The Object of Comedy: Philosophies and Performances

Description

What is the object of comedy? What makes us laugh and why? Is comedy subversive, restorative or reparative? What is at stake politically, socially and metaphysically when it comes to comedic performances? This book investigates not only the object of comedy but also its objectives – both its deliberate goals and its unintended side effects. In researching the object of comedy, the contributions gathered here encounter comedy as a philosophical object: instead of approaching comedy as a genre, the book engages with it as a language, a medium, an artifice, a weapon, a puzzle or a trouble, a vocation and a repetition. Thus philosophy meets comedy at the intersection of various fields (e.g. psychoanalysis, film studies, cultural studies, and performance studies) –regions that comical practices and theories in fact already traverse. Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Chapter 1: A Head or a Cannonball? An Introduction to the Object of Comedy References Part I: Comic Philosophy Chapter 2: The Uncanny and the Comic: Freud avec Lubitsch References Chapter 3: How They Fought From the Tragic to the Comic Skepticism and Finitude Conversation Skepticism and Acknowledgment The Tragedy and Comedy of the Couple In Praise of Bickering The Philadelphia Story References Chapter 4: Hegel and the Misadventures of Consciousness: On Comedy and Revolutionary Partisanship In the Name of the Substance: The “Severe” Experience of Consciousness Comedy Is Said in Many Ways: On Hegel’s Aesthetics The Phenomenology as a Comedy The Comedy of Consciousness Laughing Last: Comicality, Partisanship, Meaning, and Nonsense References Chapter 5: The Aborted Object of Comedy and the Birth of the Subject: Socrates and Aristophanes’ Alliance Hegel on the Terminated Object of Art-Religion Aristophanes’ Intentional Flop in Honor of Socrates Theaetetus’ Sextuplets Conclusion: The Orphan Subject of Comedy References Part II: Comic Psychoanalysis Chapter 6: The Three Moments of Comedy Moment One: The Deception—The Naive Other on Stage Moment Two: The Deceived Deceivers Moment Three: When the Means Start Destroying the Goals References Chapter 7: From Objects of Desire to Objects of Comedy in Chaplin’s Modern Times References Chapter 8: Where Does Dirt Come From? Act One: Enjoyment without a Room of Its Own Act Two: The Birth of the Joke from the Spirit of Smut Act Three: The Fold of Satisfaction Act Four: The Surprise Epilogue References Part III: Screening Comedy Chapter 9: Seriously Funny: Comedy and Authority in The Boss of It All Introduction: The David Brent Effect Outsourcing Authority Stupid Stereotype Essence True Appearance Between Two Masters Conclusion: The Cold Master References Chapter 10: Stoicism, Causality, Divine Providence and Comedy in Buster Keaton’s The General Philosophical Stoicism Reason and the Physical Universe Impressions and Impulses Keaton’s Stoicism, Fate and Everlasting Recurrence Causality, Fate and Divine Providence Conclusion References Chapter 11: Bad Cops Hands Are Never Too Clean The Critique of Pure Obedience The Lack of Knowledge Law on Trial Eating Doughnuts References Part IV: Performing Comedy Chapter 12: Richard Pryor, the Conedian References Chapter 13: Comedy as Performance The Clown and the Coat The Split Subject and Ideological Interpellation From Performative Sentences to Catachresis References Chapter 14: After Death Comes Humor: On the Poetics of Alexander Vvedensky Dramatization After the End of Time Athletics, Acrobatics, Circus Topographic Distances and Leaps Bessmissliza (Nonsense) as a Paradox of Temporality To Talk About Catastrophe Rendering It Askew References Chapter 15: Asking for It: An Exchange between Cassandra Seltman and Vanessa Place References Chapter 16: Of Organic Comedies: Interview with Romeo Castellucci References Index