooker with safety valves being a powerful idea here, despite scepticism with regard to the metaphor from various circles (see also: O’Shiel 2021). Under this model, humour would be one such crucial safety valve, as we will see further soon. For now, this means incongruity and relief elements can often be seen to go together –​and are thus ‘congruous’ themselves –​in many cases of humour, and thus can be seen to make up part of the same structural dynamic. This is the feeling I get when watching Chappelle for instance; he is providing me relief often of a non-​ logical order through various brilliant incongruous stories which can often speak to truths in a deeper way, for example the absolute absurdity of a racism. Contents of incongruity on the order of build-​up and (il)logic often mean a deeper and ultimate congruity on another (moral) order or level of understanding. Crucially, this is also totally compatible and even promotes a hydraulic model of the psyche and its accompanying relief theory of humour in that it is often precisely ‘deeper’ psychical elements which are allowed to rise up and match up with the (in)congruous words and thoughts of the comedian. In this manner the two ‘theories’ are not opposing but in fact can be seen as highly complementary, and even part of a larger more pluralistic theory and dynamic. Where does this leave superiority? Out in the cold? Well, we have already briefly seen that superiority in terms of content can and has been highly denigrating in the past. Nevertheless, we have also seen, particularly with Wong but also with Chappelle and Gadsby, that numerous contemporary comedians are turning the tables and are using superiority to ‘punch up’ and invert it

104 O’Shiel into its rightful place, as I will elaborate upon a bit further in the final section. Regarding mechanism or structure, in many pieces of humour the very fact that we have paid money to go and see a comedian, or watch a tv show that has been selected from hundreds or thousands, also can mean that there are hierarchical and competitive elements to how humour is inherently presented and represented in our lives as well. Very few of us could do a hilarious one-​ hour comedy special, and indeed in this sense the chosen and successful few are superior in comedy to most. There is thus an up-​and-​down structure in the (re)presentation of much humour and comedy itself, often quite literally with one person (the comedian) being high up on a stage with everyone else seated, watching and listening. Hierarchy and thus ‘superiority’ are still in the performative nature of comedy therefore, and our automatically comparative natures mean that having ‘favourite’ or ‘the best’ comedians or programmes are here to stay in a non-​trivial way, which is moreover not incompatible with the other two elements of incongruity and relief. This last hidden congruity is theoretical and structural. Ultimately it is the idea that the three opposing classical theories of Superiority, Incongruity and Relief should not be opposed at all but on the contrary should be seen as three chief elements to consider in a pluralistic conception of humour if one wishes to try and capture as many aspects as possible in a more or less comprehensive and dynamic manner. Humour is complex and highly multifaceted, changes in context with different people and even in different moods, not to mention over the course of one’s lifetime and the changing values and cultural adaptations and learnings that often go along with this. It therefore stands to reason that it cannot be captured in one neat little theory. Indeed, even with these three elements most probably not all elements are covered. Nevertheless, a good portion is over and above any one alone. 5

Jokes and Humour as Crucial Social Forms of Sublimation

In order to press home the relief dimension to humour and how it is compatible and even facilitates many other elements, it will be very useful to explain and highlight Sigmund Freud’s concept of sublimation. Furthermore, the concept itself needs emphasis in the context of humour because we will see that the latter is in fact a quintessential type of the former, and perhaps one of the most foundational and crucial to our species. In a word, without humour and its laughter as a powerful and prevalent form of sublimation our fragile and tense societies would have much less of a chance to manage all of our repressed aggressions and perversions. Humour and laughter as sublimation

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thus provide an absolutely essential and socially accepted or tolerated outlet for us all, one which is a particularly human trait as well. Although there are numerous detailed works (for instance: Moyaert 2002 and 2007; Vergote 1997) on sublimation that show how it makes the ‘higher psychical activities’ (Freud [1929] 2001: 97) possible as such, I intend to show that it is a broader, more dynamic and crucial category than often conceived. This is particularly apparent in the case of jokes. Firstly, although sublimation is normally associated with the so-​called ‘higher’ achievements of human civilization (art, philosophy, religion, science), Freud’s general definition –​namely a ‘diversion of sexual instinctual forces [Triebkräfte] away from sexual aims and their direction to new ones’ ([1905] 2001a: 178) –​actually shows that it has a much wider spectrum than simply these. Indeed, in the New Introductory Lectures Freud specifically states that sublimation occurs when the aim and object of a drive modifies through taking ‘social valuation […] into account’ ([1932] 1981: 97). In other words, there are many drives that are socially conditioned to change objects and aims precisely because they are not socially acceptable in their original forms. Considering this, it will come as no surprise that many destructive and aggressive drives are sublimated along with ‘desexualized’ ones (see: Freud [1923] 2001: 30). Gemes (2009) argues that sublimation is an overly fuzzy concept in Freud, often not distinguishable from neurotic symptoms, even though he also acknowledges that sublimations are activities which are social and enjoyable in Freud, whereas neurotic symptoms are not (see, for instance: Freud, [1913] 2001: 74). For my part, I maintain this is more than enough to distinguish sublimations from neurotic symptoms generally. Moreover, just like normality is a kind of imaginary point between perversion and neurosis in Freud, so too do our sublimations play out in this middle ground without however excluding other elements entirely. We all have small perversions and tendencies thereto; we all also display various idiosyncratic or neurotic traits to varying degrees. In the middle of all of this we are all also constantly sublimating in our daily lives. Actually, one can argue it is essential to remaining healthy. In this manner, sublimation is that crucial capacity we have to take socially unacceptable and ultimately painful wishes and plough their energy into useful, social and enjoyable pastimes, thereby providing much-​needed reliefs in tensions from the pressure cooker of the unconscious and id we all have simmering beneath. There is indeed a whole world here: along with the high arts there are also, perhaps even more importantly, other sublimative acts such as playing and watching sports; going to a violent, romantic or other type of film; telling a joke and having a laugh; or campaigning for a societal wrong (see: Deutsch [1992] 2017: 83–​87). In all of these activities, aggressive, sexual (in the broad sense) and

106 O’Shiel other drives that would be left dangerously frustrated are allowed to transform and find outlets in socially acceptable or even constructive ways –​something which Fanon calls a kind of ‘collective catharsis’ ([1952] 2008: 112). According to this viewpoint, sublimation is an absolutely crucial mechanism for surviving in our civilizations, and yet it is of course not without tensions and controversies of its own. This should be unsurprising seeing as our lives, under this model, remain a perennial balancing act of mediation between amoral drives seeking incessant release on one hand, and the often repressive dictates of society on the other. In various activities we are allowed to release aggressive and other tensions by reducing our disgust, shame, pity and other valves momentarily. However, if we do this too much we are in danger of receiving social reprimands; and if we do not do it enough we are likely to neurotically implode. This brings us to the case of jokes, on which Freud wrote a whole book ([1905] 2001b), as well as a much shorter piece on humour ([1927] 1981). Van Haute and Geyskens note (2012: 68) that Freud’s 1905 work is ‘the book on sublimation’. I completely agree. The materials for jokes emanate from drives that go through various ‘transforming processes’ (Freud [1905] 2001b: 28), a bit like in dreaming, and with jokes they result in two broad categories: innocent jokes, which take a pure pleasure in returning to a childlike enjoyment in the mere play of words (or even nonsense); and ‘tendentious’ (tendenziös) jokes, which have a purpose (Tendenz) that makes the joke go beyond mere wordplay. Both types of joke have a common factor that they rebel against our learned tendencies to seriousness, criticism and logic. In fact, precisely because of this Freud states that ultimately jokes are ‘never non-​tendentious’ (ibid.: 132) because even the most supposedly innocent ones override our more predominant adult disposition for seriousness. Jokes thus release childlike inclinations in us that have, for the most part, been subdued as we have matured. A formal similarity of certain words (one of Freud’s examples is ‘‘Traduttore –​ Traditore!’ [“Translator –​Traitor!”]’ (ibid.: 34)) often allows various sexual or aggressive drives to piggyback upon them. Here, although the purely formal similarities allow for a basic release, tendentious jokes are enjoyed more precisely because they allow for an additional, measured release of blocked, aggressive and other tendencies. Thus through jokes our safety valves –​including our adult proclivity for critical reasoning –​are momentarily relaxed. Why was there tension at all? Precisely because of the safety valves like disgust, shame, pity and rationality, which often hold in drives and thoughts that would be too crude, offensive or senseless to share. Jokes are thus a mechanism where just enough pressure is released in the form of laughter. However, because the release takes place in a modified –​and therefore diluted –​manner, there is often not enough open aggression or obscenity to cause real offence.

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In fact, a joke that goes too far and therefore fails is precisely one that has offended its listeners for being too obscene, disgusting and the like –​the safety valves have been opened too much. On the other side, jokes that do not harness any suppressed sources will probably leave one cold and bottled up –​in short unsatisfied and untickled. In this manner, jokes –​and humour more generally –​are essentially sublimative acts that allow brute aggressive, sexual and nonsensical tendencies to find some release in modified and relatively acceptable forms, thereby finding the medium pleasurable ground between unpleasurable neurotic symptoms on one side, and perverse manifestations that will only reap societal opprobrium on the other. As we have already seen, context and situation are also very important: what is funny in one’s social context (at university, in a bar, at home); or with one’s social group (strangers, friends, family, colleagues); or even depending on one’s own personal tastes and values, can all alter matters greatly. There is, quite obviously, an infinite amount of variability in this respect. Take one of Freud’s examples of an obscene joke: A well-​known University teacher who was in the habit of peppering his unattractive special subject with numerous jokes, was congratulated on the birth of his youngest child, who was granted to him when he had already reached an advanced age. “Yes”, he replied to his well-​wishers, “it is remarkable what human hands can accomplish.” ibid.: 59

Some may have laughed, some smiled, some not at all, and some might even have been (slightly) disgusted or annoyed. Regardless of the particular reaction, Freud’s points should be relatively clear: a joke is ‘a double-​dealing rascal who serves two masters at once’ (ibid.: 155) in the sense that an ambiguity of a certain phrase (‘remarkable what human hands can accomplish’) has a non-​obscene meaning (the general power of human production) as well as an obscene one (an old man masturbating). The joke works when the second meaning breaks through simultaneously with the first, provided that the safety valve of disgust (the image of an old man masturbating in this case) has been sublimated. Those who have locked up their drives tightly will find little funny and most things revolting; and those who are too free too often and in the wrong context are going to run afoul of social policing. All in all, the precise amount of pressure allowed in each individual person –​and at each individual moment –​can vary greatly and endlessly, and yet it should also be clear that sublimative acts

108 O’Shiel such as jokes seem to be necessary mechanisms if one is to walk the tightrope between perversion and neurosis, between open hostility and repression. This means sublimation, as the general name for any mechanism that allows repressed forces to find some release through socially enjoyable practices, is key for human mental health. From jokes to philosophy, from Hollywood films to art, Freud’s mechanism of sublimation accounts for that tightrope named normality. 6

Final Remarks: Superiority, Truth and Social Activism

At bottom of the idea of ‘hidden congruities’ is humour teaches us we are profoundly not alone; no matter how hard or desperate the situation or our lives may have become, it is important to be able to laugh because much comedy matches up with and thereby allows us to vent and sublimate many of our frustrations and the absurdities we see. One laughs or one cries, as the old saying goes. This is where the Superiority Theory may be able to come back in a more positive form too. It is true that many types of superiority have been, and continue to be, incredibly abusive, used to stigmatize, marginalize and crush many groups throughout history, with racist, sexist and even nationalist jokes being the most prevalent, and I am sure they are still widely shared and enjoyed when the joker is amongst like-​minded people. The interesting thing now, to my mind, with a lot of the best mainstream comedians is that they are using their comedy of incongruity and relief to establish a new kind of superiority –​namely one of truth, deeper moral reason and activism. In this manner, although much of the content and mechanism might be incongruity, and although the end goal for the comedian and audience is usually relief and sublimation, because of growing diversity in comedy in the last few decades the general, more overall message from many has shifted, and it is often one of moral truth and social tolerance. Dave Chappelle’s comedy is certainly provocative, but it is also clear race is a prevalent issue in his work, one which sends a powerful message that racial and even other intolerances are no longer permissible. Gadsby for her part has used her own trauma of growing up homosexual in a bigoted society to fuel reflections and jokes on her own predicament, and by extension many others’ as well. Quite poignant, one can laugh and feel sad in the strange mixture of jokes and trauma, showing that comedy and humour are powerful processing tools that, when based in truths of tolerance, can become morally superior mechanisms against those with idiotic and damaging prejudices, and the offensive jokes and unfunny abuses made thereupon. In this manner, for

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me the way comedy and humour are going they are exposing various types of humour as wrong and oppressive while at the same time liberating (see also: Grigaitė in this volume) and celebrating often precisely those groups who have been, and continue to be, oppressed and abused. Here people can claim ‘superiority’ when they are based on grounds of reason, tolerance, and equal rights and treatment. This means many comedians are now important social activists precisely because they both entertain and address important social issues in their hilarious but also ultimately serious art. Of course, offence will still occur. It is the very nature of the comedian to walk the tightrope between intrigue and boredom, perversion and repression. Gervais and Chappelle have both been criticized as transphobic, and I am sure Gadsby and Wong have probably offended some individuals as well. The point here is that comedians are always going to be grappling with superiority; there is always going to be a butt of the joke –​what Gervais calls the target, not the subject –​and this is always going to be something about oneself (self-​ deprecation), some state of the world (mocking and absurdity), or some group of people (for example ‘punching up’, often straight white men now). The trick, as always, is to do it in an artful manner that provides hilarity and release for your audience, who are there and are prepared to laugh because they match up with your sense of humour while still not knowing precisely how you are going to send them into stitches. Acknowledgements Thank you to all who participated in the conference leading up to this publication, many of whom feature in this volume.

References

Chappelle D. (2017). Equanimity & The Bird Revelation. Netflix. Deutsch H. [1992] (2017). The Therapeutic Process, The Self, and Female Psychology. Collected Psychoanalytic Papers (trans. E. Mosbacher et al.). London and New York: Routledge. Fanon F. [1952] (2008). Black Skin, White Masks (trans. C. L. Markmann). Pluto Press. Freud S. [1905] (2001a). ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’ (trans. J. Strachey), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume vii. London: Vintage Books: 130–​243.

110 O’Shiel Freud S. [1905] (2001b). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume viii. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (trans. J. Strachey). Vintage Classics. Freud. S. [1913] (2001). ‘Totem and taboo. Some points of agreement between the mental lives of savages and neurotics’ (trans. J. Strachey), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume xiii: 1–​190. Freud S. [1923] (2001). ‘The Ego and the Id’ (tans. J. Strachey), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume xix. London: Vintage Books: 12–​59. Freud S. [1927] (1981). ‘Humor’ (trans. J. Strachey), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume xxi (1927–​1931). London: The Hogarth Press: 161–​166. Freud S. [1929] (2001). ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ (trans. J. Strachey), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume xxi (1927–​1931). London: Vintage Books: 64–​145. Freud S. [1932] (1981). ‘New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-​Analysis’ (trans. J. Strachey), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume xxii. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 1–​182. Gadsby H. (2018). Nanette. Netflix. Gadsby H. (2020). Douglas. Netflix. Gemes K. (2009). ‘Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 38: 38–​59. Gervais R. (2018). Humanity. Netflix. Morreall J. (1983). Taking Laughter Seriously. suny Press. Morreall J. (1987). The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. suny Press. Morreall J. (2009). Comic Relief. A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Wiley-​Blackwell. Moyaert P. (2002). Begeren en vereren: sublimering en idealisering. Nijmegen: sun. Moyaert P. (2007). ‘Can sublimation be brought about through idealization?’, Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Network 14: 53–​78. O’Shiel D. (2021). ‘Safety Valves of the Psyche: Reading Freud on Aggression, Morality, and Internal Emotions’, Philosophies 6(4), 86: 1–​14. Pascal B. [1669] (1999). Pensées and Other Writings (trans. H. Levi). Oxford University Press. Schopenhauer A. [1819] (1969). The World as Will and Representation, Volume ii (trans. E. F. J. Payne). New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Van Haute P. and Geyskens T. (2012). A Non-​Oedipal Psychoanalysis? A Clinical Anthropology of Hysteria in the Works of Freud and Lacan. Leuven University Press. Vergote A. (1997). La psychanalyse à l’épreuve de la sublimation. Paris: cerf. Wong A. (2016). Baby Cobra. Netflix. Wong A. (2018). Hard Knock Wife. Netflix.

pa rt 3 Humour, Morality, Feminism and Politics

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­c hapter 7

Fat Jokes and the Problem of Parody Sarah W. Hirschfield Abstract This chapter asks why fat jokes are so prevalent, why they matter morally, and what can be done to limit their harm. It begins with an analysis of the interpretive ambiguity of humour, or the ambiguity surrounding who the ‘butt’ of the joke is (e.g., your mom, suburban women, Americans, etc.). Fat jokes are comedically fruitful, I argue, because they trade heavily on this ambiguity. Fatness signifies other funny traits, such as stupidity, sloppiness, or overindulgence. I introduce the problem of prejudice creep –​when a socially acceptable prejudice (e.g., fatphobia) is exploited in the service of a relatively socially unacceptable one (e.g., sexism). I explicate and defend this concept using a parody of a doll commercial as a case study. I consider possible solutions to the problem, including the use of self-​deprecating humour, drawing a moral line between fat jokes and racist jokes, and the development of so-​called ethical humour. I find these solutions wanting. The chapter concludes by considering how and why morally-​suspect parodies and comedy in general should persist despite their potential for harm.

Keywords ethics –​fatphobia –​humour –​interpretive ambiguity –​parody –​prejudice creep –​ sexism –​racism

When is the last time you told a racist joke? What about a joke about fat people? Fat stigma has been called ‘the last acceptable form of discrimination’ (Vartanian 2010: 1306). Indeed, psychologists found that while ‘jokes about immigrants, ethnic or religious minorities, and those who are mentally disabled, blind, or deaf have become politically incorrect in contemporary popular culture’, fatphobic jokes remain ‘ubiquitous and socially acceptable’ (Burmeister and Carels 2014: 224). Consider how former United States President Donald Trump has been lampooned in cartoons as fat (Boxer 2018). Nobody objected to these pictures, nor were the cartoonists asked to resign. On the other hand,

© Sarah W. Hirschfield, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_009

114 Hirschfield when a cartoonist depicted former US President Barack Obama as a monkey, evoking racist tropes, people were outraged and the newspaper apologized (‘Belgian Newspaper Apologises for Showing Obamas as Apes’ 2014). This suggests an intolerance for racism and a relative tolerance for fatphobia. Why are fat jokes so prevalent? Do they differ, morally, from other types of prejudiced humour? Can fat comedians empower fat people by joking about themselves self-​deprecatingly? These are the questions I seek to answer in this chapter. Section one lays the groundwork for this analysis, introducing what I term the problem of parody. In brief, there is a difference between being laughed with and laughed at. So much is obvious. However, when Roseanne Barr jokes, ‘I used to be a feminist, until the first time Tom grabbed me by the hair, threw me up against the wall and fucked me in the ass’ –​and is met with laughter, whether she is laughed with or at is less clear (Gilbert 1997: 321). Is the butt of the joke ‘feminists’ or ‘people who think women like to be raped’ or ‘Tom’? This is the problem of parody: one person’s sexist joke is another’s feminist joke. Section two discusses an application of the problem that I call prejudice creep, when a socially acceptable prejudice (fatphobia) is exploited in the service of a relatively socially unacceptable one (sexism). Section three considers solutions to the problem of parody by investigating whether we can joke about fatness responsibly, without reinforcing the prejudices we intend to critique. I consider whether self-​deprecating humour is a special case and whether fatphobic jokes are morally different from racist or sexist jokes. I then discuss what ethical humour might look like. Section four briefly concludes. 1

The Ambiguity of Humour and the Problem of Parody

The ‘butt’ of a joke is often open to interpretation. This is called the interpretive ambiguity of humour (Mallett et al. 2016: 274). For example, when comedian Amy Schumer tweeted, ‘I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual’, she defended the joke by clarifying that she was the intended butt of it, not Hispanic men: ‘Stick with me and trust me that I am joking’, she wrote, ‘I go in and out of playing an irreverent idiot. That includes making dumb jokes involving race’. In other words, she defended the joke by calling it a parody of ‘an irreverent idiot’, not a joke about Hispanics. Nevertheless, the joke is ambiguous. It can be seen as making fun of Hispanic men or irreverent idiots, and people can laugh for either reason. The interpretive ambiguity of humour gives us the problem of parody: the ‘butt’ of a parody is ambiguous. Is Amy parodying ‘Hispanic men’ or ‘irreverent idiots’? It is an open question.

