The Object of Comedy: Philosophies and Performances

by Jamila M. H. Mascat (Editor), Gregor Moder (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030277420
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	02/12/2020
Series:	Performance Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	855 KB

About the Author

Jamila M. H. Mascat is Lecturer in Gender and Postcolonial Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is the author of Hegel in Jena: The Critique of Abstraction (in Italian, 2011) and currently preparing a book on partisanship and political engagement. 
Gregor Moder is Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he teaches philosophy of art. He is the author of Comic Love: Shakespeare, Hegel, Lacan (in Slovene, 2016) and of Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (2017). 

Table of Contents

Section 1 – Comic Philosophy.- Chapter 1. The uncanny and the comic. Freud avec Lubitsch – Mladen Dolar.- Chapter 2. How They Fought – Sandra Laugier.- Chapter 3. Hegel and the Misadventures of Consciousness. On Comedy and Revolutionary Partisanship – Jamila M. H. Mascat.- Chapter 4. The Aborted Object of Comedy&the Birth of the Subject. Socrates and Aristophanes’ Alliance – Rachel Aumiller.- Section 2 – Comic Psychoanalysis.- Chapter 5. The Three Moments of Comedy – Robert Pfaller.- Chapter 6. From Objects of Desire to Objects of Comedy in Chaplin’s Modern Times – Alfie Bown.- Chapter 7. Where Does Dirt Come From? – Alenka Zupančič.- Section 3 – Screening Comedy.- Chapter 8. Seriously Funny: Comedy and Authority in The Boss of it All – Benjamin Noys.- Chapter 9. Stoicism, Causality, Divine Providence and Comedy in Buster Keaton’s The General – Lisa Trahair.- Chapter 10. Bad Cops – Todd McGowan.- Section 4 – Performing Comedy.- Chapter 11. Richard Pryor, the Conedian – Alexi Kukuljevic.- Chapter 12. Comedy as Performance – Gregor Moder.- Chapter 13. After Death Comes Humour. On the Poetics of Alexander Vvedensky – Keti Chukhrov.- Chapter 14. Asking for It. An exchange – Cassandra Seltman and Vanessa Place.- Chapter 15. Of Organic Comedies. Interview with Romeo Castellucci – Jamila M.H. Mascat.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A brilliant, captivating collection — sharply argued, wonderfully conceived, brimming with surprises and provocations. I couldn’t put it down. Philosophical reflections on comedy are usually so dreary and dispiriting. This was the opposite.” (Rebecca Comay, Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto)

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness but this marvelous collection demonstrates how the funny nothing is always propelled by a ‘something’ that ought not to make us laugh. Relentlessly severe in its destruction of the human fantasy, The Object of Comedy is both an indispensable primer for watching today’s unfolding chaos and a vital lesson in thought’s own obstinate perseverance in the face of it.” (Sigi Jöttkandt, University of New South Wales, author of First Love: A Phenomenology of the One (re.press 2010) and Acting Beautifully: Henry James and the Ethical Aesthetic (SUNY 2005))

“When reading scholarly work on comedy, you can’t always count on the laughs. Funnily enough, now you can. This stunning collection of articles — at once witty and erudite, philosophical and comedic — sets about reengaging with the multifarious object of comedy from performative, philosophical, and psychoanalytic perspectives. As Vanessa Place puts it here: ‘Art is vomit. And we are dogs, happy to lap.’ This is a book that is impossible not to enjoy.” (Justin Clemens, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne, Author of Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy)