In the Event of Laughter

Psychoanalysis, Literature and Comedy

Alfie Bown

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501342639
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Using Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as its pre-history and afterlives, In the Event of Laughter argues for a new framework for discussing laughter. Responding to a tradition of 'comedy studies' that has been interested only in the causes of laughter (in why we laugh), it proposes a different relationship between laughter and causality. Ultimately it argues that laughter is both cause and effect, troubling chronological time and asking for a more nuanced way of conceiving the relationship between subjects and their laughter than existing theories have accounted for. Making this visible via psychoanalytic ideas of retroactivity, Alfie Bown explores how laughter – far from being a mere response to a stimulus – changes the relationship between the present, the past and the future. Bown investigates this hypothesis in relation to a range of comic texts from the 'history of laughter, ' discussing Chaucer, Shakespeare, Kafka and Chaplin, as well as lesser-known but vital figures from the comic genre.

1

Laughter as Liberation

Every practice which produces something new is a practice of laughter.

Julia Kristeva¹

The idea that laughter is liberating has become a ‘given’, since the idea is one of the most prominent arguments both in the most complex of philosophical reflections on laughter and in the most general everyday discussions of the experience of laughing. In this chapter I argue that it is not so much the case that laughter liberates the subject but that laughter plays a role in the creation of the subject that it appears to ‘free’ or ‘liberate’.

Since ‘liberating’ laughter is often thought of as just one ‘type’ of laughter, I want to begin with the idea of dividing laughter into ‘types’. John Morreall’s book Taking Laughter Seriously (1983) and Simon Critchley’s more recent On Humour (2002), as well as Noel Carroll’s A Very Short Introduction to Humour (2014) have been important examples that have followed this tradition of ‘typing’ laughter, though there are countless examples and in fact this approach has a long history dating back as far as Hegel.² Most commonly there are three categories into which laughter is divided, and only one of these is the idea of laughter as liberating. However, I will show here that there are often important cross-overs between supposedly distinct types of laughter which are often ignored in discussions that follow the ‘type theory’ model. Ultimately my contention is that ‘type theory’ has worked to preserve the status or dignity of certain types of laughter (usually those thought of as liberating, harmless and ‘radical’) by categorizing these laughs as separable from more ideologically problematic ones. On the contrary to these tactics, I want to stress that no laugh is free of potentially dangerous political power. Jan Hokensen puts it succinctly when he writes that:

Until 1990 most theses came down to the premise that we either laugh at the comic protagonist, as a deviant from social norms (thereby reinforcing socio-moral values), or we laugh with the comic character as a heroic underdog doing battle with the social order (thereby ratifying the insurgent impulse to alter the social order).³

Theorists are yet to fully explore the impacts of this observation. In both cases, whether laughter reinforces or liberates from social constraints, those socio-moral norms are always seen as pre-existing the event of laughter. Laughter remains in the category of response. In making this assumption, such debates are doomed to ignore laughter’s constructive and productive capacity and its key role in forming ideology. On the contrary, laughter, even when it ‘liberates’, can powerfully construct us as subjects, so that it is in fact the blurring of the two types that is most powerful. We might say that sometimes laughter must appear to be one thing in order to function affectively as another. As such, we need to be attentive to the potentially dangerous ideology within liberating and joyful expressions of laughter, to the ‘conservatism’ in apparently ‘radical’ laughs and to the damage that seemingly harmless laughter can do, as well as to the subversive potential within even the most ostensibly conservative laughter.

I have given this chapter a title which might itself be perceived of as adhering to a ‘type’ theory approach. This chapter discusses ‘laughter as liberation’, while the next two chapters discuss ‘laughter and control’ and ‘laughter as event’ respectively. However, whereas type theory looks to show how some laughter liberates and other laughter controls, my intention in these chapters is to assess the social and political implications of seeing laughter in these ways. I ask what political and social purposes it has served that laughter has been seen as liberating? How has our perception of its liberating qualities affected laughter’s effect on us? How has the association between laughter and liberation affected the experience of laughing itself? Likewise, in the chapter discussing ‘laughter as control’, I ask how laughter has functioned socially, given that and because of the fact that we see it as an act of group cruelty or of social control or as the establishment and reaffirmation of established order. When it comes to my own argument that we should see laughter as event, it is likewise not a question of saying that this theory hits at the truth of laughter (as if it finally answers other less accurate discussions) but of suggesting that the framework offers a new way of talking about laughter which sees it as neither liberating or controlling. The question is not whether this theory explains how laughter works, but whether the role and functions of laughter can be changed for the better when seen in these new terms.

The first of the three apparently distinct types of laughter is what is generally called ‘superiority theory’ – the idea that we laugh in order to affirm our superiority over another. Such laughter is, first and foremost, cruel, and it may link laughter to sadism (more on this later). This type of laughter is almost always treated first by theorists of comedy, before discussions move to other types, perhaps showing a desire to deal with this type of comedy and set is aside, marking it off from other kinds of laughter. Thomas Hobbes’s famous comments in Leviathan are the most famous to follow this line. For Hobbes, ‘Laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly.’⁴ The idea of laughter expressing superiority has a long history and by no means originates with Hobbes; Aristotle commented that ‘something that excites laughter is something ugly’, framing laughter as a response to the perception that the ‘laugher’ is better than the object of laughter.⁵ Despite its ancient roots, superiority theory is by no means confined to the older history of comedy theory. Charles Gruner, for example, staunchly defends ‘superiority theory’ as the key to explaining ‘all’ humour in his relatively recent book.⁶ Similarly, James English has argued that ‘comic practice is always on some level or in some measure an assertion of group against group’.⁷ Superiority theory remains a popular way of explaining laughter.