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The problem of parody means that people can laugh at jokes for the wrong reasons. Television audiences viewed Archie Bunker, the ‘lovable bigot’ in All in the Family, differently depending on their social values. As one study found, ‘Some viewers applaud Archie for his racist viewpoints, while others applaud the show for making fun of bigotry’ (Vidmar and Rokeach 1974: 37). What the creators of the show intended to be a parody of bigotry ended up reinforcing the prejudiced beliefs of some audience members. The problem is a moral one. Telling a prejudiced joke is pro tanto wrong. Following Michael Philips, I assume a joke is prejudiced if (1) the joke is intended to harm a person P because P is a member of a certain marginalized group; or (2) the joke can reasonably expected to harm P because P is a member of a certain marginalized group; or (3) the joke can reasonably be expected to promote an atmosphere in which prejudiced jokes are more likely to occur; or (4) the joke is intended to promote such an atmosphere (1984: 77, 87). A harm is a morally objectionably setback to one’s interests. On this account, bad intentions are not a necessary condition for prejudiced jokes. Someone who makes a ‘harmless’ joke about black people to make friends at a party has told a racist joke if it in fact harms black people or can be reasonably expected to. It is worth clarifying that, contrary to the popular rhyme, words can hurt you. Research shows that disparaging humour ‘creates and reinforces hostility toward the targeted group’ (Ford and Ferguson 2004: 79). There is real harm in telling prejudiced jokes. And audience matters. Sexist humour, for example, is both more dangerous and more funny to those who score highly on measures of hostile sexism; hostile sexism predicts how funny you find a sexist joke and how likely you are to tolerate sexism after you hear the joke (Ford et al. 2013). We are now in the position to critique a common response to the charge that a parody is racist or sexist: you’re not getting it! It’s a joke! According to this view, the so-​called racist or misogynistic humour is not parodying (say) black people or women, but rather people who make fun of those groups: racists and misogynists. The racist jokes are parodies of racism, not racism itself. Because it is parody, the thought goes, it is not problematic. I will argue against this view: the problem of parody persists. Parodies are not always successful; not everyone is ‘in’ on the joke, so telling it risks setting back the target group’s interests. Andrew Terjesen defends a controversial episode of Family Guy (that was not aired because executives deemed it anti-​Semitic) by arguing that it is parody. Laughter, he writes, ‘establish[es] social norms’ by indicating ‘what should be avoided’ (2007: 131). We should laugh at parodies of things that should be avoided –​mean-​spirited people, anti-​Semites, and racists. Terjesen applies his theory to the episode ‘When You Wish Upon a Weinstein’, in which Peter

116 Hirschfield Griffin, the main character, sings: ‘I need a Jew /​Where to find a Baum, Steen or Stein /​To teach me how to whine and do my taxes … Hebrew people I’ve adored /​Even though they killed my Lord’ (133). Why should we laugh at this? Terjesen argues that we should laugh not at the Jews for their supposed greed, but at Peter for his stupidity, reasoning that ‘even a casual viewer could easily realize that the anti-​semitic [sic] comments were being made by a total idiot’ (134). And since it is bad to be an idiot, we ought to laugh. Still, Terjesen is aware that not everyone is ‘in’ on the parody. There are people who will watch Family Guy and laugh at the anti-​Semitic tropes, not the parody of people who believe them. In face of this possibility –​that viewers will laugh for the wrong reasons –​should Family Guy still make the jokes? Terjesen argues that it should because 1) this kind of humor does not cause racism to exist (so without it there would still be racist thoughts) and 2) without this kind of humor we lose a very effective way of not only making fun of racists (and therefore publicly disapproving of them), but also getting them to realize their own folly (as they laugh at Peter’s stupidity and begin to realize what they are really laughing at). (138) It is not clear why Terjesen believes (1) and (2). Of course, if we understand ‘humour does not cause racism’ to mean ‘if not for racist humour, there would still be racism’, then his statement is true. However, it misses the point. According to this theory, Jim Crow laws did not cause racism either, because if not for Jim Crow laws, there would still be racism. But Jim Crow laws did enable racism –​and so does racist humour. Regarding his second point, it is hard to see why making fun of racists is so important when the very humour we employ to make fun of them can be misconstrued as supporting them. Finally, few (if any) racists watching Family Guy will realize they are racist. Parodies are not always successful. They run the risk that viewers will laugh at racist jokes instead of at racist people, reinforcing rather than counteracting prejudice. This should be no surprise. Humour can serve as a source of relief, allowing people to engage with taboo and controversial topics without committing outright to the ideas or prejudiced behaviour. As Daniel O’Shiel writes, ‘jokes […] are essentially sublimative acts that allow brute aggressive, sexual and nonsensical tendencies to find some release in modified and relatively acceptable forms’ (2023: 116). Joking allows us to practically and cognitively disengage from serious topics: ‘While joking with friends’, writes John Morreall, ‘nothing is urgent, no action is called for’ (2009: 101). Parody is fertile ground

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for touching on controversial topics without behaving like a full-​blown bigot, on the one hand, or a full-​blown social justice warrior, on the other. 2

Application: Prejudice Creep

I have argued that the problem of parody is a moral problem. Ambiguity over who the butt of the joke is opens parodies up to harmful misinterpretation. Before I consider some potential solutions to the problem, I will introduce an application: prejudice creep, when a socially acceptable prejudice (fatphobia) is exploited in the service of a socially unacceptable one (sexism). Fatphobic humour is the paradigm of the problem of parody, because you can make a joke about a fat person without saying ‘this is a joke about fat people’ –​you can just see it. To explicate prejudice creep, I analyze the skit ‘Amy Schumer Doll’, which parodies a Barbie advertisement by presenting the doll version of Amy Schumer. A brief summary of the advertisement is in order. The ad details the Amy Schumer Doll’s lifestyle: she abuses drugs, sleeps around, and has bodily problems (uti s, vomiting) (‘Amy Schumer Doll’: 2015). The joke is that Amy is no Barbie. We learn that she consistently wakes up at 1 pm in strangers’ beds and needs Plan B. Her purse is full of birth control, Lexapro, ‘dusty candy corn’, and a ‘business card from a Tekserve employee that gave her a vibe’. The doll comes with cranberry juice for her uti s. The most striking feature of the Amy Schumer doll is her size: while many dolls are criticized for unrealistic body proportions, the Amy doll is unrealistic in the other direction: she is huge (twice as big as the male doll she sleeps with). The doll comes with outfits to ‘hide her problem areas’, including ‘skinny jeans to keep in the closet’ –​‘for someday’, says one of the girls playing with the doll. Amy is an anti-​Barbie. Who is the butt of the joke? As we have seen, parodies are ambiguous. It plausibly makes fun of Amy, women, Barbies, fat people, white people, Americans, etc. all in one sketch. And it is precisely this ambiguity that allows the prejudice to creep. Prejudice creep works by using Amy’s gender to strengthen the fat joke. Her fatness hides the sexism. Fatness is loaded with social meaning that allows fatphobia to creep into other types of prejudice. Comedians can use fatness to make fat stereotypes legible. In the doll skit, Amy’s size underscores the unhealthiness of her lifestyle. The skit relies on fat stereotypes, which link fatness to a wide range of troubling behaviours. As Ellie Tomsett explains, ‘Often in mainstream media, the stomach region of a woman’s body is a symbol of laziness, of not going to the gym, not exercising self-​care, and so on’ (2018: 14–​15). Fat is associated

118 Hirschfield with self-​indulgence, lack of self-​control, and hyper-​sexuality (Farrell 2011). Amy’s fatness can serve an explanation for all her undesirable behaviours. If Amy were skinnier, the thought goes, she would not be waking up in strangers’ beds –​she’d have a stable boyfriend. The legibility of fat underscores Amy’s status as a ‘bad woman’, one who fails to live up to feminine standards (Glick and Fiske 2001). The Amy Schumer doll plays the same part as Roseanne Barr’s character, ‘a fat, glaringly heterosexual woman’ (Lee 1991: 20). Like Schumer, Roseanne is ‘an inappropriate role model for America’s young women, the antithesis of sweet [and] thin’. Roseanne is a classic bad woman: ‘If the kids are still alive when my husband comes home, I’ve done my job. Thank God for gay guys –​without ‘em, us fat women wouldn’t have anyone to dance with’ (Russell 2002: 7). As Danielle Russell explains, the bulk of Roseanne’s comedy comes from her ‘personal ‘failure’ to live up to the culturally defined roles of wife, mother, caregiver, and sex-​symbol’ (2002: 7). She goes on: ‘By society’s criteria she is not a ‘good’ housewife or mother, but she rejects these standards, first by refusing to meet them; second, by claiming the title of ‘domestic goddess’, she moves beyond their power to define her […] she rejects society’s authority to define her, claiming the right of definition for herself’. Likewise, Amy rejects the ‘good girl’ standard by not complying with gender norms while still claiming the title of (Barbie) doll. However, just as Roseanne’s ‘domestic goddess’ title cannot pass the straight-​face test, neither can the Amy Schumer doll. That is why these are comedies. One might think that gender is doing very little work here. If Amy were a man, the thought goes, the joke would still be just as funny. What we know about comedy, however, does not support this. Thin, not fat, men are more likely to be ridiculed on tv. In a study of portrayals of obesity on television, researchers found that ‘the greatest amount of ridicule was aimed toward the thinnest male characters’ (Greenberg et al. 2003: 1347). Another study found that ‘in entertainment television, the viewing audience observe heavier females being punished for having average to above-​average body shapes/​ weights; whereas heavier males receive little punishment or rejection’ (Fouts & Vaughan 2002: 441). Fat men are not typically the butts of cruel jokes; fat women are. The Saturday Night Live sketch ‘My Drunk Boyfriend’ –​another doll parody, where the doll is male –​serves as an instructive comparison (2018). The sketch advertises a life-​size doll of a drunk boyfriend, ‘designed to mimic the behaviour of the sloppy grown man that you can’t get enough of’. He starts bar fights, brings frozen pizza into bed, and urinates in the hamper. While parodying an alcoholic man, the sketch also makes fun of women: the other butt of the joke is the woman who puts up with her drunk boyfriend. The viewer is

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left wondering: why would anyone stay with this helpless man? The butt of the joke in the Amy Schumer skit is also the girls who play with the doll –​but the difference is that nobody actually plays with Amy Schumer dolls (it’s absurd), whereas women actually date men who get obnoxiously drunk, so the joke is on the real-​life women who do so. Prejudice creep can use other types of group-​based prejudice, such as race. A study of ten highly rated US television shows in 1977 –​when racial tensions were high –​found that 90% of black characters were obese and that ‘negative characteristics were more frequently associated with overweight and obesity’ (Kaufman 1980: 44). In the late 19th and 20th centuries, ‘cartoonists who published their work in periodicals like Harper’s Weekly and Life frequently drew immigrants as fat, a quick way to signify to readers their inferior status’ (Farrell 2011: 76). Fatphobia is highly intersectional; it can hide sexism and racism alike. In sum, fat jokes exploit the interpretative ambiguity of humour, using a relatively socially acceptable prejudice (fatphobia) in the service of a less socially unacceptable one (sexism). 3

Is It Okay to Joke about Fat People?

I have introduced the problem of parody and one of its applications, prejudice creep. In this section, I consider some solutions to the problem. In particular, I consider two arguments that fatphobic humour is morally permissible. The first says that fat jokes are permissible when they are used in a self-​deprecating manner. The second says that fat jokes are permissible because they are different from racist and sexist jokes in morally relevant ways. I ultimately find these arguments unpersuasive. I then offer a workaround to the problem of parody: knowing one’s audience. 3.1 Self-​Deprecating Humour Many have argued that self-​deprecating humour –​even involving negative stereotypes –​can benefit members of the group. Martin Grotjahn writes, ‘The Jewish joke constitutes victory by defeat […] It is as if the Jew tells his enemies: You do not need to attack us. We can do that ourselves –​and even better’ (Grotjahn 1966: 22, 25). There is value in mocking the stereotypes applied to them. Lisa Merrill argues, Humor addressed to women; comedy that recognizes the value of female experience may be an important step in developing a culture that allows women to self-​critically question the stereotypes that have governed our

120 Hirschfield lives. A strong, rebellious humor empowers women to examine how we have been objectified and fetishized and to what extent we have been led to perpetuate this objectification. merrill 1988: 279

Under this view, skits like ‘Amy Schumer Doll’ may call on viewers to ‘self-​ critically question’ stereotypes about fat women. Joanne R. Gilbert argues that due to the interpretative ambiguity of humour, self-​deprecating jokes can be subtly subversive. She uses Roseanne’s joke as an example: ‘I used to be a feminist, until the first time Tom grabbed me by the hair, threw me up against the wall and fucked me in the ass’. After a brief interchange with Tom, she adds, ‘That's every guy's fantasy –​that his wiener saved your life’. gilbert 1997: 321

Gilbert offers three possible readings of the joke: [Barr] may appear to be both the victim of domination and abuse by her husband and the butt of the joke –​the joke being her own ideological sell-​out. Another possibility is to see Barr as victim and all feminists, even all women as the butt –​easily placated by a good time. A final interpretation, however, places women, specifically feminists, as victims and American culture itself as the butt. Barr may be saying that any society that actually finds this (a woman being raped –​ideologically or otherwise) natural and appropriate needs to have its collective unconscious radically interrogated. (327) The majority of the audience may adopt the first or second readings –​misogynistic ones. But the possibility of the third reading, which targets ‘American culture itself’, opens the possibility of ‘subverting the status quo’ by lampooning the belief that ‘all a woman needs to be happy is to be sexually dominated and abused by a man’ (Gilbert 1997: 321–​322). Women will understand that it is an ‘autobiographical performance of personal identity and cultural criticism’ (328), giving voice to a shared but unspeakable experience and critiquing it Are these arguments successful? It appears that self-​deprecating humour, like all humour, suffers from interpretive ambiguity. Hence self-​deprecating humour is not a unique case: the problem of parody persists. Fatphobic humour can be used or abused depending on who’s listening. The lesson is that

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context and audience matter. I return to this thought again as a workaround to the problem of parody. The point here is that self-​deprecating humour about the body is not an unalloyed good. 3.2 Fatphobic Humour vs. Racist Humour Another line of argument defends fat jokes by drawing a moral line between fatphobic and other types of prejudiced humour. One might think that the difference between making fun of fat people and making fun of, say, black people, can be explained by a few facts: 1) fatness is a mutable trait, while race isn’t; 2) it’s appropriate to make fun of fat people as they are living unhealthy lives that we should avoid, but it’s inappropriate to make fun of one’s race because there is nothing wrong with being one race or another; and 3) marginalized racial groups have suffered much more on account of their race than fat people have on the account of their weight. Let’s analyze these purported differences. The first and second say that fatness is the appropriate object of humour because it is a trait that is (1) controllable and (2) to-​be-​avoided. Indeed, common sense tells us that one’s weight is controllable. People diet and exercise for this very purpose. Yet the mutability of one’s weight may be overstated. Genetic factors have a large role to play, and there is little evidence that long-​term weight loss is possible (Oliver 2006, Chapter 5). There is also a tight correlation between one’s weight and one’s socioeconomic status; many people are fat because they are poor, overworked, and lack access to healthy foods (Tirosh 2013: 286–​287). In light of these findings, it is hard to maintain that people have significant control over their weight. Moreover, it appears that fatness is not necessarily a trait to be avoided. Being fat can be good, medically speaking: elderly people with excess weight live longer than their skinnier counterparts, and ‘fat but physically fit obese people are healthier than thin and sedentary persons’ (Tirosh 2013, 289). Medical evidence suggests that obesity is a symptom, not a cause, of most medical problems correlated with obesity (Oliver 2006: 27). J. Eric Oliver explains: There are only two medical conditions that have been shown convincingly to be caused by excess body fat: osteoarthritis of weight bearing joints and uterine cancer that comes from higher estrogen levels in heaver women (although this can be treated medically without weight loss). All other disease are only linked to obesity through associations in large populations. It is not clear why having a lot of fat tissue would make someone more likely to have heart disease, asthma, or many of the other diseases commonly attributed to obesity. Ibid.

122 Hirschfield Here, what one should avoid is unhealthy behaviour, such as eating processed foods and not getting physical activity. However, fatness does not necessarily denote an unhealthy lifestyle, and when it does, it may be due to life circumstances that are out of the person’s control. The third purported difference concerns comparative histories of oppression. Fat people may face discrimination and oppression, but it pales in comparison to that experienced by marginalized racial groups in both duration and severity, the argument goes. Anti-​fat prejudice is a relatively recent phenomenon (Pausé 2012; Tirosh 2013). Before calories could be found in abundance, up until the late 19th century, fatness was celebrated as an indicator of good health, fertility, and wealth (Farrell 2011: Chapter 2). Racial oppression, on the other hand, preceded fatphobia by hundreds of years. Racial oppression is also much more severe. While fat people do face discrimination, they were not enslaved, separated from families, and murdered on account of their weight. Likewise, the oppression that women face may outdo what fat people face. As one woman puts it: As women, we live in a coercive, threatening, unpleasant world; a world which tolerates us only when we are very young or very beautiful. If we become stupid or slow, jumpy or fast, dizzy or high-​pitched, we are simply expressing the pathology of our social position. So when we hear jokes against women, and we are asked why we don't laugh at them, the answer is easy, simple, and short. Of course, we're not laughing […] Nobody laughs at the sight of their own blood. weisstein 1973: 51, 58

As a description fat people’s oppression, this may seem overstated. But consider what some fat people themselves say about the severity of their discrimination. As one fat black woman explained, ‘the problem of racial prejudice never became confused with my problem of being overweight. The latter is a much more severe problem. For instance, I knew that colored girls were employed in certain offices where I applied for a job –​so my being rejected there could not be attributed to color. At one company, the interviewer […] said it won’t look right for the company to have a lot of overweight people as checkers’ (Cahnman 1968: 296). So it is not clear that racism is always worse than fatphobia. Even if we accept that racism is worse than fatphobia, it is unclear why the fact that fat people are ostensibly less oppressed than others makes jokes at their expense permissible. If anything, this explains why it is morally worse to tell a racist joke than a fatphobic one, not that the latter is morally permissible.

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Some have argued that fatness should be classified as a disability (Mollow 2015), which would make the wrongness of fat jokes more clear, as it is not socially acceptable to make fun of disabled people. There may be good political or medical reasons to classify obesity as a disability, but we should not need to classify it as such to see that fatphobic humour can be wrong. Somebody’s harm should be recognized without their belonging to a protected class. We looked at three arguments that attempt to defend fat jokes by drawing a moral line between fatphobic and other types of prejudiced humour. The first two rested on the assumptions that fat is both undesirable and controllable. Interestingly, psychologists have found that these two assumptions ‘lead to antifat attitudes’ in the United States: ‘To dislike fat people, one must not only think that fat is undesirable but also simultaneously blame the person for his or her situation’ (Crandall and Martinez 1996: 1166). But we saw that fatness is neither universally undesirable nor in a person’s control, so those arguments fail. Lastly, I considered the argument that fatphobia is a lesser evil than (say) racism, so it is okay to joke about fat people, but found it unpersuasive. 3.3 Morally Responsible Humour On the theory of the ethics of humour adopted in this chapter, telling a joke is wrong if it harms the target group, can be reasonably expected to, or promotes an atmosphere in which prejudiced jokes are more likely to occur. The problem of parody means that jokes are open to harmful misinterpretation: one person’s feminist joke is another’s sexist one. So to determine whether a joke is permissible to tell, we must ask if it is possible to tell it in a way that closes off the possibility of misinterpretation. Here, I focus on the narrow question of how we can joke more responsibly. I save the discussion of ‘can we make prejudiced jokes at all’? for the conclusion, where I argue that the positive value of humour may outweigh the risk of reinforcing prejudice. This section focuses only on how to use humour responsibly, assuming one is interested in doing so. One way to reduce the likelihood that a joke is misinterpreted is to stay away from risqué and potentially controversial humour in the first place. You will not risk harming fat, black, or gay people if you stay away from fat, black, and gay jokes. Indeed, Morreall seems to favor this risk-​averse approach: From considering the cognitive and practical disengagements in humor, and the irresponsibility, cruelty, and other forms of harm that can result from them, we can propose a general ethical principle, along the lines of ‘Don’t play with fire’: Do not promote a lack of concern for something about which people should be concerned. (110)

124 Hirschfield But Morreall’s proposal should give us pause. Fire may burn, but it also lights up the world. For all that can be said of its defects, humour is a valuable social tool, promoting bonding, stress-​relief, joy, intellectual virtues, and shared values (Martin et al.: 2003). Steering clear of potentially controversial humour deprives us of the full depth of this social resource. A more pressing issue with Morreall’s proposal is how we are to determine what counts as ‘fire’, i.e., which jokes ‘promote a lack of concern for something about which people should be concerned’? We saw that the interpretive ambiguity of humour makes this project virtually impossible. Can I not make fun of my friend Rachel for being late all the time, because doing so would risk making fun of all women or Jewish women? There is no joke about living humans that does not implicitly reference socio-​cultural topics; there is no joke that does not play with fire. How, then, can we joke about controversial topics more responsibly? What does morally permissible humour look like? A complete analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter, but certain comedians seem to offer good templates. The stand-​up comedy of Jena Friedman is one example: I had a job interview recently with a guy who dated a friend of mine –​ sorry date raped a friend of mine in college. [Audience laughter] I know, it's like what are the odds? One in six. [Laughter] But it was a very awkward job interview. I thought I nailed it 'cause I have a charisma of a serial killer, [laughter] but I never heard from him. So I waited two weeks and I gave him a call and I was like ‘hey, did I get the job’? and he said no. So the next day I showed up, 8:00 am sharp, ready to go, and he's like, ‘what are you doing here’? so I was like, ‘I’m sorry. I thought ‘no’ meant ‘yes’. jena friedman at wow Theatre nyc 11-​4-​2010

Here, the comedian appeals to common feminist cultural ground: the ‘one in six’ statistic describing the frequency of rape victimization, the nonchalance with which she mentions date rape (implying a shared understanding of its prevalence), and the fact that the rapist is employed and works in a management position (vs. the rape myth that rapists are ‘low lives’). Taken together, Friedman’s reliance on shared feminist cultural understandings reduces the likelihood that a sexist person would find this joke funny. The ‘butt’ of the joke is the rapist (for thinking that ‘no’ means ‘yes’), not Friedman (for showing up the next day) or her friend (for getting raped). Making rape jokes with a feminist framing attracts the right audience and reduces the likelihood that people will laugh for the wrong reasons. Friedman’s joke is successful because it relies on shared cultural understandings of feminism and certain women’s experiences that close off the possibility of misinterpretation.

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If morally responsible comedy requires that comedians limit their jokes’ cultural references to that which unambiguously supports a (say) feminist interpretation, can comedy emerge from its parochial recesses? In other words, how can comedy reach its more noble goals, such as expanding the minds of others and fostering empathy, if humour only works among sufficiently like-​ minded people? Can comedy bring us together across socio-​cultural lines? Will a sexist person find Friedman’s joke funny? O’Shiel argues that some level of audience-​comedian congruity –​shared values, meanings, references –​is necessary for comedic uptake: ‘Watching comedians from very different cultures often leaves you at a loss not only because the language and references are often utterly different and foreign, but also because the system of norms and taboos and what one laughs about –​and can laugh about –​can all vary enormously as well’ (125). This suggests that comedy’s impact may be circumscribed by what counts as common ground between comedian and audience, and it is bad news for the comedian activists looking to ‘punch up’ (criticizing the powerful and the structures that support them) because it means that the effectiveness of the critique will only be felt by like-​minded supporters. If this is true, there is a trade-​off to be made between breadth and depth: the more one wants to reach wide audiences, the more watered down the jokes must be. Morally responsible humour, as we’ve seen, is not a simple pursuit. Because any joke can be taken to reference controversial topics, comedians always toe the line between benign and harmful. Furthermore, restricting one’s comedy to reference shared subcultural values might mean limiting one’s reach. 4

Conclusion

I have argued that the problem of parody is a genuine moral problem. Humour is open to harmful misinterpretation. Fat jokes are the paradigm of the problem: they allow us to make fun of fat people without saying so explicitly. Due to prejudice creep, fatphobic humour may be racist or sexist humour in disguise. Fat jokes are similar to other group-​based prejudiced humour in that they take as their object immutable traits that are not necessarily bad. Does this mean that joking about fatness among a group of strangers is morally impermissible because the joke is open to harmful misinterpretation? If the argument and empirical information about the harmfulness of disparaging jokes presented here are correct, it would seem to imply that a morally good person has a pro tanto reason to refrain from making such jokes. However, morality is only one of the many goods implicated in joke-​telling. Aesthetic values –​wit, beauty, friendship –​are also at stake, and one’s interests

126 Hirschfield in developing a personality, friendships, stress-​relief, and a means of self-​ expression may outweigh the moral reason to not tell a potentially harmful joke. Indeed, no one wants to be a moral saint (Wolf 1982). In the end, comedians must ask themselves what harms to target groups they are comfortable risking to further their own interests, personal or professional. Since making the Hispanic rape joke, for example, Amy Schumer has tried to move away from satirizing racism, realizing that her jokes were being misinterpreted. ‘I think people may have been laughing for the wrong reasons’, Amy told the New York Times about her earlier comedy, ‘which she now cringes at’ (Zinoman 2019). She continued, ‘I played a Republican fool, kind of racist, homophobic, everything’. Now, she just plays a fat person. We saw that self-​ directed fatphobic humour is just as ambiguous as her racist humour: when Schumer jokes that her arms are so fat that in Los Angeles, they register as legs –​we don’t know who or what the butt of the joke is: la’s insipid beauty standards, Amy’s body, fat people, or fat women? Schumer’s blind spots are telling: while racist humour is off the table, she is okay making jokes at the expense of fat people. The primary victims of fat jokes are fat people. Everyone, however, have a stake in fatphobic humour. As we have seen, jokes can employ prejudice creep to target other marginalized identities through fat jokes. Thin people, too, worry about their weight and whether they are ‘passing’ as skinny or not. Just as homophobia affects people of all sexual orientations who become incentivized to avoid behaving in a way that could be perceived as gay, fatphobia affects people of all shapes and sizes who become incentivized to fret about their diet, exercise habits, and clothing. Morreall once observed that ‘[p]‌eople tell ethnic jokes not about a group they despise, but about a familiar group, much like themselves, who live at the margin of their culture’ (2009: 98). Perhaps this explains, above all, the prevalence of fatphobic humour: everyone could become the butt of a fat joke, if only they had that extra donut. Acknowledgements I thank Professor Judith Hamera, Laura Hirschfield, Avital Fried, Kevin Zhang, Morgan Carmen, Rachel Edelson, Elizabeth Wiita, Daniel O’Shiel and Naomi Shifrin for feedback on drafts of this paper and the conference participants for helpful comments and discussion.

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­c hapter 8

A Funny Taste: Immoral Humour and Unwilling Amusement Zoe Walker Abstract In this chapter, I am interested in the relationship between one’s moral beliefs and attitudes, on the one hand, and what one finds funny, on the other. There are some philosophers who hold that one cannot find a joke funny if one morally disagrees with it –​so one’s sense of humour reveals one’s moral beliefs. I think this is wrong –​and yet, contra others, I do think there is an important relationship between sense of humour and character. I start by noting what existing views cannot capture about the sense of humour: the phenomenon of unwilling complicity in unethical comedy. To remedy this, I propose a more developed account of sense of humour that pays attention to its emotional, perceptual and motivational aspects. This involves taking seriously the notion of a sense of humour, understood as a sensibility or taste, and I develop this account by building on Anne Eaton’s work on the related phenomenon of erotic taste. Finally, I go on to argue that this comic taste develops by habituation, and that a central way in which we are habituated to find things funny is through representations (for example, sitcoms and stand-​up comedy), which foreground certain aspects of something and frame them as funny. This sheds light on how one might change one’s sense of humour in a more egalitarian direction.

Keywords aesthetics –​Aristotle –​comedy –​ethics –​feminist philosophy –​habituation –​ humour –​taste

Clearly, here, too, it is possible to exceed or fall short of the mean. People who carry humor to excess are considered vulgar buffoons. They try to be funny at all costs, and their aim is more to raise a laugh than to speak with propriety and to avoid giving pain to the butt of their jokes. But those who cannot say anything funny themselves,

© Zoe Walker, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_010

130 Walker and are offended by those who do, are thought to be boorish and dour. Those who joke in a tactful way are called witty, which implies a quick versatility in their wits. aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (1987: 14–​15)

∵ 1

Introduction

What did Aristotle think about the ethics of humour? Famously, his extended treatment of comedy in the Poetics is now lost to us, so we can only guess at what he said there based on the surviving parts of that book. However, we also find a brief but illuminating discussion of the sense of humour in the Nicomachean Ethics. Here, Aristotle claims that a good sense of humour is a virtue to be found between two vicious extremes: the vulgar buffoon, who ‘tr[ies] to be funny at all costs, and […] aim[s…] more to raise a laugh than to speak with propriety and to avoid giving pain to the butt of their jokes’, and the humourless boor, who ‘cannot say anything funny [himself, and is …] offended by those who do’ (Aristotle, 1987, 15). By contrast, virtuous jokers are ‘witty’ yet ‘tactful’ (Ibid.): they are quick to make and enjoy a joke, but not when doing so would cause pain to those around them. Is the kind of sense of humour one has a matter of luck? Aristotle does not discuss this here, but if we infer from his wider discussion of virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics, it seems fairly likely that he takes sense of humour, like other emotions and character traits, to be a disposition that can be cultivated towards the virtuous mean. In more recent debate on the ethics of humour, the thought that one’s sense of humour can be virtuous or vicious in its own right has been challenged from two directions. On the one hand, there is a view, held by Ronald de Sousa, that the moral status of one’s sense of humour is entirely parasitic on the moral status of one’s beliefs. One can have a morally bad sense of humour, but what this really amounts to is that one has bad beliefs. This first position might to some sound a little humourlessly boorish –​though perhaps not exactly in Aristotle’s sense –​because it tells you, in a rather scolding, moralizing tone, that if your beliefs were really thoroughly moral, you would not ever be amused by immoral jokes: ‘to laugh at the [sexist] joke marks you as sexist’ (De Sousa 1987: 239). Then, in stark contrast to de Sousa’s position, there is another view, held by Aaron Smuts, that sense of humour does not have its own moral status –​a

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tendency to find certain kinds of thing funny is never in itself morally bad –​ and what we find funny reveals nothing about our character: ‘we are standing on shaky ground if we say that merely finding any given joke funny is itself reprehensible’ (Smuts 2010: 346). This view moves entirely away from the idea that sense of humour reflects one’s beliefs, and seems to suggest that sense of humour does not reflect anything about one at all, so that what one finds funny becomes more like a sneeze or a cough. To some, especially those sympathetic with de Sousa, this might sound buffoonishly permissive. To see that neither of these views successfully capture the phenomena, consider the following ‘light-​hearted and high-​decibel exchange witnessed in 1990, at a Melbourne football game’:

st. kilda supporter to sluggish player: ‘Get on with it, Laurie, you great girl!’ alert bystander: ‘Hey, what’s wrong with a girl?’ st. kilda supporter: ‘It’s got no balls, that’s what’s wrong with it!’ langton 2018: 145

The St. Kilda supporter’s quick-​witted response relies on the sexist presupposition that women ‘have no balls’, because they are less courageous than men. Rae Langton –​fortunate witness to this exchange –​is interested in the difficulty of challenging presuppositions of this kind. But of course, it is also a joke, and one that I for one find funny, even though I disagree with its sexist presupposition. I find it funny and then I feel guilty for finding it funny, because it is sexist. Moreover, this, I take it, is a familiar phenomenon. What this example illustrates, then, is something that I believe neither Ronald de Sousa nor Aaron Smuts’ views can capture: that immoral jokes can give us a feeling of unwilling complicity. De Sousa cannot capture the fact that your amusement at a joke could be unwilling, because for him you must endorse the joke to find it funny. And Smuts cannot capture the fact that your amusement at a joke could make you feel complicit and therefore guilty, because when he moves away from the idea that sense of humour reflects one’s beliefs, he goes all the way in the other direction and concludes that it does not reflect anything about one’s character at all. Indeed, I think both go wrong in focusing too much on belief (whether accepting or rejecting it), to the detriment of other attitudes. In this chapter, I will navigate between these two positions, by resurrecting a version of Aristotle’s cultivation view of the sense of humour. In section one, I argue that we should understand humour as a matter of taste, or a sensibility. This allows for a fleshing out of the purely belief-​centred understanding of the

132 Walker sense of humour, adding emotional, perceptual and motivational aspects to it, which makes it possible to capture the phenomenon of unwilling complicity in an immoral joke. In section two, I consider how this sensibility develops, returning to Aristotle to suggest that the sense of humour is habituated by the comedic representations with which we engage. 2

A Funny Taste

We have seen that, contra de Sousa, the sense of humour does not appear to be merely a function of one’s beliefs. Yet, contra Smuts, nor is it as arbitrary as a sneeze or a cough. So, what exactly does determine what we find funny? My proposal is that in order to answer this question, we need to take seriously our talk of a ‘sense’ of humour, and treat humour as a matter of taste; a sensibility with emotional, motivational and perceptual aspects to it as well as cognitive ones. To begin, it will be instructive to draw an analogy with another sort of taste: erotic taste. Anne Eaton develops the concept of erotic taste in the context of the feminist critique of pornography, and she starts by commenting on ‘feminist analytic philosophy’s generally intellectualist tendency [… That is to say,] a tendency to conceive of sexism primarily in terms of people’s (misguided) beliefs about the two sexes’ (Eaton 2017: 246). As such, ‘contemporary feminist thought, at least in the analytic tradition, tends to eschew considerations of the role of taste in sustaining the current order’ (Ibid.). Antiporn feminism in particular, Eaton notes, ‘tends to suffer from this tendency of being overwhelmingly concerned with the falsehoods that pornography propagates –​for instance, falsehoods about female inferiority, rape myths, etc. that it purportedly leads its audiences to accept, whether consciously or unconsciously’ (Ibid.: 246–​247). What antiporn feminism has neglected, Eaton thinks, is the role of ‘erotic taste’ in sustaining sexism. For Eaton, taste, in general, is ‘an individual’s or collective’s standing disposition for evaluative sentiments regarding some x –​whether a particular thing or a kind of thing –​where these sentiments are partially or fully constituted by or based on pleasurable or displeasurable responses to some of x’s properties’ (Ibid.: 244). By sentiments, Eaton has in mind mental states like ‘emotions and also some feelings and pleasures’ (Ibid.), which need not involve explicit appraisals of their objects, but rather they ‘present their object as valuable and so worthy of experiencing, having or preserving’ (Ibid.). For example, one might have a taste for designer shoes, which would mean tending to experience pleasure and joy when seeing or wearing

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designer shoes, and thus perceiving designer shoes as worthy of experiencing, having or preserving. Erotic taste, then, is a particular category of taste which includes ‘a person’s sexual taste –​for instance, her positive and negative preferences for particular types of sex acts, or orientation toward certain kinds of sex partners –​but also […] extend[s]‌to one’s general sense of what makes a person sexy or even simply attractive’ (Ibid.: 245). Engagement with pornography plays an important role in shaping erotic tastes in a patriarchal direction –​what Eaton calls the ‘eroticization of dominance and submission’ (Ibid.: 247, referencing MacKinnon 1991) –​but this shaping is not a result of our beliefs about the sexes. To summarize Eaton’s claims, then: analytic feminism has overplayed the role of beliefs in sustaining sexism, and underplayed the role of taste. An important way in which pornography, in particular, sustains sexism, is to eroticize patriarchal norms so that we find them attractive, even though we may believe that these norms are wrong. I believe that Eaton is right about the importance of taste, and that applying her account to the realm of humour can shed the necessary light on what sense of humour is, and how comedy can make us unwillingly complicit in it. First, applying Eaton’s account of taste to sense of humour, we get the suggestion that a sense of humour –​usually of a person, but potentially of a collective (e.g. a national sense of humour) –​is a standing disposition for an evaluative sentiment of amusement regarding some x –​whether a particular thing or kind of thing –​where this amusement is constituted by or based on pleasurable responses to certain of x’s properties. These sentiments of amusement need not involve explicit appraisals –​i.e. being amused need not involve making the explicit judgment ‘this is funny’ –​but they do present their object as valuable, and so worthy of experiencing, having or preserving. For example, on this account, a taste for puns is a disposition to feel pleasurable amusement towards puns, and to see them as valuable and worth experiencing as a result of their tendency to give one pleasurable amusement. At this point, it is worth noting a surprising commonality between erotic taste and what we might call ‘comic taste’ as compared to other sorts of taste. In both the case of finding something funny and finding something sexy, there is a particularly pleasurable reward in the offing –​pleasurable amusement and thus potentially laughter in the former case, and pleasurable arousal and thus potentially orgasm in the latter case –​and thus things which tend to give us these experiences are especially valuable to us; more so than, say, a nice pair of brogues is valuable to someone with a taste in leather shoes. This Eatonian account of comic taste fits well with the way we ordinarily talk about sense of humour. People do in fact seem to enjoy different kinds of

134 Walker humour, and find those kinds of humour to be worth experiencing and seeking out, so it is very intuitive to treat sense of humour as a matter of taste. It also fits well with the common conception that different cultures have distinctive senses of humour, and the culture shock often experienced by those who go to a different country, and find that they are unable to see what is so funny about the new country’s comedy, and that their own jokes fall flat. What is more, this account of sense of humour as a matter of taste, with emotional, perceptual and motivational facets to it, puts us in a position to better capture the phenomenon of unwilling complicity than either de Sousa’s or Smut’s view are able to do. On the one hand, contra de Sousa, it vindicates the thought that one can be amused by things that are at odds with one’s moral beliefs –​one’s amusement can be unwilling –​because having a taste for something does not have to involve making any explicit judgments or having any particular beliefs about it. I can have a taste for sexist jokes –​find them funny –​without believing their sexist assumptions. That being said, it also offers an explanation for why de Sousa arrived at his view: because one’s taste in jokes could match one’s moral beliefs, so for some people it may be the case that they do not find funny anything that they judge to be immoral. Perhaps de Sousa is disposed not to feel amusement at sexist jokes –​if so, then his mistake is only in inferring that this is true of everyone. What de Sousa is right about, and Smuts wrong, is that sense of humour does reflect something about one’s character, which is what allows us to capture the phenomenon of complicity that Smuts’ account could not capture. To enjoy, say, sexist humour is to have a standing disposition to experience pleasure when one perceives it, and to see sexist humour as worthy of that amusement and worth experiencing –​to see amusement to be apt with regard to that humour, even though you might believe that such humour is morally bad. And crucially, this disposition for pleasure and perception of aptness is subjective –​there is no fact of the matter about whether sexist humour is funny or not. Therefore, it reveals something particular about you that you find it funny: there is something about you –​a sexist implicit attitude that you have –​ which is being co-​opted to make you complicit in the humour. One question one might ask at this point is whether one’s tastes reveal anything about one’s values. We have seen that finding sexist humour funny reveals nothing about what you believe about the equality of the sexes, but does it reveal that you do not value equality of the sexes as much as you thought? On the one hand, I think that valuing equality, or holding equality as a value, might be understood as synonymous with believing that equality is good –​in which case the answer will likewise be that finding a sexist joke funny says

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nothing about whether you value equality. On the other hand, though, one might understand valuing as involving a notion of priority that is absent from belief: when I value equality, I take it to be more important than other things that I may nonetheless believe are good. On this second understanding, I do think finding sexist humour funny reveals something about how much one values equality. Having a taste for sexist humour, I have proposed, involves seeing sexist humour as valuable because of its tendency to give one pleasurable amusement. If this is so, then it looks as though the propensity for sexist humour to give you pleasure is more salient to you than its propensity to perpetuate (displeasurable) inequality, and thus reveals something about your priorities, whether you are conscious of those priorities or not. 3

Farce of Habit

If the picture developed in the previous section is right, then it is natural to wonder: is there anything I can do to cultivate my sense of humour in a more virtuous direction? In this section, I will argue that there is: one’s comic tastes are the result of habituation, and therefore, cultivating one’s sense of humour in a more virtuous direction will be a matter of engaging with good (that is, morally good) kinds of comedy –​a suggestion that, as we will see, is thoroughly Aristotelian. In determining how comic taste is formed, I once again take my cue from Eaton’s account of erotic taste. Eaton, very appropriately for my purposes, endorses ‘an Aristotelian model of habituation’ (Eaton 2017: 250),1 according to which: the disposition to feel properly about some object in the world is inculcated in a subject by repeatedly getting the subject to have that feeling with the right intensity toward the object. Representations […] can play a critical guiding role in habituation by encouraging their audiences to imaginatively engage with represented objects (characters, inanimate objects, events, situations, and the like) [… R]epresentations solicit from their audience particular sorts of sentimental responses and train them on represented objects in our imaginations, and in repeatedly doing so 1 Eaton’s account here ‘is based on Aristotle’s discussion of virtue and habituation toward virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics, especially Book ii. Aristotle discusses the use of representations in habituation toward virtue in Book viii of the Politics, the Poetics, and also the Rhetoric’ (Eaton 2017: 249).