On the other hand, others have followed the German philosopher Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) in trying to actively recover ‘the comic’ from ‘the feeling of superiority’.⁸ In 1896 Lipps wrote:

The comic ends in the moment when we ascend the pedestal again, i.e. where we begin to feel superior. The feeling of superiority proves to be the complete opposite of the feeling of the comic, as its classic deadly enemy. The feeling of the comic is possible to the extent that the feeling of superiority doesn’t arise and cannot arise.⁹

Lipps’s suggestion is that the true moment of comic laughter is far removed from anything like superiority, perhaps even diametrically opposed to it. We can estimate from this comment that Lipps prefers the idea of comedy as liberating, and indeed the rest of his discussion bears this out. For Lipps, while the comic feeling itself is liberating and equalizing, even democratic, the ‘classic deadly enemy’ of superiority, when we finish laughing we ‘ascend the pedestal again’, so that after laughter the structures of superiority reorder themselves and take hold once again. My suggestion in Chapter 4 is that we are sometimes dealing with the complete reverse of this: that while the actual laugh can be an expression of superior joy, we are afterwards left with an anxious residue indicating the insecurity of this superiority. For now, the point I want to make is that it is hardly possible to sustain the idea that laughter is a departure from structures of superiority when this laughter is taking place in a world which so regularly sees laughter as evidence of superiority. The ideas of ‘superiority theorists’ such as Aristotle, Hobbes and others are so ingrained in our unconscious (whether we have ever read these theorists or not) that we experience laughter as an expression of superiority. As a result of the fact that we see laughter as a self-affirming act that proves our superiority over the object of laughter, we experience the laughter itself as evidence of this superiority. As such, interpretations of laughter and the actual physical act of laughing are inseparable. To think of it any other way would seem particularly essentialist, as if laughter is not affected by the political and social conditions into which it erupts, as if its effects are not affected by how its social role is perceived by those involved. In short, to say that laughter is not about superiority is to ignore a powerful unconscious association between the two that influences the effects that laughter as upon us.

Opposed to this idea of laughter as an expression of superiority is the idea of laughter as release of bound or repressed energies. Superficially at least, this defines laughter as something that operates against those imposed or social structures such as hierarchy and superiority, freeing the subject from such constraints. Many have spoken about Freud and Bakhtin’s distinct theorizations of laughter in this way, though their own specific comments on laughter cannot ultimately be reduced to the idea of laughter as liberating. It is worth noting that contrary to a general impression, this association between laughter and liberation was by no means born with Freud. In the eighteenth century, for example, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, wrote, ‘The natural free spirits of ingenious men, if imprisoned or controlled, will find out other ways of motion to relieve themselves in their constraint; and whether it be in burlesque, mimicry, or buffoonery, they will be glad at any rate to vent themselves, and be revenged upon their constrainers.’¹⁰ Just as with ‘superiority theory’, the idea of laughter as a radical force that liberates the subject from political restraints and conditions also remains prevalent and popular today, both in academic discussions and in general discourse. Barry Sanders’s Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History is particularly indicative example, though the vast majority of discussions afford laughter at least some liberating qualities.¹¹ In short, the idea of laughter as release is as old and as entrenched in our unconscious as the idea of laughter as superiority. Indeed, Hobbes’s definition of ‘sudden glory [my emphasis]’ (the epitome of superiority theory) may itself have a hint of ‘release’ theory about it, which is made more of in what follows, suggesting that these types may not be as clearly separate as is often thought.

The third type of laughter which often appears in discussions of laughter ‘types’ is ‘incongruity theory’, which is rather self-explanatory: it claims that laughter arises from the perception of something odd or incongruous. I have not given this ‘type’ of laughter a chapter of its own in this book, since it is easy to see how this ‘type’ could be thought of in relation to either of the other two theories; we either laugh to affirm ourselves over the incongruous or odd (making it a self-affirming or superiority laughter) or we are forced by the incongruity to face the inadequacy of our normal order of things (making it a laughter associated with some kind of release). This third ‘type’ seems to have entered discussions of laughter later and has not characterized the history of theorizing laughter as the other two trends have. Another discussion which appears connected to this type of laughter is the idea of laughter as caused by ‘surprise’. This idea also connects ‘incongruity theory’ with ‘relief theory’, and indeed Noël Carroll sees Freud’s ideas of humour as a theory of surprise.¹² Ultimately though, it seems impossible to maintain a system of dividing laughter into types: each laugh seems to have features of more than one ‘type’ operating at once. The close connections between the two dominant trends in comedy theory (superiority theory and liberation theory) complicate many of our existing assumptions about laughter. Once we throw type theory out and see that laughter can be both liberating and cruelly superior at once, things start to get interesting.

More recent work such as Simon Critchley’s has moved away from a strict conception of ‘types’ of laughter but has at times nevertheless maintained a distinction between radical and reactionary or between liberating and ideological laughter. This move allows for positive investment in the idea of a laughter which avoids the limitations and dangers of other more ‘reactionary’ types of laughter such as those which simply re-enforce the social consensus or worse, assert visibly problematic ideologies, as racist and misogynistic laughter does. This risks ignoring the constructive and coercive elements that can be found in all laughte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Note on the Text
• Introduction: Laughter’s Doubleness
• 1 Laughter as Liberation
• 2 Laughter and Control
• 3 Laughter as Event
• 4 Laughter and Anxiety
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page