136 Walker over time, inculcate in this audience a predisposition to respond similarly to similar objects in the real world. ibid.: 250

In the realm of erotic taste, the thought is that what we find attractive is shaped by what is repeatedly represented to us as attractive. A key part of this habituation will be engagement with visual media generally and, as Eaton wants to claim, pornography specifically. Constantly watching certain bodies and acts portrayed in an eroticized light –​‘presented with particular vivacity and detail aimed at erotically stimulating its target audience’ (Ibid.: 251) –​gradually leads us to find those things erotic, regardless of what we believe about equality of the sexes. As a result, Eaton proposes that the key to combatting sexism sustained through erotic taste is to encourage the creation of, and engagement with, feminist pornography: pornography that, for instance, eroticizes female pleasure and empowerment, and features much more varied body types, and thus habituates people’s erotic tastes in a more egalitarian direction. I find this Aristotelian model plausible as applied to erotic taste, and I believe that comic taste is developed in the same way: what people find funny is shaped by what is repeatedly represented to them as worthy of amusement. Repeated engagement with sexist jokes, and sexist humour more broadly, will develop in people a taste for sexist humour, regardless of their beliefs about the sexes. Much as pornography depicts certain acts in an eroticized light, which habituates people to find those acts erotic, comedy depicts certain speech, sounds or acts in a humorous light –​for example, delivered with a pace and tone that indicates a punchline, or accompanied by canned laughter, or portrayed in a way that foregrounds similarities with other things widely considered to be funny –​which habituates people to find said speech, sounds or acts funny. Again, this proposal fits well with the earlier observation that different cultures and social groups have distinctive senses of humour. If people are habituated by the comedy they are exposed to, and people make comedy based on what they already find funny, then within a culture a particular sense of humour will be perpetuated. However, because what we find funny is not objective –​there is no fact of the matter about what is funny and what is not –​ between two cultures there can be big differences in what people find funny. For this proposal to really look promising, it will need to be supported by psychology, and particularly developmental psychology of humour. If something like this habituation model is right, then we would expect very young children’s sense of humour to develop in response to cues from adults, or older children, or comedic media –​cues that x event, or object, or image, is

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something that is appropriately laughed at (with the laughter of others at x being a particularly powerful cue). This does seem to be supported by psychological research. Developmental and cultural psychologist Vasudevi Reddy writes that ‘in infancy, other people’s responses to events can change the emotional atmosphere, enabling the carving out of objects of fear, distaste, and funniness’ (Reddy 2019: 189). Moreover, the importance of cuing is apparent in ‘the phenomenon of infant clowning, where the infant seizes on others’ laughter to (sometimes accidental) actions by the infant and repeats them to re-​elicit laughter’ (Ibid.). Examples from the study suggest that ‘actions by infants […] appear to have become humorous objects solely by virtue of the parent’s amusement at them […] Just as adult clowns pick up on things that amuse others and play on these things, so infants are both sensitive to, interested in, and motivated enough by others’ laughter to pick up on the causes of others’ amusement and repeat them’ (Ibid.: 190–​1). Across four studies (Reddy 1991, 1998, 2001, and Reddy, Williams & Vaughan 2002), Reddy ‘found numerous examples from infants from the age of about 7 months (when the earliest study began) of infants seizing on adult laughter to a variety of actions and repeating them’ (Reddy 2019: 191). Again, it looks as though what children come to find funny depends on what is framed or represented to them as funny, primarily through the laughter of adults. There appears, then, to be some good empirical support to suggest that representations are key in shaping how children come to find things funny. If this picture is right, then the upshot is that the way to cultivate one’s sense of humour is to stop engaging with comedy that represents as humorous the kinds of thing it is bad to find humorous, and to start engaging with comedy that represents as humorous the kinds of thing it is good to find humorous. These things may not seem funny at first, but after enough immersion in this sort of humour, one will eventually develop a taste for it. A concern with this proposal might be raised by those who see an intrinsic connection between humour and transgression. It has often been observed that many people find taboo and risqué subjects funny, and for ‘relief theorists’ of humour, who take laughter ‘to relieve us of nervous tension’ surrounding taboo subjects (Morreall 1987: 131), this is a very central feature of amusement. Therefore, one might think, it is a futile task to try and cultivate a sense of humour that is entirely in line with one’s moral beliefs. A first thing to say about this is that many of the taboo topics that the ‘Relief Theory’ is concerned with are transgressions of norms of politeness and conversational acceptability rather than moral norms (in the case of toilet humour, sexual innuendo or gallows humour, for example), so these could survive a shift to a more moral sense of humour. Moreover, whilst I do not dispute

138 Walker that many people find the taboo funny, I do dispute that this is either necessary or sufficient for humour. It is clearly possible to find things funny which do not involve moral transgressions (consider puns, impersonations or farce, for example), so we need not worry that in eschewing such humour we will find ourselves with no alternative. Moreover, taboo topics do not necessitate humour, and many are unmoved by such comedy or are moved to discomfort or disgust rather than amusement –​so we need not be concerned that it is impossible not to find such things funny. Nevertheless, one might still worry that these changes in the sense of humour cannot be achieved by merely passively watching comedy one does not yet enjoy, and I am open to the thought that once one already has an established sense of humour, it may be hard to change it via passive engagement alone. Rather, the most effective means of habituation may well be something more deliberate: an intentional cultivation of one’s tastes via purposeful attention and genuine openness to new possibilities. In an article on the politics of sexual desire, Amia Srinivasan writes that Lindy West describes studying photographs of fat women and asking herself what it would be to see these bodies –​bodies that previously filled her with shame and self-​loathing –​as objectively beautiful. This, she says, isn’t a theoretical issue, but a perceptual one: a way of looking at certain bodies –​one’s own and others’ –​sidelong, inviting and coaxing a gestalt-​shift from revulsion to admiration. srinivasan 2018

Here Srinivasan is discussing just the same problem as Eaton: how can one change one’s erotic tastes to be more egalitarian and inclusive? For Srinivasan, this requires not just looking at the bodies in question, but looking in a particular, attentive and open way. Given that the odds are stacked against egalitarian taste, passively perceiving in the way one has been habituated to do will not suffice, and a more active project of seeking out the beauty of certain bodies, or the eroticism of certain acts, is necessary. Might this sort of project of purposeful attention also be applicable to comic tastes? It is certainly possible to approach comedy with charity and willingness to be amused, just as it is possible to go in assuming the worst, and trying one’s best to find every joke lame, or cringeworthy, or boring. These methods do not work every time, and we often find ourselves unable to laugh no matter how hard we try, or giggling despite ourselves. However, an openness and attentiveness to finding the funny in progressive comedy seems a more promising way

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to go about changing one’s tastes than pessimism, reluctance and resistance. Moreover, progressive comedy has in its favour the virtue of novelty, and treading new ground, rather than reworking the same old tired subjects, so there will often be some new insight to seek out and enjoy, if one looks for it. In other words, if we are interested in habituating people’s tastes in a more egalitarian direction, perhaps the most effective way to go about it is to call on those with immoral comic tastes to do what feminists have been called on to do for so long: to see the funny side. 4

Concluding Remarks

I have argued that sense of humour should be viewed as a matter of taste rather than a function of one’s moral beliefs, and have defended a habituation-​ via-​representation model of the sense of humour based on and analogous with Anne Eaton’s account of erotic taste. I will conclude by pointing to two potential avenues for further investigation that are made apparent by the account I have developed. The first is to think about what this account would mean for responsibility. Taste seems like an extremely personal thing, and people are often reluctant –​ or even feel unable –​to critique their tastes, thinking that they are an important part of who they are. However, we have seen that taste is more malleable than it seems, and more important in sustaining ideologies than we might have realized. Thus, it does not seem unjust, in my opinion, to claim that everyone has a responsibility to critique their tastes in jokes, and, if they find that their aesthetic judgments do not match their ethical ones, to expose themselves to material that might train their sense of humour for the better. Certainly, there is a responsibility on those who control the comedy that is readily available to us to commission more diverse programmes, to avoid habituating people’s tastes in a problematic direction. Finally, I want to say a little about the final part of Eaton’s description of the habituation of taste, where she claims that ‘representations solicit from their audience particular sorts of sentimental responses and train them on represented objects in our imaginations, and in repeatedly doing so over time, inculcate in this audience a predisposition to respond similarly to similar objects in the real world’ (Eaton 2017: 250, my italics). In the case of pornography, Eaton thinks that imaginative engagement with fiction can shape our sentiments about ‘similar objects in the real world’. Is this plausible in the case of humour? To me, this seems to point to the worry about the trivializing effects of humour, and I find it more plausible in the case of visual humour than linguistic humour.

140 Walker Imaginatively engaging frequently with fictions that portray misogynistic or racist acts in a humorous light could, I contend, make it harder for a viewer to perceive real-​life versions of those acts as the serious acts that they are. If this habituation account is right, then humour is potentially capable of a sort of perception-​harm, and that would certainly be no laughing matter. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Viktoras Bachmetjevas, Richard Holton, Rae Langton, Lucy McDonald, Matyáš Moravec, Daniel O’Shiel, Jack Wearing and attendees of the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club for comments on this chapter.

References

Aristotle. (1987). ‘Nicomachean Ethics, Book iv, ch.8’ in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (ed. J. Morreal). State University of New York Press: 14–​16. De Sousa R. (1987). ‘When is it Wrong to Laugh?’, in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (ed. J. Morreall). State University of New York Press: 226–​249. Eaton A. (2017). ‘Feminist Pornography’, in Beyond Speech: Pornography and Analytic Feminist Philosophy (ed. M. Mikkola). Oxford University Press: 243–​258. Langton R. (2018). ‘Blocking as Counter-​speech’, in New Work on Speech Acts (eds. D. Fogel, D.W. Harris and M. Moss). Oxford University Press: 144–​164. MacKinnon C. A. (1991). Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Harvard University Press. Morreall J. (1987). ‘A New Theory of Laughter’, in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (ed. J. Morreall). State University of New York Press: 128–​138. Reddy V. (2019). ‘Humour as Culture in Infancy’, in Research on Young Children’s Humor (eds. E. Loizou and S.L. Recchia). Springer: 187–​201. Reddy V. (2001). ‘Infant clowns: The interpersonal creation of humour in infancy’, Enfance 53: 247–​256. Reddy V. (1998). Person-​directed play: Humour and teasing in infants and young children. Report on Grant No. R000235481 received from the Economic and Social Research Council. Transcripts from study. Reddy V. (1991). ‘Playing with others’ expectations: Teasing and mucking about in the first year’, in Natural Theories of Mind (ed. A. Whiten). Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 143–​158. Reddy V., Williams E. and Vaughan A. (2002). ‘Sharing humour and laughter in autism and Down’s syndrome’, British Journal of Psychology 93: 219–​242. Smuts A. (2010). ‘The Ethics of Humor: Can Your Sense of Humor be Wrong?’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (3): 333–​347.

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Srinivasan A. (2018). ‘Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?’ [online], London Review of Books 40 (6). Available from https://​www​.lrb​.co​.uk​/the​-paper​/v40​/n06​/amia​-sri​ niva​san​/does​-any​one​-have​-the​-right​-to​-sex [Accessed 7 June 2021].

­c hapter 9

Feminism’s Look at Itself: Self-​Hygiene through the Prism of Laughter Teodora Marija Grigaitė Abstract By invoking various theories of humour and the ideas of second wave feminism and postmodern philosophy, this chapter argues that the cornerstone of every movement is the ability to internalize the existence of the Other in our individual and collective world experience. The chapter examines how laughter manifests itself in the feminist movement, particularly focusing on laughter without content (transcendental laughter), as well as analyses incongruity and liberation theories and their value to the feminist discourse.

Keywords feminism –​incongruity –​laughter –​humour –​liberation –​transcendental laughter

1

Introduction

This paper focuses on one of the most important practices of feminism which, despite its importance, has been largely overlooked. To correct any injustice, a group of individuals usually direct their focused gaze towards the image of the ‘enemies’. The strategy of the group evolves together with the changing behaviour of the latter. In essence, another individual or object acquires its otherness by fostering the contradiction that the social movement (feminism) fights for. Hence, any becoming is directly affected by external forces. The movement becomes enslaved in the form of constant reaction. This effort requires neither great creativity nor does it allow one to see the situation from other angles –​it becomes directly dependent on the object. As a result, it loses its originality, its sense of self. Despite the fact that any struggle will always involve someone from the outside, as a hostile or indifferent party to the struggle, I will, nevertheless, try to break away from this particular aspect as much as possible.

© Teodora Marija Grigaitė, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_011

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Instead, I will only seek to closely examine the benefits of and the need for self-​ reflection of feminism or its inward gaze, which adds greatly to its authentic posture and well-​being. I will first look into the tendency of the movement towards self-​hygiene while invoking Giving Account of Oneself by Judith Butler. From Butler I will build upon this theory on the that of second wave feminism (Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva) and ideas of the postmodern era, which will help to claim that laughter, whose beginning can be traced within an oppressed individual, is a state to establish an authentic existence, or (at least for a mere moment) to break through language structures that shape the human psyche. I will refer to specific examples in order to describe the image of a social struggle directed at another, while trying to prove that a constant return to oneself and turning to one’s goals and personal pursuits is, in fact, a true source of strength in formulating one’s position based on love and empathy rather than the desire to display individual or collective difference within the movement. Therefore, I will examine the manifestation of laughter in the feminism movement. I will mainly focus on laughter without content (otherwise called transcendental laughter), incongruity and liberation theory, noting all their value to the feminist discourse. 2

Ethics in Giving Account of Oneself by Judith Butler: Guidelines for Reforming the Relationship with Oneself and the Other

Before turning to Giving Account of Oneself, which perfectly sets out some guidelines for starting a movement that is not based on ethical cruelty, I will first use a short text ‘Hegel for our Times’, also by Butler. In Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel suggests that we are not separate creatures, even if we see ourselves as so most of the time. In his view, conscious entities cannot exist without each other. He puts forward another thought: a man becomes aware of himself through the constant encounter with another (Butler 2019). Nevertheless, ‘Hegel for our Times’ continues to depict a different reality that is grounded in a deep-​rooted view of an individualistic world, which ignores the importance of the collective, a state of existential denial. Written in the late 2019s, Butler’s article makes the same point as Giving Account of Oneself, written in 2009. I will, nevertheless, focus more on the latter, largely because of the teleology of ideas. Butler’s contemplation moves from an individual to a collective dimension: the author shows that another person or object unmasks our incompleteness or helps us discover new things about ourselves. What is the most important for the main idea of this chapter

144 Grigaitė is the depiction of the time when the individual is still alone with oneself. Only by reflecting on one’s own existence can a person realize how deep his connections are with another person or another object. Therefore, for any movement, and for feminism in particular, this stop is a great way to reconsider one’s actions and aspirations. This moment shows that being an individual is a process, and that most things in individual and collective life are not so transparent and easy to understand. As a result, incongruity and discrepancy between concepts are grasped, the breakdown of prejudices occurs, and a gust of chaos enters through the window, despite our constant efforts to keep it closed (a metaphor for an attempt to stay ignorant). In this case, laughter is a crucial aspect that emerges as a by-​product of perceiving life’s incomprehensibility. The incongruity theory here becomes one of the cornerstones enveloping being, as it momentarily switches from chaos to order and then the other way round. The incongruity theory describes a state where the potential for provoking laughter depends on the perception of incongruity between one’s conceptual thinking and the object’s manifestation in reality, fostering an emotional disposition appropriate for laughter (Critchley 2011: 2). This misunderstanding accompanies a person as long as s(he) is firmly attached to a certain type of vision, but the latter is constantly denied the power of world manifestation. By trying to build a link between the incongruity theory and the feminism movement, I argue that such moments can help create a different world of space and time, when language rules are suspended and the image of symbolic order easily breaks down. It is the greatest source of creation and emancipation. I will discuss the main ideas of Giving Account of Oneself, which serve as a primary and essential stage for self-​perception in the territory of the Other. The recurring and main theme of the work is the narration of one’s life, conditions and agents that determine it. Every person is faced with the request to briefly present themselves and to crystallize the ‘essence’ of their character for ‘real humans’ to emerge amongst the abundance of events. However, a mere answer to the question ‘who are you?’ is extremely frustrating, as it forces us to adjust our lives to the standards of the interviewer and to classify our experience on the principle of hierarchy. As regards personal life accounts and the ethical violence it causes (or, in milder terms, the inconvenience of ranking experience on a scale of significance), Butler’s theory can be crystallized into two main postulates. First, self-​narration always has a direction. This means that I am always directed at another person or object, submitting myself to the phenomenological principle of intentionality. The second postulate emphasizes the importance of language. A common understanding exists that we (the human race) use language to emerge from the chaos. Yet, a language was before our

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emergence to this material world and will continue to exist when we perish. In a sense, language is indifferent. It allows us to take advantage of it, but the rules are already set a priori. One day I decided to make an experiment and record a video of me talking about how I felt that day. At first, I spoke in my mother tongue, Lithuanian, and then switched to English. There was a change not only in the content of the story but also in the mood and overall phenomenological experience of the place. I was surprised by free associations. This is a simple example, but it proves well that a language is not an objective entity in our lives. The very conditions that ‘help’ us to narrate our lives, through which we perceive ourselves and others, are not created by us, which means that in any case wo(man) will cultivate a mode of opacity, incompleteness. A wo(man) alone will never be able to construct a narrative that explains everything of which his or her subject is composed (Butler 2009: 20). However, this opacity of self and the inability of language to be an agent of objectivity is not the main obstacle for an individual in trying to comprehend one’s own existential state. In the first chapter of Giving Account of Oneself, Butler draws on the ideas of Theodor Adorno on collective morality. The philosopher states that no one is more perverted than the ethics or morals that exist in the form of collective ideas (Butler 2009: 4). Collective morality, according to Adorno, has collective-​conservative roots. The ideas that make up the content of morality have long become an anachronism –​a remnant of history that does not fit in with the current context. Ideas floating in the form of anachronism are no longer needed, but circulate because they are enforced through coercion, and collective morality requires that all individuals participate in it and introduce these common qualities into their personal being (ibid.). Butler agrees with Adorno’s statement, which establishes the existence of universal morality, and emphasizes its biggest disadvantage –​the inability to adapt to cultural identity. This means that it is only an individual who has to constantly adjust to a priori formulated concepts. Morality itself hardly yields and allows itself to be changed by external forces. Thus, if most of the elements that make up an individual are indifferent to him or her, what influence does this have on the narration of our lives? We have the result –​a person who accepts various anachronisms and adapts. ‘Who are you?’ –​the answer to the question usually consists in the components of the environment that exist regardless of our presence or absence on this earth. Nevertheless, one is still called to nurture different narratives of one’s life, one that has contradictions and unexplained dark corners, where the power of language is unable to penetrate. ‘I’m a man of contradictions, I’m a man of many moods /​I contain multitudes’ says Bob Dylan in his quarantine song ‘I Contain Multitudes’. Is it not characteristic of every human being? Unity of opposites,

146 Grigaitė inconsistency and the sum of many. Western culture captures man as a set of truths and essences, and everything else can change as long as it does not violate the core and the principle of operation. However, even if we were to look five years into the past, we would see our own image and the vast majority of our decisions, moods or words uttered would now be foreign to us. As a result, personal accounts become a more difficult task than the vast majority of people imagine, because we cannot even name many of the elements that make us up and the factors that drive them. This does not mean that we should refrain from trying to tell a story about our lives, but we must realize that it is not an objective static and unchanging narrative but rather a creation, a becoming. Our authority is much less powerful than imagined by the popular discourse and various trivial psychological practices. To sum things up, Butler’s Giving Account of Oneself presents the problems we face by putting our lives into a static and unchanging narrative or story. There are primary or initial relationships which shape us even before we begin to contemplate the meaning of those initial relationships. Philosophers Levinas and Laplanche talk about primary experiences, but in different ways. Laplanche uses the theory of psychoanalysis and argues that we acquire a form of functioning in our childhood and then act according to the principles produced by that form, which means we can trace, record our life events, but we cannot give a full account to ourselves (or to others) why we react to things in one way or another, why we desire or hate that person or object, why we did it one way or another (Butler 2009: 71–​72). Like Laplanche, Levinas speaks of unconceptualized experiences and argues that, at the very primary level of existence, we have no voice and we are shaped by the Other. This in no way means that the Other must necessarily be a traumatic factor, the Other simply relates to our stage of passivity, which, being already conscious, cannot be traced. Talking about the development of the subject, Levinas speaks of everyday experiences of encountering the Other (76). We are shaped not only by our relationship with individuals and the Other, but also by norms that, while facilitating the process of self-​narration, reduce our agency in this process. These norms include an infinite number of elements of life –​a bundle of values and language (Butler 2009: 3–​41). At first glance, this theory denies a person’s responsibility to himself and another person, as s(he) establishes constant ignorance and self-​incompleteness. Here we come to the most important thought for me personally, communicated in Giving Account of Oneself: if we agree with Butler’s arguments, we can say that ethics directed at ourselves and others is much more authentic, drawing to a constant impact on oneself and other individuals, realizing that I → Other is ethically, existentially intertwined, therefore, morality must always exist in this intentional form (Butler

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2009: 128). This type of ethics breeds humility and respect as a cornerstone in relation to oneself and others. This attitude towards oneself and the Other is the beginning of a different ethics, it deepens feminist practice starting from its smallest component –​an individual. A person deeply motivated by injustices should possess an inner yearning to look for a position that listens. Sadly, it can be said that a person very rarely actually listens. To really listen is not to wait for the other to finish speaking so that we can place those words in our psyche and compare it to our previous knowledge; it is an ethical imperative for several reasons. First of all, by allowing the other person to speak, we give him or her a platform to narrate part of them. Of course, this can also be done in a state of passivity, without listening to the meaning of the words but by deceiving with our own body movements, by imitating real listening, and this brings us to the second point –​by listening to another being we open ourselves to the world. In saying this, I do not mean that it is possible to close the world under our influence in any case, but it is surprisingly easy to sail through the same ideas and images, suspending our imagination. We find ourselves in a state of chaos where the pendulum plunged us from complete clarity into complete uncertainty. I will examine below how laughter gives a helping hand in that rejuvenating but scary state. 3

Feminist Laughter: Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva

Giving Account of Oneself encourages us not to try to put everything in an orderly semiotic-​symbolic closet and drawers, because in this way part of our essence, part of the unnamable will be lost. The laughter of a feminist born in a state of unknowing can be crystallized into a phenomenon that gives more clarity not only to my individual life but also to others. In In the Beginning Was Love, the Bulgarian philosopher and feminist Julia Kristeva states that ‘we are subjects in process, ceaselessly losing our identity, destabilized by fluctuations in our relations to the other, to whom we nevertheless remain bound by a kind of homeostasis’ (Kristeva 1987). The concept ‘female laughter’, widely used by Belgian philosopher Luce Irigaray, may at first sound like a tired essentialization of the sex, but its meaning cannot be more different. When speaking of the feminism movement, the philosopher refers to the emancipation of women from the symbolic order. According to her, feminine laughter in its essence contradicts the rules of symbolic order, language constraints and societal norms (Xu 1995: 76–​89). The practice of feminine laughter also affects other marginalized groups that feel the oppression of the dominant discourse.

148 Grigaitė To illustrate woman’s liberation Irigaray starts with psycholinguistics, following the narrative discovered many years before her, which states that language strongly influences individual’s psychology, Irigaray explored the differences in language between men and women. According to Irigaray, the subject’s position in language is masculine, so the only identity of women allowed in this system is ‘a man that lacks’, therefore women are not primarily symbolically defined in a positive sense (1985: 23–​24). Irigaray talks about what is still extremely relevant these days. Irigaray has never clearly outlined any postulates on how a woman should behave –​she leaves it unconceptualized. Being in a state of chaos can sometimes terrify more than being in a limited, enslaved symbolic order encompassing all aspects of life. Liberation will always imply uncertainty, so, according to Irigaray, the first impulse to imagine the limitlessness of feminine action is laughter, the decisive stage in capturing action beyond the bounds set, no matter how uncertain the future may appear (1985: 134). Relying on laughter –​does it seem like there can be a more ambiguous, vague commandment? What can laughter in a state of chaos change? From the perspective of a rational world, laughter in this case may resemble images of frenzy when women are confined to psychiatric facilities. What does laughter signify in this case, when it has not yet reached the dimension of humour and more rational phenomena? In this case, it is not the content of the laughter that matters but the form. This type of individual and collective act of laughing is not directed at something but is intended for the sake of laughter, which is a social act that does irreparable ‘damage’ to the human psyche: the group laughed together, hence things will no longer be the same. Laughter in this state is an experience whose by-​product is the denial of the existing order. This phenomenon is perfectly described by the French feminist Hélène Cixous in her essay The Laugh of the Medusa (1976). Both Cixous and Irigaray invoke the image of the inseparability of the mental-​linguistic field, arguing that there is a deep correlation between these phenomena, not only in terms of the example I used earlier (i.e., how a particular language shapes our speech and thoughts), but also in terms of how a language fundamentally underpin all our vision. From the very beginning of their existence on this earth, wo(man) accepted language, obeyed it. However, everyone in their life has found themselves in a state where we cannot find words to describe our feelings and experiences. As a famous beekeeper and novelist Jack Kerouac said in his famous novel The Dharma Bums ([1958] 2000): ‘One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple’. The whole of the existence is mobilized in the search for simple but essential words for our being, like ‘what is the meaning of life?’ We

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have a logos-​based tradition stretching for thousands of years in an attempt to answer this question by saying all and nothing. Moreover, frustration does not disappear in the life of an ordinary person; we rather continue to respect language as a guiding star –​as something that manages to turn the ignorance of the night into the clarity of the day, point out contradictions and clarify misunderstandings. What can we do when we get tired of a language? Hélène Cixous uses laughter as a visual representation of subversion of various postulates. Laughter, in contrast to language, has a direct relation to the presocial dimension, it allows the absurd to intervene. Here, prelinguistic structure works by invoking play and joy, so the liberation from rationality is more easily achievable (Billingsley 2013). Laughter is a radical act as it frees the framework of moral references. Paul McDonald argues in his Philosophy of Humor that it may seem like a destructive action, but from another perspective it is also creative and constructive as it prepares space for new images, ideas and emotions (2012: 123). 4

Transcendental Laughter

No matter how difficult it is to define this prelinguistic space and time where laughter, emotions and everything that happens to us take shelter in our speech, we must try to at least grasp the images of their potential to change us. We should try to stay longer in this position in order to understand our potential and our visions for the future: is it always possible to change symbolic language? Is this prelinguistic place our present and future, or is it just a momentary experience of spacetime that acts as a charge for creative potential, but is not characterized as something that can be prolonged? In this case, deconstruction theory and its concept of transcendental laughter become important for this prelinguistic formulation. Regarding ‘transcendental laughter’ (or ‘postmodernist laughter’ named otherwise) –​i.e., laughter devoid of the content –​is talked about by a great number of the 20th century postmodern philosophers, including Jacques Derrida and Jean-​Luc Nancy. They talk about the fact that the meaning in the language system is constantly slipping out of our hands. If we try to grasp one concept or another by, say, looking at the meanings given in the dictionary, we are directed towards strings of other words, in which case we no longer even know if we have caught the essence of the concept. The method of deconstruction speaks to the fact that truth is not what can be achieved through language. We can only draw allusions to truth, so given the different experiences of individuals, different cultures and epochs, we can say that language shapes our understanding even

150 Grigaitė to a greater extent when we are afraid to acknowledge the complexities of the world and strongly adhere to the meanings that are formed by specific language (McDonald 2012: 123). Nancy argues that there is no available truth and one way to better show its inferiority is laughter, transcendental laughter (McDonald 2012: 123). Nancy defines the essence of transcendental laughter: What is a transcendental laugh? It is not the obverse of the sign or value accorded to serious matters, which thinking, necessarily reclaims. It is knowledge of a condition of possibility which gives nothing to know. There is nothing comic about it: it is neither nonsense nor irony. This laugh does not laugh at anything. It laughs at nothing, for nothing. It signifies nothing, without ever being absurd. It laughs at being the peal of its laughter, we might say. Which is not to say that it is unserious or that it is painless. It is beyond all opposition of serious and non-​serious, of pain and pleasure. NANCY 1992: 41

We see that a similar type of phenomenon is described in the theories of the philosopher-​feminists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, where laughter is juxtaposed with liberation from opposition and the symbolic order; this laughter is shielded from the content usually given by language and its various variations. Transcendental laughter is also ‘divorced from the idea of comic’ (McDonald 2012: 124), which usually contains clear images of what is worth the mockery, what needs to be respected, and where there are human flaws. Comedy implies in itself a certain system of values, a desire (at least maliciously) to show its lack to another: Deep-​rooted in the comic, there is always a tendency, we said, to take the line of least resistance, generally that of habit. The comic character no longer tries to be ceaselessly adapting and readapting himself to the society of which he is a member. He slackens in the attention that is due to life. He more or less resembles the absentminded. Maybe his will is here even more concerned than his intellect, and there is not so much a want of attention as a lack of tension: still, in some way or another, he is absent, away from his work, taking it easy. He abandons social convention, as indeed –​in the case we have just been considering –​he abandoned logic. bergson 1913: 196

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Thus, a comic character is what still operates within this framework of symbolic order or civilization. But transcendental laughter is such laughter that, by getting rid of the oppositions and the direct outcomes of language, is able to point out the limitations of attempts to create meaning. Laughter signifies the moment when that absence of meaning is perceived. This might invoke feelings of melancholy, depression or anxiety; there is a whole bunch of romantic, existentialist or nihilistic works of philosophy that explore the loss of meaning. Very rarely do we hear laughter or a smile as reconciliation with such reality. In his work Very Little … Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature (1997) Simon Critchley says that ‘laughter is an acknowledgement of finitude, precisely not a manic affirmation of finitude in the solitary, neurotic laughter of the mountain tops […] but as an affirmation that finitude cannot be confirmed because it cannot be grasped […] Laughter returns us to that limited condition of our finitude, the shabby and degenerating state of our upper and lower bodily strata, and it is here that the comic allows with windows to fly open onto our tragic condition’ (quoted in Stott 2004: 142). However, in this tragic mood, transcendental laughter does not leave us yet, because humour-​laughter is what give us the dignity to endure this whole process of internalizing tragedy. Here, Critchley introduces the metonymy of laughter, that is, a smile: ‘this smile does not bring unhappiness, but rather elevation and liberation, the lucidity of consolation. This is why, melancholy animals that we are, human beings are also the most cheerful. We smile and find ourselves ridiculous. Our wretchedness is our greatness’ (Critchley 2011: 111). 5

Incongruity: Freedom from the Usual Forms of Thinking

Even though the incongruity theory was greatly influenced by a number of thinkers, it has a framework (or, rather, a way of thinking) of its own acquired thanks to Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The concept of incongruity is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as an incompatibility between nature and its characteristics. Schopenhauer argues that there is a huge gap between the possibilities of manifestation of a limitless world and the abstractions born in individual consciousness (Schopenhauer 1995: 172). The individualistic worldview and the world as a whole are in constant quarrel: an individual will never absorb all the possibilities of the world through experience, so the opposite often happens and people lose the desire to learn and discover and turn into a lifeless lump. Difference and incongruity are what drive life forward (Schopenhauer 1995: 116). Coming to realize that the comprehension of the world will always be incomplete and that it will always remain partly

152 Grigaitė unfathomable may justifiably serve as a reason for unrest or anxiety, the protagonist and culprit of which has always been omnipotent uncertainty. It can knock out our consciousness and leave us either in unbearable torment or a lifeless state, involving apathy, denial and all other similar nouns referring to a comic human struggle against the inability to have all the knowledge of the world. Thus, incongruity has always existed and will continue to exist in various forms, including this more general one before laughter. This is how we can see the prelinguistic state: on the one hand, its set of possibilities is frightening; but on the other hand, it provides peace knowing that we will not capture the essence of life. This return to the pre-​symbolic dimension should be a constant practice in human life, where rules are escaped. This practice seems at first to be a vague activity, but it will only be understood by those individuals who have already grasped the myth of objectivity. Chaos, irrationality or feelings are not rare phenomena in human life, but at least in the Western hemisphere they are curbed –​a practical and socially acceptable amount of feelings and irrationality is fine as long as we can put it into our narrative. No one is freed from chaos. Various systems of truth are trying to give us a feeling of cosiness, clear perception of this life, time and space. But how to deal with those who, having already realized that existence and language systems are often unsatisfactory, have already implicitly experienced chaos and prelinguistic irrationality? There are many alternatives: resigning, allowing uselessness to win, ignoring, recognizing futility, trying to crystallize as much meaning as possible and showing chaos its symptoms again –​i.e., accepting it as an old good childhood friend or returning to a certain childhood condition with a different perspective on life. Laughter or a smile must be our constant and at the same time spontaneous companions in order to be able to remind us of our state of chaos. We must not be afraid of the fact that our conventional patterns of thought are not all-​encompassing. Laughter comes to our aid at this point as a reminder that chaos and rules are at a constant intersection. The nature of laughter, flipping concepts and involving of contrasts, thus opening up and positioning oneself in the possibilities of other truths may seem counterintuitive at first glance, as it destroys order, knowledge, cognition and most importantly, it destroys the cosy feeling that makes the world familiar and not so enigmatic. Therefore, the language which provides that clarity is also capable of dispelling the illusion through absurd and mismatched concepts. Let us use the example of kōan to illustrate the incongruity theory. In Zen Buddhism kōan translates directly from Japanese meaning ‘public observation’, although in this religious, spiritual tradition, kōan is a practice of spiritual training that helps Zen Buddhist students to achieve enlightenment (McDonald

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2012: 103). Kōan often exists in the form of a question or a statement, the answers to which we find neither in books nor in the rational mind based on logic, because it is intuition-​based knowledge (or ignorance) achieved (or not achieved) by the method of contemplation and ruminating around the question for some time. The main goals of kōan are to get rid of the image of hierarchy in one’s consciousness and to transform the norms and practices ingrained in language and civilization that exist in the human psyche. This Zen Buddhist phenomenon shows that we will not be able to reflect constructively on the prison of language and rules on the basis of the same language and the same logic that follow us through our existence on this earth. Kōan not only unmasks the habit of our mind to think in hierarchical forms, but also seeks to instill monistic thinking. There is a paradox when, in principle, we cannot completely give up what we have learned, heard or seen because it sticks, and we must try to get rid of this ego habit of being attached to knowledge, opinions or expectations. According to Zen teaching, a person who has not yet attained enlightenment seeks to maintain his attachment to things or objects, as this brings security and strength in the empirical world (Morreall 2009: 134). This is well illustrated by this short poem: My barn burned down. Now I have a better view Of the rising moon. morreall 2009: 134

Of course, there is always the question as to whether it is possible to give up what has been acquired through these practices. However, in my opinion, even if we do not immerse ourselves in Zen Buddhist or other practices that try to eradicate thought habits, we see that a brief change of methods, a different diet and routine can in a sense, albeit briefly, help us to see a completely different world expression. The phenomenon of incongruity covers all areas of individual life, from various metaphysical reflections to socio-​political private and public affairs. In the narrative of feminism (to understand the latter term in a heterogeneous sense), incongruity is important because it can unmask the existence of various practices that are brought together to form a ‘feminine beginning’. Incongruity and the aspect of self-​hygiene are related in this case when the representatives of feminism are able to name and redefine their vision through these various images which have been usurped by various anachronisms and sayings claiming ‘this is how it has always been done here’. Also important in this case is the practice where ingrained narratives are unmasked through laughter.

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Liberation Theory

Another aspect how laughter could help in a state of oppression is described by liberation theory, which is a pluralistic account having a specific end goal in mind, namely to help persevere in difficult existential situations. While giving credit to the most merited philosophical theories of laughter, liberation theory goes a step further to identify liberty as a truly significant by-​product of laughter, thereby reducing the metaphysical components surrounding the interpretation of human existence and strengthening the diversity of collective and individual elements. According to this theory, laughter momentarily liberates one from relative socio-​political-​historical-​moral norms; laughter is a way to transcend one’s current situation and provide hope. This theory tends to illustrate the liberty to say ‘no’ (invoking Max Scheler’s theory) where there is internalization of the perception of social standards that we personalize and make part of our being without first considering them. In this section, I will talk about the concept of laughter as liberation from the clutch of imposed key societal norms and invoke instances from Scheler’s phenomenological theory of human non-​situatedness and its relationship with laughter. First things first, laughter is a liberating agent both individually as well as collectively. For this reason, this theory, in contrast to the relief and superiority theories (which tend to focus on the physical-​mental well-​being of an individual), is significant in the sense that it points to the importance of the balance between solitude and solidarity. This differs from the relief theory because the latter works as a counter-​example to social struggle practices as it: 1) uses social hierarchy (for example, dirty humour); 2) has no images of empathy, attention or caring for each other; and 3) talks about the importance of only one aspect of human life –​sexuality, narrowing it to elementary examples illustrating heteronormative practices. Here appears the desire to strive for humanity, which can be described further as a pursuit for high-​quality, productive and close relations, where the government apparatus, authorities and legal frameworks exist in harmony with and in service to ordinary people rather than to their own personal interests. Unfortunately, this is not our reality, and thus people resort to their own means, laughter included, which often happens as a last resort. Subtle and harmless as it may appear to be, it is still a tool in the hands of those suffering from injustice of all sorts, and in many cases, it serves as a smouldering fire. Still, it must be admitted that humour is not always liberating. As we can see from the philosophical theories of humour (superiority in particular), humour can exist like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, namely aggression disguised in wit. Satire often belongs to someone subjugating others. The humour of liberation portrays an image of a positive struggle. Humour-​laughter is comparable

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to dancing, which is liberating in so many ways, as illustrated by the film Jojo Rabbit (2019) where a girl of Jewish origin went outside for the first time after a long time hiding in a warehouse and started dancing to David Bowie’s German version of Heroes (Helden). Here, humour is not set to bite others but to bring peace, both personal and collective. I must note that it is often extremely difficult to tell the boundaries between fighting for one’s own peace and fighting against something, while forgetting that the main goal is not to cause pain and misery to others. Here, humour-​laughter helps to see those divisions in a variety of ways. Humanity and love-​based laughter will never cause pain to others. A great illustration to this is the Palestine Laughter Liberation movement. This movement is a theatre group that employs a variety of comedy techniques: stand-​up, narrative, audience interactions, musical compositions and more. The pll founders Faisal Abualheja and Alaa Shedada are West Bank refugees that talk about the stereotypical image of a Palestinian in the United States: a terrorist or a victim. This theatrical group seeks to show that man (in this case, the Palestinian they represent) cherishes and fosters humanity, and that he cannot be reduced to a label. Through its art, this comedy-​based theatre group also seeks liberation from its internal occupation (Gill 2018). The pll argues that comedy can create a safe space for self-​expression and free thinking and thus help grow into a social movement advocating the meaning of constructive criticism, with their main idea being ‘if you can laugh at it, you can change it’ (Gill 2018). Through laughter, this group speaks against the use of tools of war on both sides. One of the founders said that bringing hundreds of most the influential politicians to the Palestinian territories would not be as powerful in terms of existential experience as this show (Gill 2018). What kind of liberty does positive laughter bring about after all? Itis a long list, as laughter frees us from inferiority complexes, moral laws, logic, naivety, selfishness. Here we come to the point where the role of the environment to existence must be observed. All lifeforms possess the innate characteristic of being in a particular environment, whether it is a socio-​political field, or just a physical location. German philosopher Max Scheler points out the difference of a human being compared to other lifeforms on earth in that we have the ability to detach ourselves from the surrounding environment. Human beings are not fully connected with their drive and environmental components, and thus are more open to the world. To have a spirit, according to Scheler, means also to have an individual ability to build the main points of resistance, Human Place in Cosmos main thesis states that a person is defined by his ability to say ‘no’, to resist the circumstances and react to the environment, with individual ability to carry out resistance against the environment enacted through

156 Grigaitė directing force at other objects (Scheler 2009: 23). Comparing a human being to an animal who always says ‘yes’ to reality, even when fleeing or hiding from it, a human being says ‘no’ and thus happens to be an eternal protester against simple existence (ibid.). Questioning seems to be an intrinsic part of humour. Talking about the issue of politics, it can be argued that the sense of humour as a life stance will never allow circumstances to take charge. Those who do not take realpolitik seriously have the advantage of detaching themselves from the current circumstances that often come as an imposition, while also taking a different perspective towards things and thus maintain a certain freedom of thought. An example of a failed breakfast can serve as a great illustration here: let us imagine an individual about to have breakfast. Still partly asleep, he fills a bowl of cereal with coffee instead of milk but soon comes to his senses and laughs at the blunder, thereby fixing the absurdity. There is a different reaction very much possible in this case: the individual loses his temper for the food and time wasted, and is unable to take a step back and distance himself from the absurdity and continue to make breakfast (Morreall 1983). This simple example shows that we always have the opportunity to look at things differently; change in emotions fundamentally changes the experience of the event. Humour (at least briefly) manages to free the individual from the fundamental emotions –​anger, fear, sadness, joy, wonder, disgust –​and this mental step pulls us out of our environment, destroys the immediate relation and reminds us that we are something more than events around us. This section shows that each philosophical theory of laughter-​humour is different in its characteristics of its own, which only confirms that different perspectives on the subject matter are available and acceptable. On the other hand, all these theories have many points in common, one of them being the identification of social aspect of humour-​laughter. Philosophical theories of laughter-​humour also bring a number of examples forward illustrating the engagement of this phenomenon in a certain social movement, namely feminism. 7

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to reaffirm that, to my mind, it is key for every movement to internalize the existence of the Other both on individual as well as collective levels of worldly experience. By realizing this dependence, we reduce various subjective existential tensions and bring more quality into the feminist movement. Furthermore, we have seen that the relationship of laughter with

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the feminist movement has positive consequences for contemplating the symbolic order: a brief suspension of rules prompts new ways of acting, and in this case, the incongruity theory becomes particularly relevant between private conceptual experience and immeasurable world expression; and the liberation theory proves that laughter, as a phenomenon, can help transcend the situation which is difficult to endure.

References

Bergson H. (1913). Laughter, An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (trans. C. Brereton and F. Rothwell). Macmillan. Bilingsley A. (2013). ‘Laughing Against Patriarchy: Humor, Silence, and Feminist Resistance’, Philosophy Matters (pages.uoregon.edu/​uophil/​files/​Philosophy _​Matters_​Submission_​Marvin_​Billingsley.pdf). Butler J. (2009). Giving Account of Oneself. Fordham University Press: New York. Butler J. (2019. ‘Hegel for Our Times: Judith Butler’. iai tv –​Changing How the World Thinks (iai.tv/​articles/​hegel-​for-​our-​times-​judith-​butler-​auid-​1273). Cixoux H. (1976). ‘The Laugh of Medusa’, Signs 1(4): 875–​893. Critchley S. (1997). Very Little … Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature. Routledge. Critchley S. (2011). On Humour. Routledge. Gill J. (2018). What’s so funny about the Israeli occupation? ask these comedians. Middle East Eye. https://​www​.middle​east​eye​.net​/featu​res​/whats​-so​-funny​-about​-isra​eli ​-occ​upat​ion​-ask​-these​-comedi​ans​. Irigaray L. (1985). This Sex Which Is Not One. Cornell University Press. Kerouac J. [1958] (2000). The Dharma Bums. Penguin Modern Classics. Kristeva J. (1987). In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith. New York: Columbia University Press. McDonald P. (2012). The Philosophy of Humour. heb Humanities (ebook). Morreall J. (1983). Taking laughter seriously. Suny Press. Morreall J. (2009). Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Wiley-​Blackwell. Nancy J. L. (1992). ‘Elliptical Sense’, in Derrida: A Critical Reader, ed. David Wood, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 36–​51. Scheler M. (2009). The Human Place in the Cosmos (trans. M. S. Frings). Northwestern University Press. Schopenhauer A. (1995). Pasaulis kaip valia ir vaizdinys. Vilnius: Pradai. Stott A. (2004). Comedy. Routledge. Xu P. (1995). ‘Irigaray’s Mimicry and the Problem of Essentialism’, Hypatia, 10(4): 76–​89 (http://​www​.jstor​.org​/sta​ble​/3810​206)​.

­c hapter 10

The Carnival of Populism: Grotesque Leadership Maura Ceci Abstract This chapter sheds some light on the employment of grotesque humour in the current political scenario. More specifically, I deal with grotesque images exploited and enhanced by populism. In order to unfold my argument, I allude to and apply two often neglected yet fruitful ideas: the idea of carnivalization of politics and the grotesque power of the sovereign. Regarding the first, I appeal to the idea of the grotesque in the Renaissance and more specifically in the French poem Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, as well as how it is presented by Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in his seminal work Rabelais and His World. Bakhtin explains how the carnival allows social hierarchy to be not only suppressed but even inverted for a limited window of time. Regarding the second, I refer to the so-​called ‘ubuesque’ power explored by philosopher Michel Foucault in his lectures Les Anormaux, according to which the ubuesque king has the capacity to enhance and strengthen his power over his subjects by exploiting satire and use mocking as a relief valve. The king of the fools, or the Ubu King, is then crowned as the highest authority in this subverted social and ethical order. Grotesque humour has the capacity to put citizens in a state where conflicting and even opposing feelings, such as amusement and repulsion, coexist on the same level. The coexistence of contrasting feelings may provoke a change in perspective that can influence not only our mood but also our moral compass regarding tastes, pattern of behaviours and ethical issues, creating a new model of leadership that can be internalized by citizens through laughter.

Keywords Bakhtin –​carnival –​Foucault –​grotesque –​humour –​laughter –​political philosophy –​ ubuesque –​populism –​Rabelais

Here you will find a novel savor, a most obscure doctrine; here you will learn the deepest mysteries, the most agonizing problems of our religion, our body politic, our economic life. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Prologue

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© Maura Ceci, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004548817_012

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Introduction

This chapter explains populism through the lens of carnival. By appealing to the celebration of carnival, we can propose an account of populist movements based on humour, especially grotesque humour. I will draw from the Rabelaisian imaginary of carnival culture to explain dynamics typical of populism, such as the language of the marketplace, the absence of social hierarchy, the uniformity of ‘the people’ and the figure of the leader. I will then focus on the latter aspects of populism, namely the relationship between the leader and its electorate in order to unfold the notion of ubuesque power introduced by Michel Foucault. In this case, I will allude to the figure of the king of the clown elected during carnival in order to shed some light on the role of the populist leader and the fascination or repulsion that is provoked by his citizens through scorn or mockery. Despite the fact that the idea of carnivalization of politics is not discussed here for the first time (Gaufman 2018; MacMillan 2017), it still begs the question as to how and why a medieval celebration can help us understand a phenomenon so complex and deeply entangled with the contemporary political atmosphere. As a preliminary step, I believe I should explain what brought me to decide to adopt Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais 1994) as a key text to tackle populism. I started my investigation on populism with the hope to produce a small linguistic toolbox that might help to navigate through the incongruities and ambiguities at stake in the word ‘populism’ and, more generally, in populism as a political phenomenon (Ceci 2019). As we are well acquainted, populism defies easy classifications or definitional features (Berlin 1969; Canovan 1981; Mudde 2004; Müller 2016). In order to overcome this apparent indefinability of populism, I appeal to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 1953) and I propose three key concepts, namely the idea of family resemblance, of meaning as usage and of language as a form of life. Treating populism as a family resemblance concept will allow us to give meaning to the terms by relying on a criss-​crossing and overlapping network of similarities and differences rather than focusing on definitional criteria. In short, not all populist phenomena share a fixed set of stereotypical characteristics, yet you can still recognize populism thanks to a collection of similarities that we grasp among different political realities. Secondly, the idea of meaning as use, according to which the meaning that we give to the word ‘populism’ changes according to the use within a particular discourse, or better, within a specific language game. There is no fixed meaning of populism nor is populism meaningless; its meaning changes and adapts itself according to different models, discourses or theories in which the term is used. Lastly, both the

160 Ceci idea of family resemblance and of meaning as use rely on Wittgenstein’s intuition of language as a form of life. Wittgenstein stresses that language should not be conceived as a static system of communication, but rather as an infinite set of language games that are constantly created, mutated and reinvented. Treating language as a form of life also stresses the fact that language is deeply influenced by human behaviour and it changes and evolves similarly to other forms of life. On top of this, the idea of language as a form of life recalls the necessity of thinking language as something that it is alive and mutable; it is formed and created by us, but it also deeply influences us, our behaviour and our perception of the world. I believe that this ‘lively’ aspect of populism was not fully grasped through a Wittgensteinian analysis of language. In order to strengthen this view, I needed examples from real life that could mirror the incongruities and contradictions of populism while also producing a model that could be easily used a system of references for other populist phenomena. The idea of carnival came to help. Drawing from contemporary commentaries (Gaufman 2018; MacMillan 2017) mostly based on case studies, I try to explore the meaning of carnival through the work of François Rabelais and its seminal interpretation conducted by Mikhail Bakhtin. According to Bakhtin, the carnival is a pivotal periodic episode in Renaissance culture (Bakhtin 1984); it is a short period of time, recurring every year as a preliminary festivity before Lent, during which the whole social structure is subverted, and religious and juridical laws are suspended. During carnival, every class distinction is eliminated and the participants, who often wear mask or colorful garments, lose their personal identities in a collective state of euphoria. The carnival ethos would step in opposition to the strict rules imposed by feudal political systems and the church, functioning as a relief valve for a population usually subjugated to severe and authoritarian norms of conduct. Excess in food, sex, jokes, dances and swear words is the inner regulator of the party; carnival exists as a window of time in which excessive behaviour is not simply tolerated but even invited. My claim is that by appealing to carnival and its atmosphere, we are able, if not to explain, at least to describe certain social and political behaviours which are often seen as bizarre, unusual or irrational and which, therefore, are not easily classified within the traditional conceptual tools of political theory or political philosophy. I will particularly draw a comparison between populism and carnival on four main aspects. First of all, the homogenization of the people, or the carnivalesque crowd. Secondly, the attack and mockery of the status quo are also elements which are easily recognizable in carnivalesque and populist discourses. Thirdly, the language of the market place as a lens for interpreting

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the political incorrectness of populist speeches. Lastly, I will focus on the relationship between the populist leader in contrast to the figure of the king of the fools. This last analysis, the one that tries to describe the figure, speeches and effects of a populist leader, will be tackled by appealing to the idea of ubuesque power presented by Michel Foucault (Foucault 2003). Foucault speaks of ubuesque power as a specific manifestation of power in which a political leader or king acquires more power through scorn and mockery. This will also uncover one of the consequences of grotesque laughter within the political arena, which does not always offer an alternative eye on the political reality in front of us, but rather helps us to accept or digest the present situation. I claim that through an analysis of populism considering carnival culture and ubuesque power we can provide a description for the irrational behaviour that characterizes populist leaders and followers. As we are well acquainted by now, populism rejects the traditional modus operandi of politics as it has been standardized by liberal democracies and more specifically by libertarianism. This refusal to follow what are considered the traditional rules of politics have left many of us without a clear reference to understand this variegated constellation of populist movements, let alone propose countermeasures to contain them (Müller 2016). Whereas several attempts have been made to explain the emotional or irrational import of the masses, for instance by psychoanalysis (Freud 2018; Le Bon 2009) or by critical theory (Laclau and Mouffe 2001), this chapter tackles the same problem by describing populism through the lens of grotesque humour. The idea of grotesque, derived from arts and literature, can describe contradictory or contrasting feelings. For instance, it can help us to deal with a leader that we despise but we cannot stop laughing about. At the same time, by appealing to the carnivalesque, we can provide an alternative description of mob homogeneity, post-​truth rhetoric and political incorrectness. Overall, I believe that my appeal to carnivalesque and grotesque laughter is justified because it can evoke the atmosphere and lively aspect of populism that are often overlooked. This has been made possible by the grotesque itself, as a form of humour which is able to incorporate opposing and contrasting feelings through laughter. 2

François Rabelais: Folk Humour, Carnival Culture and the Grotesque

The best way to proceed is probably to forget about populism for now and try to grasp the atmosphere of carnival. In this section, I will therefore explain what carnival is and how it has been portrayed by François Rabelais in his French

162 Ceci poem Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais 2006). The book does not treat any issue strictly related to populism or to contemporary politics. Nonetheless, it is replete with social and theological allusions. As Bakhtin says, Rabelais exploited the bodily descriptions incorporated in his writing as a metaphor for the political situation of his time. Rabelais was a monk (Dominican first, Franciscan after) with a baccalaureate in medicine and a vast humanist knowledge. He was part of the first generation of French literates who learnt ancient Greek, an antique language lost during the Middle Ages in Europe, and he was a fervid reader of the philosophy of Erasmus of Rotterdam, with whom he maintained an epistolary exchange for many years. All of these components will merge in his masterpiece, a poem composed of five books in which he narrates the adventures and misadventures of the giant Gargantua (Book i) and his son Pantagruel (Books ii–​v ). The exact chronology of the whole set of books is uncertain, but we know it was written between 1532 and 1564. Curiously enough, Rabelais was buried in 1553, making many commentators contest the authenticity of the last books, especially Book v. We know for sure that the fourth book was censored by Sorbonne University in 1552, and the danger of ecclesiastic purge may have already been in the air for quite some time, given that Rabelais published under the alias of Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of his real name, since the beginning. Alcofribas is not only the author but also a character of the poem. He is the cupbearer of Pantagruel, a role that will lead him to follow his master and even to have adventures himself in the profundity of Pantagruel’s mouth, discovering mountains, villages, plantations and civilizations. As we can already notice, the figure of Rabelais is lost in the thick fog of the world he created, and we are left with a mixture of history and legends. The same can be said about the whole composition by Rabelais, somewhere between a novel and a poem, an erudite exposition with scatological humour; an upside-​down world where adventures unfold always on the edge between reality and pure fiction. The book follows the birth, youth, education and adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel, with an exquisite parade of characters, either in the form of recurrent help for the giants, or as extraordinary encounters on their path. While both Pantagruel and Gargantua perfectly fit in the standard of the ‘good prince’ –​explained by clerical intellectuals as a subgenre of Specula Principis according to which a political leader should be good, generous and wise –​the theatre of figures that surrounds the giant-​prince is often bizarre, morally questionable, excessive, curious and odd. Even by virtue of these meetings Rabelais can render the ideas, costumes, beliefs and attitudes of the people of his time without sparing mocks or attacks on his ideological opponents.

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There are many fantastic elements and allusions to contemporary doctrines, habits, mottos and public figures. Like other extraordinary masterpieces, it is hard not to get lost in this labyrinth of references, intended or unintended, real or fictious. After all, Rabelais loved to prank his readers by presenting them with fake quotations or scientific explanations. On top of this, the series of the book was also a window of freedom for the monk to express his political and theological views, often displayed through a ridiculization of his adversaries. Acknowledging that consuming the whole of Rabelais would result in indigestion due to the extreme richness of his poetry, language and cultural references –​which, in my opinion, are not only impossible to be fully mapped but can even generate unnecessary confusion –​I regard it as more appropriate to mention a few episodes that will hopefully become useful once we tackle populism again. –​ Le Torchecul. In Chapter xii of Book i, which is entitled How Gargantua’s wonderful understanding became known to his father Grangousier, by the invention of a torchecul or wipebreech, we find a five-​year-​old Gargantua entertaining his father Grangousier by enumerating all the different ways he tried to wipe his ass. He would steal clothes, precious papers and garments, collect plants, flowers and other weird instruments all for the purpose of finding the more appropriate torch for his perianal area. The chapter ends with little Gargantua explaining, a bit in Latin, a bit in vulgar French, that a duck is the ideal torchecul: the animal feathers are gentle and soft and the animal itself can be easily handled by the beak, thereby preventing the giant toddler from touching his own excrement. This passage has become particularly famous not only for its irreverence but also for its capacity to elevate the gesture of wiping one’s ass to a celestial experience that deserves full attention and dedication. There is a huge gap between the language involved, which spans from refined poetic French to vulgar expressions, and the tone, which describes the simple gesture of cleaning oneself as a noble adventure. This first example gives us a sense of the wittiness of Rabelais’s language, used as a tool to attack stereotypes and conventions. At the same time, we have a glimpse of his grotesque humour, where contrasting elements, in this case the employment of different language, evoke laughter somewhere in between amusement and disgust. –​ The Abbey of Thélème. In Book i, Rabelais narrates the establishment of the monastery of Thélème, which is a gift to John Friar for his services to the giant. John Friar is an eccentric monk who loves drinking

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and fighting. Gargantua, knowing his friend, decides to give him land and money so that he can found a religious community that might fit his inclinations. The Abbey of Thélème is a place where there are no walls, meaning everyone can enter or leave as they please. There are no laws or social order, both men and women are welcome to join the community with only one rule: ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ (Rabelais 1994: 157). As we can already notice from this description, Rabelais uses the Abbey of Thélème as an opposing pole to monastic life, which was strictly regulated by rules and vows, namely poverty, chastity and obedience. These are all wonderfully reversed in Thélème, where everyone is encouraged to marry, have sex and enjoy food, wine and life with no constraints. –​ Thaumaste. Chapters xviii–​x x of Book ii are dedicated to the philosophical debate between Thaumaste, a British philosopher and intellectual, and Panurge. Thaumaste travels to meet Pantagruel, famous for his wisdom and exceptional knowledge, and invites him to a friendly philosophical debate. Panurge, Pantagruel’s friend and advisor, takes his lord’s place in the discussion. On Thaumaste’s request, because he considers words inappropriate to talk about metaphysical and theological problems, the two orators would communicate only through gestures and symbols. Panurge takes the opportunity to immediately disdain the intellectual, and we witness a weird spectacle in which the poor Thaumaste tries to articulate his philosophical doubts, while Panurge replies with smirks and grimaces. This example perfectly elucidates the mocking tone of Panurge regarding academic knowledge. –​ Quaresmeprenant. In Book iv, Chapters xxx–​x xxii, we follow the maritime adventures of Pantagruel. During his travel he encounters many islands inhabited by different populations. Among these is the island of Tapinois where Quaresmeprenant is king. Pantagruel never meets this unusual sovereign, but his appearance and inclinations are portrayed to him. Quaresmeprenant does not have human form, but his body is portrayed though similarities to natural or animal elements. For instance, his brain is described as the ‘left code of a male hand-​worm’ (Rabelais, 1994: 594) and his blowing to ‘indulgence money-​boxes’ (599). This passage is considered particularly obscure and many interpretations have been given on who or what this figure represents. One of the most fortunate interpretations depicts Quaresmeprenant as the spirit of the carnival, or better of the ambivalence between carnival with its luxurious feasting and the Lent tradition, during which catholic people fast and eat basic food (Kinser,

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1990). The incongruity is fully portrayed in his bodily descriptions, with abundant references to food consumed during or immediately after carnival, and attitudes that are in between instinctive jokes and strict observance of rules. This borderline character not only embodies another stereotype of Rabelaisian grotesque bodies, but also the contradictory charm of the king of the fools during carnival, as we will see soon. A remarkable and desecrating humour explodes out of these examples, and it is precisely this humour that, Bakhtin claims, has been lost my most contemporaries. Rabelais and His World (Bakhtin 1984) was written by the Russian intellectual in 1940 as a doctorate dissertation but was published only in 1965 and should be seen as an attempt to place Rabelais’ œuvre in the context of what he called folk culture of humour. Bakhtin asserts that the original context out of which the book was born, an infusion of an irreverent and excessive spirit, has been lost, and he urges the necessity to relocate Rabelais’ work in the horizon of humour and laughter as the privileged way to access its beauty, originality and strength. This folkloristic culture is a non-​literary experience that cannot be grasped through words, concepts or abstractions. In order to recreate this folkloristic humour that runs through the whole plot, he re-​adopts the terms ‘grotesque’ and ‘carnival’ as linguistic tropes to describe this lost atmosphere. And what about laughter? ‘Terror is conquered by laughter’ (Bakhtin 1984: 336). In the Bakhtinian analysis, laughter becomes a means against fear, in particular cosmic fear. A man such as Rabelais, in between catholic faith and humanist fervour, was fully aware of philosophical streams that were pervading Europe at the dawn of the modern era. European intellectuals were living in a period in which the role and scope of humanity was being rewritten thanks to a new cosmological view called humanism, which put the human being at the centre of the universe. Humanism helped to develop the new heliocentric model of the universe and naturally influenced the connection between man and the universe. This revaluated the relation with the natural world, helping people to ‘become aware of the cosmos within oneself’ (Bakhtin 1984 336). Rabelais tries to control the cosmic fear that naturally emerged from a change of perspective about cosmology and the world by appealing to laughter, with a special attention to a material lowered bodily stratum. Against the tendency to distinguish between high and noble elements, such as faith or reason, and low, dirty elements that tie humans to their earthly experience, Rabelais evokes all the bodily elements of ourselves that link us to the horizon in which we are placed and with which our inner microcosmos is active: mastication, digestion, procreation, urination, defecation, sexual acts, drinking

166 Ceci and eating food. The inner cosmos of our bodies, which alternates creation and destruction, mirrors the macrocosmos of the universe. Celebrating the material lowered bodily stratum represents a celebration of life embodied by humans. Those bodily activities are, to some extent, the real protagonist of the novel, because it is through their detailed descriptions that he can merge the world of the stars, ideas and gods with the earthly world of humans and their bodies. The grotesque body in Rabelais, as Bakhtin would have called it, alludes precisely to this role of the body, which has majestically described sizes, forms and actions that bear metaphorical import for folk culture, politics, societies, traditions and beliefs. Rabelaisian bodies are grotesque not only in their abnormalities and sizes, but also for their ability to erase their limits through vital activities, such as eating and defecation, where part of the world is englobed by the body in order to be expelled once again. Bodily and cosmic activities are therefore compared in their ability to constantly destroy and create themselves and their environment. Here it is important to stress that ‘grotesque’ is not a term that can be comprehended ahistorically; it always has a historical, geographical and cultural context and so deriving general rules would necessarily impoverish its meaning (Edwards & Graulund 2013). Grotesque, therefore, cannot be described but can be shown or actuated through art and literature. The sense of grotesque can only be fully experienced once we are also acquainted with the context in which it is formed. However, how does one recognize it? What can be said about the grotesque in Rabelais is that it takes the form of excess and abnormality, with huge characters consuming unlikely amounts of food and wine. From here comes the word ‘gargantuan’ to indicate excessive size. Grotesque bodies, excessive yet perfectly camouflaged within their surroundings, find their natural habitat in the carnival spirit where the limits between bodies and the environment are constantly blurred. Carnival is a historical catholic celebration that takes place between February and March, before the period of Lent which anticipates the celebration of Easter. In the medieval and early modern periods, carnival therefore represented a distinct and precise celebration which would last approximately two weeks. In Gargantua and Pantagruel the carnivalesque spirit is depicted as an upside-​ down world, where time is suspended, stories unfold in the precariousness of the present moment, with little care for what is behind or beyond. In this precarious and momentaneous state of affairs, the usual social system is disrupted; social classes, distinctions and hierarchies are erased, usual norms and habits are suspended, and customary language enlarges itself with swear words, oaths and obscenities. During carnival, the whole social body meets

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in celebration, sometimes even losing their identity thanks to masks and costumes. The celebration is the occasion for the bourgeoisie of the city to offer food, wine and spectacles to their community and the peasants enjoy the feast and forget their social roles and good manners. People entertain themselves with dances, games, feasts, costume parades, love-​courting and more generally with all those activities that are usually forbidden. Carnivalesque spirit is a facet of the folk humour culture that Bakhtin tried to analyse in his book. Part of it, directly or indirectly, has survived the Middle Ages and still plays a role in societies nowadays. 3

Carnivalization of Politics: the People, Subversion of Hierarchy, Political Incorrectness and the King of the Fools

In this section, I focus on a comparison between various aspects of carnival which seem to closely recall certain dynamics we see nowadays among populist movements. First, let me remind us that carnival, like the grotesque, can assume different meanings and connotations according to the period or context in which it is employed. The main difference is probably between the philological meaning and the general understanding of carnival. For instance, ‘Carnival’ –​with a capital ‘C’ –​usually denotes the catholic celebration described and popularized by Rabelais. When we speak of carnival in its larger meaning, we usually refer to any festivity or celebration which loosely resembles the old carnivalesque tradition. It might be a dress-​up costume parade or a town celebration in honour of a local public figure or historical occurrence. The most prominent example is probably the Brazilian carnival: despite being introduced during the Portuguese occupation as a religious festivity, it is now known as one of the biggest costume and dancing parades in the world. What remains a constant in almost all forms of carnivalesque celebration is precisely this idea that, once celebrating, we enter a window of time when social rules are provisionally suspended. Kids are allowed to eat candies and might go to bed later than usual; adults can dress in a different way and enjoy drinks and food in quantities and qualities that would not be recommended for a healthy lifestyle. Generally, we can define as carnival any celebration suspended in time where habits and customs change, and excessive behaviour regulates the mood of the celebration. Time and space are very peculiar in carnival festivals: the first unfolds in the moment, with no concern for neither the past nor the future; and the latter is an open place for meeting and gathering such as market squares, streets or parks. Populism seems to have swallowed this spatiotemporal setting of

168 Ceci carnival –​precariousness of the moment and public spaces –​and has englobed it in their way in order to address the electorate. Populist discourses are often contradictory, superficial and unnecessarily extreme. Sloganesque rhetoric is used as a means to distress the attention of the electorate, who are unable to remember all the daily sensationalistic messages. It is very noticeable how certain politicians –​Trump, Berlusconi, Bolsonaro to name a few –​largely rely on exaggerated news and actions, triggering a chain reaction for which it is almost impossible to remember the huge quantity of false information we have encountered. Most people simply cannot keep track of what is happening on this political arena, because we are constantly overwhelmed by shocking speeches, behaviour and political choices. This pushes us, citizens, inside a bubble of time where past and present are blurred, and we are constantly exposed to the latest news that is ready to be forgotten the next day. If this temporal atmosphere is exhausted in a small window of time when it comes to carnival or festivities, with populism it has permeated our everyday interaction with media and political news. Also, the spatial setting has found a new dimension: with the advent of the internet, we have witnessed the creation of social platforms which partially play the same roles that squares and streets have played for thousands of years, namely a space for meeting and exchange. Like carnival, populism is a politics of the streets, squares or market places, where one counts as one and everyone is entitled to say their opinion. I am aware that populism existed way before the introduction of the internet and of search engines to browse on (Canovan 1981; Taggart 2000). Still, their importance in contemporary populism cannot be overlooked. Digital space has immediately provided itself as an alternative place where people can meet, know each other and exchange opinions, goods and information. It is no surprise to realize that the internet has become a powerful tool for the birth, growth and spread of populist speeches and ideas all around the globe. Populism, being from the very beginning a collection of movements rotating about the real or fictitious needs of the ‘common people’, has naturally developed by relying on the availability of new inclusive spaces such as social platforms and media. While it is undeniable that the internet has had a huge impact on politics in general, I believe it is still important to acknowledge that populist movements have heavily relied on social media more than on traditional means of communication such as newspapers or tv programmes. The latter often maintain a disdainful attitude toward populist ideas or commentators, whereas the public of social media seems much more inclined to be seduced by their rhetoric. The effectiveness of populist content on the internet cannot be explained merely by the fact that there is little to zero regulation regarding news and

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information. It is also enhanced by the creation of algorithms that highlight a post or a content through likes and comments, even if they are generated by a machine. Anyone, from an influencer to a politician, can access this type of service simply by paying a fee in order to gain visibility on the web. Without diving into a full discussion about the relationship between social media and populism, I wish to remind that the internet has presented itself as an opportunity to enlarge the political scene into the digital space, thereby playing the same social role that the market square or streets played in the past, and especially during carnivalesque celebration. Unlike in old times, we do not need to go out and meet people in the street; the market square has become available on every device equipped with internet connection. Alongside the spatiotemporal setting, we can notice other similar dynamics: 1) assimilation of many parts of society into a whole, i.e. the people; 2) attacks on hierarchies through mockery and scorn, i.e. post-​truth discourses; 3) the language of the market space, i.e. politically incorrectness; and 4) extravagant kings of the crowd, i.e. the populist leaders. Some of these similarities are not discussed here for the first time. For instance, MacMillan (2017) and Gaufman (2018) have shown how the Spanish political party Podemos and Trump’s campaign in 2016 present elements of Bakhtin’s carnival. Gaufman highlights how Trump has largely insisted on the trivial and material side of existence, for instance he made many allusions to bodily functions, sex and material objects, which made his campaign a perfect example of a carnivalization of politics by appealing to the grotesque body (Gaufman 2018). Gaufman brilliantly shows how Trump’s bodily appearances have been exploited by him and by the media, depicting his figure in grotesque tones. Notably, his yellow hair or his tanned skin have become the hallmark of his figure. Similarly, other leaders obtained immediate recognition thanks to an exaggeration of certain bodily features, perpetuated both by their own staff or by the public, such as Silvio Berlusconi, Boris Johnson or Vladimir Putin. It would be impossible to fully unpack here the import of grotesque bodies exploited by politics; but it is important to remember that in many instances several leaders have recurred to a grotesque representation of their body as a propagandistic tool. Here I will highlight some points that bridge the gap between the populist reality in front of us and the elements described in Rabelais. –​ The people. The people are literally the heart of populism, from which the word is derived. Interesting enough, there is very little consensus regarding what (or who) the people are and what this means. Either understood as popular sovereignty (Canovan 2005) or as an empty signifier (Laclau 2005), it remains a deeply confusing and ambiguous

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term with overlapping meanings. Generally, we might say that ‘the people’ present themselves as an indistinct crowd, whose only identifiable trait is given by their opposition to something or someone external to them. Like the carnivalesque crowd, there is no specific or common trait, and often the term is used to refer to whole social tissue or simply to a portion of it (Canovan 2005). Because of the uniformity of the mass and the lack of clear and distinctive borders, both to their meaning and size, the people escape any real classification or distinction. According to Bakhtin, everyone is equal in the market square. Carnival precisely presents itself as the opportunity to erase social distinction and create a cohesive mass without internal distinctions. The only way left to analyse the people is therefore to turn our attention to what and who they are fighting against, often referred to as ‘the elite’. –​ Subversion of the status quo and anti-​elitism. Another striking similarity is the anti-​elitist1 sentiments typical of populism. Like the carnival crowd, which disdains authorities and rules, the people generally resent anything or anyone different from them. Populists see themselves as a point of resistance against the imposition of political, economic or intellectual ideologies. Their anti-​system feelings are not only embodied in street protest or affiliation to populist parties; most populist voters also question the validity of scientific knowledge and official educational institutions. This is exemplified by the introduction of the word ‘post-​truth’ to indicate how our communities have lost a shared system of values and beliefs, precisely because a consistent and significant part of the population chooses to consider supposed facts, opinions and information as truths and yet they are not supported by scientific evidence. Knowledge is conceived merely as an instrument of power, aimed at subjugating citizens. While this attitude reveals some powerful philosophical insight that has already been exposed by Foucault (1980), populists are simply rejecting the whole system of knowledge and education in favour of a theory that would confirm their biases towards society. Movements such as No-​Vax, Flat-​earthers and all types of negationist waves often deeply intertwined with populism are striking examples 1 I want to specify that it would be reductive to consider populism as simply anti-​elitist. Populism as an antagonist political model means the people are averse to anything or anyone that does not fit in it. Most often it is the elite, but often they oppose immigrants and foreign cultures too, amongst other things.

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of this attitude, where fiction is used as a weapon against the imposition of knowledge. In short, Panurge is back and ready to mock and diminish the next Thaumaste who dares to share his intellectual doubts and concerns. –​ Political Incorrectness. The resistance to hierarchical order is also strictly connected to linguistic choices. In carnival we observe an increase in coarse and dirty language. The passage of the torchecul mentioned above represents a perfect example of how lower language can be used as a tool against stereotypes, common places or more generally as a weapon to subvert the current hierarchical organization of values. While in Rabelais vulgar expressions are used to dignify a body mortified by religious restrictions, in contemporary political campaigns they are mostly used as labels to identify the political orientation, as well as capture people’s attention. Choosing politically incorrect phrasing is considered an attack to the ethical imposition of the current liberal democracies. In populism, there is heavy reliance on oversimplified messages, ample employment of metaphors and slogans levering on emotions and feelings, as well as common words, slang and even curses, oaths and dirty words. As already mentioned, the choice of adopting these colourful tones can be understood not only as a rhetorical weapon to enhance an emphatic bond with the electorate, it also creates an idea of the populist as an ‘outsider’ who does not play by the rules of communication shared by the majority of the country. On top of this, vulgar language can be funny and amusing, playing a performative role that enhances the emotional connection between the people and its leader. –​ Last but not least, the king of the fools. As mentioned in the introduction, there are no fixed definitional criteria for populism; there is a network of overlapping similarities that makes us recognize a populist movement without relying on a set of omnipresent features. Probably the most controversial feature of populism is the figure of the leader. Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017) have already highlighted how populist parties lack a central core ideology and often borrow ideas from other parties in order to gain support. In some extreme cases, we are in front of populist parties that not only lack a set of cores ideals and values, but whose existence and creation is merely rooted around the leader. Sometimes, a populist politician may win the leadership of a party that existed for a long time and then annihilate internal resistance in order to secure full control over it: Matteo Salvini with Lega or Donald Trump with the Republican Party. Other

172 Ceci times, a populist politician may even create a new party, choose his or her candidates and use the party simply as a tool for their political success, like Viktor Orbán with Fidesz or Alberto Fujimori and now his daughter Keiko who have founded many parties throughout their careers. On the other side, other parties are bottom-​up movements developed out street protest, such as Podemos in Spain or the Five Star Movement in Italy. Even though strong leadership is not enough to define a party as populist, when it appears it usually represents a dominant trait of the party. While some commentators have tried to avoid leadership from their analyses precisely because it cannot be generalized (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017), a lot has been written on populist leaders, their personae and strategies. This was particularly visible worldwide in the figure of Donald Trump: we might not like him, but we could not ignore him. The 2020 US election and the following ban from social media have proven once again that it was necessary to remove him from the virtual market square in order to take a break from his persona and tweets. 4

Ubuesque Humour: How a Buffoon Becomes a King

A possible way to interpret the successfulness of strong leadership in relation to carnivalesque propaganda is through the model of the Ubu Roi as presented by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his Les Anormaux lectures at the Collège de France in 1975. Ubu Roi was written by Alfred Jarry in 1896 (1958) and it immediately became a classic of European theatre. The play recounts the rise to power of an imaginary Polish king through violence and deception and is loosely based on one of Jarry’s high school teachers. The text is indeed grotesque: once again we have a story full of violence, coarse language and extreme actions of a caricatural character who simultaneously amuses and repels us. Mark Jordan, in his book Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (2015), explains how the ubuesque represents a performance of power, more precisely a contradictory metaphorization of power; the image of the person holding power does not correspond to the idea we would have of a legitimate authority who deserves to hold power (Jordan 2015: 134). This mismatch between actuality and expectations provokes laughter and amusement while also stimulating repulsion and disgust. The ambivalence of Ubu resembles the one provoked by king Quaresmeprenant’s description in Rabelais’ Book iv. In other words, Ubu does not present himself as a legitimate sovereign, and nonetheless his power is constantly growing. According to Foucault,

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it is possible to find many illustrations of ubuesque sovereignty, namely the ‘maximization of effects of power based on the disqualification of the one who produces them’ (Foucault 2003: 12), and he lists examples from the Roman tradition to modern bureaucracy. I can say that allowing power to be exercised by a clown or a buffoon, or more generally by someone usually depicted as ridiculous or despicable, does not invalidate legitimation as a valuable sovereign. On the contrary, this allows the hostility of the population to be released against its sovereign through satire, mockery or simply laughter, while also accepting the leader as unavoidable and inevitable. In short, rather than delegitimizing the leader and his or her way of operating, ubuquesque representations enhance and boost the effects of power held by the clown sovereign, enhancing his or her visibility and softening the anger and resentment of the people towards their leader. A populist leader who endorses a full carnivalization of discourses, instead of being belittled and dismissed, empowers him or herself both in the eyes of their supporters who recognize themselves thanks to the constant allusion to corporeal and vernacular references, and in the eyes of the opponents who release their hostility through laughter, mockery and defamation while passively accepting the power as unavoidable. Overall, it is important to remember that ubuesque power can be fully understood only in relation to laughter and, consequently, in relation to the context which makes a leader to be seen as funny or ridiculous. Without the lens of humour, we would be left with a bunch of extravagant political analyses that do not mirror the complex dynamics I have described in this chapter. Indeed, the description of ubuesque power seems almost paradoxical: Foucault describes a power dynamic according to which a leader increases his power through the disqualification of himself and his skills. Philosophy of humour offers different theories that can provide several interpretations to this peculiar mechanism, such as incongruity theory, relief theory or superiority theory. If we follow incongruity theory, we say that laughter is provoked by the divergence between our expectation of what is a good leader and the actual leader in front of ourselves. According to relief theory, ubuesque power can be justified as a relief valve: since we cannot change the political situation in which we are, we would rather laugh at it as a way to exhaust our negative feelings and to replace with positive ones. Lastly, superiority theory suggests to us that we laugh in front of a leader in order to increase the distance between ourselves and the politician we are mocking, in order to boost the sense of superiority we feel toward ourselves and to belittle the object of our scorn.

174 Ceci Whereas it is undeniable that there are elements of all three theories (incongruity, relief and superiority) I believe that these alone do not suffice to explain how and why ubuesque has the capacity to maximize the power of the leader. I believe this mechanism can be explained on the basis of grotesque humour. One of the characteristics of grotesque is precisely its ability to comprise extremes and opposite elements together. As a result, when we are in front of a grotesque piece of art or humour we are caught in a state where we experience both pleasure and repulsion, laughter and disgust. I believe the peculiarity of grotesque humour lies precisely in this ability to produce extreme and contrasting emotions, where positive and negative feelings are blurred and meshed. I claim that this state can produce a shift in perspective in the way we usually experience things around us. For instance, when we laugh about the US Capitol attack by Trump’s supporters, we find ourselves in a state of amusement but also of shock and revulsion. This peculiar state of contrasting feelings may affect our ability to think, judge and value the object of our scorn. In other words, the grotesque has the power to modify our standards regarding taste and ethical issues and to adapt them to the extreme situation in which we find ourselves. To borrow Foucaultian terminology, grotesque can normalize actions, tastes and behaviours that would not be considered normal in another setting. In some cases, such as the Capitol attack, anger and shock prevailed, and most US citizens harshly condemned the episode. In other occasions, Trump’s grotesque and extreme comments against minorities became so recurrent and surreal that laughing at them simply accelerated our process of interiorization of these behaviours, making them if not normal at least acceptable on a daily basis. To sum up, I attributed to grotesque humour the capacity to revaluate our standards regarding tastes and ethical issues and to normalize behaviours that would usually be considered inadmissible. At the same time, returning to grotesque jokes, pranks and scorn is an excellent way to attract attention on social media, which literally feasts on extravagant and catchy contents. While grotesque humour has been largely exploited by populist politicians and their staff in order to attract attention and secure a vote, we are left with the question whether it can be used not only to increase politicians’ popularity but also to improve citizens’ awareness regarding political matters. If populism represents an example of politics that exploits grotesque humour through sloganesque propaganda, Gargantua and Pantagruel represents a brilliant example of how grotesque literature can propose a witty and unrealistic counterexample to power organization in our societies.

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175

Conclusion

In this chapter I have analysed populism in the light of carnival culture. In order to do so, I explained Rabelais’s 16th century masterpiece Gargantua and Pantagruel. It has passed through history not only for its beauty but also for the irreverence of its contents, the wittiness and richness of the language, the obscure reference to historical, geographical, cultural and political elements of its time, and for its warm-​hearted humanism of Erasmusian inspiration. It is an exquisite journey where extremes embrace each other, where lower bodily functions are described through divine attributes and where traditional, religious and political views are endlessly mocked. It is precisely thanks to this ambivalence, made possible by laughter, that we can descend into and enjoy a world where opposites constantly collide. As Bakhtin has shown, grotesque laughter is used not only as a means for a variety of interpretations and multiple meanings within the poem, but also as a weapon against fear. Given the uncertainties of the times we are living, it is not a surprise to discover that laughter is still a valuable source against negative emotions and existential dreads. It is natural, therefore, that people have integrated it within their political sphere: carnivalization of politics is a way to deal with anger, sadness, delusions and disillusions present in our societies. As a downside, it has become increasingly exploited by public figures in order to tame angry populations and to gain widespread support. In this sense, Foucault has provided a compelling example as to how grotesque irony is used to maximize the effects of power by those who hold it with the notion of the ubuesque. Ubuesque power, by which the more we laugh at it the stronger a politician becomes, can be explained through the lens of grotesque humour, which may influence and modify our moral compass and normalize behaviours, actions and bodily images that we would usually perceive as abnormal. Carnivalization is not typical or unique to contemporary populism; it has appeared in completely different forms of political organization, such as the medieval feudal system, and it can also be found among in many other areas of our everyday life. Some examples are in the current oligarchy, like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos; within show business, like Kanye West and his recent pompous candidacy, later revoked, as US president; or simply in our daily interactions with social media. Though carnivalization cannot be described as a unique feature of populism, it is nonetheless extremely enlightening for unfolding, by using a paradigm still unmapped by political theory, the dynamics that intersect political discourses and the mass mobilization of laughter as a way to connect the sphere of politicians with the polity they represent.

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References

Bakhtin M. M. (1984). Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Berlin I. (1969). ‘To define Populism’, The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library (http://​ber​lin​.wolf​ .ox​.ac​.uk​/lists​/bibli​ogra​phy​/bib​111b​LSE​.pdf)​. Canovan M. (1981). Populism. New York: Harcourt Brace. Canovan M. (2005). The People. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ceci M (2019). ‘Between Indefinability and Usage: towards an Understanding of Populism’, rifl 13(2): 51–​62. (doi: 10.4396/​12201907; http://​160​.97​.104​.70​/index​.php​ /rifl​/arti​cle​/view​/545)​. Edwards J. D and Graulund R. (2013). Grotesque. London and New York: Routledge. Foucault M. (1980). Power/​Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writing 1972–​1977. Brighton: The Harvester Press. Foucault M. (2003). Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974–​1975. New York: Picador. Freud S. (2018). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego (https://​arch​ive​.org​/deta​ ils​/gro​upps​ycho​logy​a00f​reu)​. Gaufman E. (2018). ‘The Trump carnival. Popular appeal in the age of misinformation’, International Relations 32(4): 410–​429. (doi: 10.1177/​0047117818773130). Jarry A. (1958). Ubu Roi. Paris: Librairie Larousse. Jordan M. (2015). Convulsing Bodies. Religion and resistance in Foucault. Stanford, California: California University Press. Kinser S. (1990). Rabelais’s carnival. Text, context, metatext. Berkley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press. Le Bon G. (2009). Psychology of crowds (annotated). Southampton: Sparkling Books. Laclau E. (2005). On Populist Reasons. New York: Verso. Laclau E. and Mouffe C. (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategies. New York: Verso. MacMillan C. (2017). ‘Welcome to the carnival? Podemos, populism and Bakhtin’s carnivalesque’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 25(2): 258–​273. (doi: 10.1080/​ 14782804.2016.1269642). Müller J.-​W. (2016). What Is Populism?. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mudde C. and Kaltwasser C. R. (2017). Populism: A very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mudde C. (2004). ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition 39(4): 541–​563. Rabelais F. (1994). Gargantua and Pantagruel (trans. T. Urquhart and P. Le Motteux). London: Everyman’s Library. Taggart P. (2000). Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Wittgenstein L. [1953] (2009). Philosophical Investigations. Wiley-​Blackwell.

Index absurd 32, 42, 61, 62, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76 Abualheja, Faisal 155 activism 92, 93, 99, 108 actual world 76n16 Adorno, Theodor 145 aesthete 51, 52, 53 aesthetics 129 affective 27 affinity 74, 100 African Americans 18 agency 146 agreeable 31 alliance 86 ambiguity 113, 114, 117, 119, 120, 124 ambivalence 164, 172, 175 amelioration 57 amuse 68 amusement 57, 69, 75, 83, 84, 88, 91 129 emotion of 75n14, 86 emotional 75 anger 156 animals 23 anxiety 68, 151, 152 applause 83 appreciation 83 Aquinas 6, 63n1 Aristophanes 15, 18, 25 Aristotle 1, 6, 53, 58, 77, 94, 129, 130, 131, 135n1, 140 art 22, 31 Attardo 66, 77 attention 83 attentiveness 81 audience 50, 82, 85, 97, 108, 109, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 125, 135, 136, 139 Augustine 15 authentic existence 143 awe 37 Baby Cobra 110 Bachmetjevas 1, 2 background conditions 86 Bain 68, 78 Bakhtin, Mikhail 5, 158, 160, 162, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 175, 176

banana skin 68 Barack Obama 114 Barr, Roseanne 114, 118, 120, 127 Baudelaire 10, 13, 22, 23, 24, 25 beautiful 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43 objects 30, 42 pleasure in 30 beauty 125, 126 becoming 142, 146 behaviour 75, 86, 116, 118, 122, 142, 160, 161, 167, 168 belief 63, 64, 84 false 87 implicit 63, 68, 69 mistaken 88 reconsideration 68 beliefs 85 Bergson 1, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 23, 24, 25, 63n1, 78, 124 Berlin 159, 176 Berlusconi, Silvio 168, 169 Bezos, Jeff 175 Billingsley 157 Bobonich 25 borderline cases 69n7 borderline category 56 boredom 100, 109 Bowie, David 155 brain 65n3 buffoon 130 Bunker, Archie 115, 128 Burke 32 Burmeister 127 Butler, Judith 4, 143, 157 Canovan 159, 168, 169, 176 caprice 2, 53, 56 caricatures 65 carnival 5, 158, 159, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 175, 176 carnivalization 167, 175 Carroll 73n12, 74, 78 categorical imperative 41 Ceci, Maura 5, 158

178 Index Chaplin 10 Chappelle, Dave 97, 98, 103, 108, 109 character 129, 130, 131, 134 characters 81, 82 childhood 146, 152 children 83 Cicero 94 Cisoux, Hélène 5, 143, 147, 148, 149, 150 civilization 151, 153 Clewis 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 44 climax 82 code of honour 84 cognition 28, 30, 35, 37, 42, 43 cognitive mastery 66n4 cognitive problems 69 fictional 69 Cohen 78, 84, 89, 91 comedian 96, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 108, 109 comedy 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 108, 113, 118, 119, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139 beyond 22 concept 10, 11, 12, 13 deep 9, 11, 12, 13, 19–​22, 23, 24 limitation 21 objects of 13 other-​directed 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24 philosophy and 14 philosophy of 10, 11 self-​directed 11, 12, 13 comedy club 95 comical 10, 15, 21, 56, 89 comical effect 57 commitment 87 common sense 2 comprehension 30, 83 concept 30 determinate 30 concepts 29 confound 38, 40 Confucius 22 confusion 51 congruity 65, 125 Connolly, Billy 97 conservatism 14, 17, 18

conservative 9, 11, 12, 14, 18 context 48, 50, 51, 66 extrasentential 66 fictional 68 linguistic 67 contingent 43 contradiction 47, 54, 56, 57 contrast 67 convictions 52 moral 75 corporeal 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38 Crandall 127 Critchley 15, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 151, 157 cruelty 123 cultural identity 145 custom 42, 43 practical 43 danger 36 Darwin 1, 6, 63n1, 78 de Sousa, Ronald 130, 131 deconstruction 149 deep 63 Dennett 78 depression 151 Descartes 1, 51 Derrida, Jacques 149 detach 68 Deutsch 109 difference 151 dignity 34 Diogenes Laertius 15, 25 direct comprehension 91 direct speech 50 disability 123 disambiguation 66 disappointment 42, 67 discord 35, 38 between imagination and reason 38 higher 38 discriminated groups 72n10 disengage 76 disengagement 61, 62, 68, 69, 75, 76 disgust 156 disgusting  morally 77 dispositional theory 86 distance 51, 52

Index Dostoyevsky 51 doubt 51 Douglas 96, 102, 110 drives 63 unconscious 63 Duchenne 78 Dylan, Bob 145 Eaton, Anne 129, 132, 133, 135, 135n1, 136, 138, 139, 140 Edwards 166, 176 elite 170, 170n1 emotions 100, 102 empathy 143, 154 engagement 87 entertainment 91 environment 145, 155, 156 equality 98 Equanimity & The Bird Revelation 149 equity 98 Erasmus of Rotterdam 162 erotic love 55 essence 48 esteem 37 ethical 57 ethics 113, 123, 129, 130, 145, 146, 147 ethnic group 72 euphoria 160 everyday life 52 evil 54 existence spheres 45, 46, 53, 56 existential 58 instruments 46 position 51 expectation(s) 10, 32, 40, 41, 42, 50, 63, 67, 82 broken 87 expressiveness 81 factive 76 failure  ethical 53 fairytale 81 faith 55, 56 familiar 83 familiarity 81, 85 family resemblance 159 Fanon 106, 109

179 Farrell 127 fascination  intellectual 69n7 fatphobia 4, 113, 114, 117, 119, 122, 123, 126 fear 36, 63, 156 feminism 2, 4, 98, 111, 142, 143, 144, 147, 153, 156 feminist 114, 120, 123, 124, 125 philosophy 129 Ferguson 127 fiction 61, 62, 66n4, 70, 74, 75, 76n16, 81 fictional 68, 75 fictional representational model 61, 62, 68, 70, 74, 75, 76, 77 fictionality 3 Forabosco 72, 72n11, 78 Ford 127 formal object 63 Foucault, Michel 158, 159, 161, 172, 173, 175, 176 Frazier 52 freedom 30, 31 Freud, Sigmund 1, 23, 24, 25, 78, 95, 104, 161, 176 Friedman, Jena 124 frustration 67 Frye 12, 25 Fujimori, Alberto 172 funny 26, 27, 28, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 68 as a condition 38–​39 as a subspecies 37–​38 as a third species 39–​42 as unthreatening sublime 36–​37 element 91 feeling 89 -​haha 69, 75 -​huh 69, 75 future 148, 149 Gadsby, Hannah 96, 97, 102 game 83, 85 Gargantua and Pantagruel 158, 159, 162, 166, 174, 175, 176 Gaufman 159, 160, 169, 176 Gemes 110 German Romanticism 48, 51 Gervais, Ricky 54, 55, 97, 98, 109, 110

180 Index Geyskens 106, 110 Giamaro 26, 28, 35, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44 Gibbs 65 Gilbert 120, 127 Gill 157 Gimbel 14, 15, 25 God 23, 54 death of 23 good 21, 30 morally 30 Graulund 166, 176 Grigaitė, Teodora Marija 4, 98, 109, 142 Grotesque 158, 161, 166, 176 habit 42, 135 habituation 129, 135, 135n1, 136, 138, 139 Hard Knock Wife 110 harmonious 30, 37, 38, 41 Hegel 9, 11, 13, 18, 22, 23, 25, 48, 50, 58, 143, 157 hidden congruities 92, 93, 108 hierarchy 94, 167 hilarious 69 Hirschfield, Sarah W. 4, 113 Hobbes, Thomas 1, 27, 44, 78, 94 Hoinski 2 Hollywood 108 homosexual relationships 72 hostility 27 Hounsokou 26, 28, 33, 34, 37, 38, 44 human being 21 human existence 154 humanism 165 humanity 154, 155 Humanity 97, 110 humility 147 humorist 53, 54 humorous 20, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 72n10, 74, 75, 76 purposes 64 humour 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 63, 63n1, 64, 65, 65n3, 66n4, 67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 73n12, 74, 75, 76, 77, 85, 86, 87, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139,

140, 142, 148, 151, 154, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 173, 174, 175 and beauty 42 and irony 53 as a mechanism 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 108 as disinterested 35 as irrational 34 as universal 35 comedy and 14 dispositional theory 63n1, 75 emotional component 65n3 essentialist theory 62 irrational 26, 27 Kant on 31–​34 mechanical 63n1 necessary and sufficient conditions 75 play theory 63n1 sense of 62 subjective standard 43 theory of 15 hydraulic 27 illusion 32 imagination 29, 30, 38, 40, 42, 43, 147 play of 41 unconstrained 39 imaginative resistance 76n16 immediacy 51 implicit 75 incongruities 39, 42 funny 42 incongruity 26, 27, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 65, 65n3, 66, 66n4, 68, 70, 72, 73, 73n12, 74, 75, 76, 77, 87, 92, 94, 95, 104, 142, 143, 144, 151, 152, 153, 157 incongruity theory 1, 45, 46, 47, 63, 65, 66, 73, 75, 76, 77 incongruous 32, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 74, 76, 89 infinite 51 infinity 49 inhibition 85 inhuman 20 insight 81 instrument 56, 57 intellect 32 intentionality 144

Index

181

intentions 40 interpretation 67 intersubjective 35 inwardness 48 Irigaray, Luce 5, 143, 147, 150 ironic effect 50 ironist 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 pure 52, 53 irony 3, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 67 absoluteness of 49 and personal existence 52 as disciplinarian 52 as goal in itself 51 as tool or instrument 51 controlled 52 core of 49 destructive force 52 target of 50 usages of 51 Ivy League 98

teller 82, 83, 85, 87 time and place 82 joke performance  successful 90 jokes 81 fictional representations 85 surprise theories 87 joking 15, 82, 83 process 89 successful 84, 85, 86 unsuccessful 85 Jordan, Mark 172 joy 149, 156 judgement 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 86 aesthetic 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 43, 44 determinative 43 of beauty 30, 41 reflective 29, 43 subjective 29

jargon 84 Jarry, Alfred 172 Jenner, Caitlyn 97 Jim Crow laws 116 Johnson, Boris 169 joke 20, 21, 32, 35, 36, 40, 53, 57, 61, 64, 65, 66n4, 67n5, 69, 69n7, 70, 70n9, 71, 72, 72n10, 72n11, 73, 73n12, 74, 75, 76, 76n16, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 89n2, 90, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 138 affective 84 comprehension 90 conditional 84 explanation 84 hermetic 84 meaning 83 narrative 81 performance 82, 83, 91 performed 80, 83, 87 pure 84 realistic 82 reception 80, 81 recipient 85, 86 sexual 65, 77 spontaneous response 89 successful 77, 80, 81, 84

Kant 1, 2, 26–​44, 71, 78, 94 and reason 28 radical evil 40, 43 Kaufman 127 Kerouac, Jack 148 Kierkegaard 2, 45, 46, 46n1, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 and irony 47–​53 concept of humour 53–​56 the aesthetic 45, 51, 52, 53 the comic 46 the ethical 45, 46, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56 the religious 45, 46, 47, 53, 54, 55, 56 the tragic 47 King, Larry 49 knowledge 50, 84, 147, 150, 152, 153 background 89 prior 81, 84 kōan 152 Kristeva, Julia 5, 143, 147 Kulka 78 language 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153 proficiency 84 Langton, Rae 131, 140

182 Index Laplanche 146 laugh 12, 13, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 74 laugher  theories of 57 laughing 80, 85, 88, 89 about 85 at 85 laughter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 46, 75, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86–​87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 163, 165, 172, 173, 174, 175 contagious 75 genuine expression 84 good-​hearted 33 material for 33 negative side 11 object of 24 power 11 spontaneous expression 91 Le Bon, Gustav 161, 176 Lent 160, 164, 166 Les Anormaux 158, 172 Levinas 146 Levinson 6, 75n14, 78 levity 74 liberation 142, 143, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 157 liberation theory 5 libertarianism 161 linguistic 48 love 56 MacKinnon 140 MacMillan 159, 160, 169, 176 magnitudes 30 Magritte 74 make-​believe 66n4 Malcolm 78 Marmysz 26, 28, 36, 37, 44 martyrdom 56 Marx, Groucho 64 McGhee 78, 79 meaning 50 intended 67

literal 67 sentential 67 meaning-​blindness 76n15 meaningless 74 media 50 sensationalism of 50 melancholy 151 Melbourne 131 melody 102 Meredith 26, 28, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 Merrill, Lisa 119 metaphysical 57 metarepresentational awareness 66n4 Middle Ages 162, 167 mirth 69n7 misunderstanding 51 mock 11, 12, 13, 24, 50 model of simultaneity 80, 81, 89 Mollow 128 moral belief 129, 134, 137, 139 morality 2, 30, 111, 145 Morreall, John 1, 26, 27, 44, 78, 79, 94, 116, 123, 124, 126, 128, 140, 157 Moyaert 110 Mudde 159, 171, 176 Müller 159, 161 Musk, Elon 175 Myanmar 101 naive 33 naivety 2, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40 Nancy, Jean-​Luc 149 Nanette 148 narrative 82 narrator 81 Nasier, Alcofribas 162 nature 30, 31, 43 moral 43 sensible 40 necrophilia 72 negate 50 negation 48 negative 51 negligent 51 nervous energy 63 Netflix 96, 98, 109, 110 neuroscience 90 New Introductory Lectures 105, 110

183

Index Nicomachean Ethics 130, 135n1, 140 Nietzsche 9, 11, 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25 Nightingale 24, 25 nihilistic 51 non-​involvement 68 nonsensical 32 norms 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 51, 52, 53, 54 violation of 72 nothing 32, 41 transformation into 32 Nozick 10, 25 O’Shiel, Daniel 1, 3, 66, 66n4, 82, 116, 126 obesity 118, 119, 121, 123, 128 obscene 83 odd 89 offence 97, 100, 106, 109 Oliver, J. Eric 121, 128 oral tradition 81 Orbán, Viktor 172 oscillation 35, 41 outwardness 48 Pantagruel 162, 164 paradox 51 paradoxical 61, 62, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76 parody 4, 113, 114, 116 Pascal, Blaise 103 passion 56 inward 55 past 68 peculiar 89 perception 30 performative conditions 80, 81, 85, 86, 89 interactive 86 performative practice 82, 85 perversion 104, 105 Peter Griffin 116 phenomenon 48 philosophical anthropology 1, 5 Philosophical Investigations 159, 176 philosophy 21, 22, 92, 94, 105, 108, 151 theory and practice 21 picture 75 Plato 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 94 comedy in 15–​19 pleasure 27, 31, 33, 80, 81, 87 Poetics 130, 135n1

polis 13, 18 political community 11, 12, 13, 16, 21, 22 political philosophy 9, 12, 14, 15 politics 2, 111, 158, 159, 161, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169, 174, 175 populism 5, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 168, 169, 170, 170n1, 171, 174, 175, 176 pornography 132, 133, 136, 139 positive laughter 155 postmodern philosophy 142 power 30 negative 53 physical 30 practical reason 40, 41 predisposition 33 prejudice creep 113, 114, 117, 119, 125, 126 present 68 pretence 33, 40, 41 property 61, 62 mind-​dependent 61, 62, 63, 76 objective 61, 62, 63, 76 relational 61, 62, 63, 76 response-​dependent 61, 62, 63, 76 subjective 62 protagonist 87 prototype(s) 82–​83 provocative 83 psyche 95, 103, 143, 147, 148, 153 psychoanalysis 146, 161 punchline 72, 83, 95, 97, 99, 101 incongruous 88 pun(s) 61, 66, 75, 85 one-​sentence 67n5 paradigmatic 67 syntagmatic 66 purposiveness 29, 30, 37 without purpose 30 Putin 49, 50, 169 puzzles 69 quality  secondary 62 Quaresmeprenant 164, 172 Quintilian 47, 49, 50, 58 Raatzsch 88, 89 Rabelais, François 5, 158, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 171, 172, 175, 176

184 Index racism 98, 103, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 122, 123, 126 racists 115, 116 rationality 31 practical 28, 31 real 75 realization 89 reason 30, 44 and representation 30 ideas of 43 reasoning 74n13 reasons  cognitive 76 ethical 76 subjective 76 recognition 85, 91 direct 89 Reddy, Vasudevi 137, 140 reflection  after effect 89, 91 relativity 52 relief 46, 88, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 104, 110, 137, 154, 158, 160, 173, 174 relief theory 1, 63, 66, 74n13 religion 22 religionists 21 religious 57, 73 Renaissance 158, 160 repellent  morally 76n16 representation 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 70, 72, 75, 76 sensible 42 repress 63 resistance 76n16 resolution 65n3, 66 resonate 84 responsibility 86 revision 68 revivalist 56 riddles 69, 88, 90 ridicule 9, 12, 16, 17, 21, 24 rules 40, 42, 43, 83, 85 determinate 42 subjective nature 40 Russell, Danielle 118 sadness 156

Salvini, Matteo 171 sarcasm 65 satire 65, 154 Schadenfreude 68n6 Scheler, Max 154, 155 Schlegel 51 Schopenhauer, Arthur 1, 95, 102, 110, 151 Schumer, Amy 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 126, 128 science 51, 52 doubt in 51, 52 scientism 21 self-​deprecating humour 113, 114, 119, 120 self-​hygiene 142 self-​narration 144, 146 sensations 29 sensibility 28 seriousness 15, 21, 34, 63 lack of 34 set up 82, 83 sexism 113, 114, 115, 117, 119, 127 sexual intercourse 72 sexuality 154 shame 96, 106 Shedada, Alan 155 shock 41, 42 Sickinger 3, 94, 101 silence 83 smile 13, 15, 20, 24, 50, 74, 83, 151, 152 Smuts, Aaron 130, 131 social cohesion 9, 11, 24 social contract 51 social hierarchy 158, 159 social milieu 51 social struggle 143, 154 social-​cultural context 100 society 2, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 24 corrupt 14 Socrates 12, 16, 17, 18, 25 Solger 48, 51 Sommer 2 Sorbonne 162 Spektor, Regina 37 Spencer, Herbert 79, 95 spontaneity 51, 91 spoonerisms 67 Srinivasan, Amia 138 standard theory 74 stereotype(s) 66, 117, 119, 120

185

Index story 75, 81, 85 Stott 157 Strauss 18, 25 stupidity 113, 116 subject of the joke 97 subjectivity 13, 22 sublimation 92, 93, 96, 102, 104, 105, 106, 108, 110 sublime 26, 27, 29, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43 dynamic 30 mathematic 30 purpose of 35 subsume 42 Suls 79 superiority 92, 93, 94, 104, 108, 154 superiority theory 1, 13, 22, 27, 63 supersensible 28 surprise 87, 89 suspension of knowledge 70n8 sylleptic zeugmas 67 symbolic order 144, 147, 148, 150, 151, 157 sympathy 85 Szabo-​Gendler 118 taboo(s) 95, 96, 97, 100, 137 target of the joke 97, 98, 109 taste 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139 tension 27, 41, 48, 95, 96, 99, 102, 106 relief of 57, 66 Terjesen 115, 116, 128 the comic 45, 47, 53, 55, 56, 57 as therapeutic 57 main function 57 the comical 46, 54, 56 the enthusiast 52, 53, 54 the humorist 54 the Other 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 156 the role 57 the self 9, 13, 24, 51 the tragic 57 thing-​in-​itself 40 thought 33 purity of 33 threat 36 Tieck 51 Tirosh 128

token 64, 85 Tomsett, Ellie 117 tragic 20, 21 transcendental 43 transcendental idealism 26 transcendental laughter 142, 143, 149, 150, 151 transphobia 97, 98 trauma 96 trompe-​l’oeils 74 Trump, Donald 5, 113, 127, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174, 176 truth 51, 92, 93, 108, 149, 150, 152 Tsoi 117 Ubu King 158 understanding 29, 30, 38, 42, 43, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91 and reason 38 concept of 41 forms and degrees 89 interpretative capacities 38 puzzled 32 United States 18, 113, 123, 155 universal assent 29, 30 unpleasant 32 validity 43 limited 52 subjective 43 values 85 Van Haute 106, 110 Vergote 160 vibration 35, 53 vice 11, 19 violence 25 virtue 130, 135n1, 137, 139 Voltolini, Alberto 3, 27, 82, 85, 95, 100, 101 Vrtička 79 Walker, Zoe 4, 129 Walton 108 wavering 66 Weiss 117 West, Kanye 175 West, Lindy 138 West Bank 155 Wilde 64

186 Index wit 2, 125, 154 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 73n12, 78, 79, 88, 159, 160, 176 wittiness 69n7 women 17, 77 wonder 156 Wong, Ali 98, 103, 109, 110 wordplays 75

Xu 157 Yablo 77, 79 zealotry 55 Zen Buddhism 152 Zinoman 128 Zupančič 25