Comedy and Critical Thought

Laughter as Resistance

Iain MacKenzie, Fred Francis, Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786604088
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Throughout history, comedians and clowns have enjoyed a certain freedom to speak frankly often denied to others in hegemonic systems. More recently, professional comedians have developed platforms of comic license from which to critique the traditional political establishment and have managed to play an important role in interrogating and mediating the processes of politics in contemporary society. This collection will examine the questions that arise when of comedy and critique intersect by bringing together both critical theorists and comedy scholars with a view to exploring the nature of comedy, its potential role in critical theory and the forms it can take as a practice of resistance.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Setting the Agenda

Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Fred Francis and Iain MacKenzie

[Foucault laughs.] This particular textual insert is taken from Foucault’s famous discussion with Noam Chomsky, ‘Human Nature: Justice vs Power. A Debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault’.¹ It could, however, have been taken from many of Foucault’s interviews and discussions in which we see the same insert. Foucault saw the humour in these situations, but he also used humour to make critical interventions. This particular case, though, is a good example of both. Early in their discussion both thinkers gave lengthy responses when probed on their respective views on human nature. The moderator of the conversation, Fons Elders, gently reproaches them both for these lengthy responses when he says ‘may I first of all ask you not to make your answers so lengthy’.² It is the first time in the discussion that we find the insert ‘[Foucault laughs.]’. As the discussion turns to the nature of justice and power, and the differences between their respective positions become rather more pointed, Chomsky gives a (lengthy) overview of how he understands the role of justice in the fight against oppressive forms of power, how this can be mobilised as popular struggle and how it can avoid the tendency of popular struggle to replace one oppressive regime with another. He concludes: ‘Give an argument that the social revolution that you’re trying to achieve is in the ends of justice, is in the ends of realizing fundamental human needs, not merely in the ends of putting some other group into power, because they want it’.³ Foucault’s response seems initially oblique: ‘Well, do I have time to answer?’ As Elders responds, ‘yes’ and Foucault asks ‘how much?’ he is met with the answer ‘two minutes’. At which point we find the particular insert we have in mind: ‘[Foucault laughs]’. As Foucault responds ‘But I would say that that is unjust’ we also get the insert ‘[Everybody laughs]’.⁴ At which point we become aware that Foucault was quite an accomplished sit-down comedian! Chomsky’s response ‘Absolutely, yes’ has no following insert, even though we plainly see on the video of the discussion, that Chomsky did, if not laugh, at least chuckle along with Foucault’s humour.⁵

The point is not that the textual version of this exchange is somehow unfair in painting Foucault the humourist against Chomsky the dry scholar. Rather, the point is that the text accurately represents the moment when humour was used by Foucault to effect a critical interjection, one that finds Chomsky simply laughing along with him. But what critical point is being made? What is crucial in these responses is that Foucault is already questioning the ways in which arguments are framed: the rules and regularities, in this case, of a televised discussion which sets limits on what can be said and what must therefore remain unsaid. It is telling because it immediately brings to the fore that all argument is set by such limits, that Foucault is (obliquely, for sure) calling into question Chomsky’s belief in the rational power of argument to guide us to social revolution by exposing the structures that exist which delimit argument itself: Foucault does not hold Chomsky’s rationalist belief in the power of argument to sway us one way or another in purely theoretical disputes. It is not possible, therefore, to separate the truths that our knowledge of the world can produce (Chomsky’s two ‘is’ claims about the ends of justice and the nature of human needs) from the production of relations of power that condition those forms of the knowledge in the first place. But if one cannot argue one’s way out of the idea that rational argument must have priority, for fear of performative contradiction, then what better way to highlight the uncritical nature of Chomsky’s position than by laughing; not at him but at the constraints themselves? Foucault’s humour elucidates the constraints, enjoins the audience to recognise these constraints and brings to the fore that the questions of justice that concern him are those in the here and now rather than ideal conceptions based on problematic universal notions of human need. Foucault laughs, and critical thought results.

Thirty-four years later, Stewart Lee is performing his show, 90s Comedian, at Chapter Arts in Cardiff. About half way through the show, he brings up the case of Lynndie England, ‘a female American soldier’ who was ‘photographed pointing and laughing at the naked genitals of hooded, bound Iraqis’.⁶ He recalls that the judge in her trial intervened in proceedings in an unusual manner by saying, as Lee puts it, ‘that he [the judge] wasn’t convinced that Lynndie England knew what she was doing’.⁷ Lee continues: ‘Now, I don’t believe that ’cause in my experience, when a woman points and laughs at a man’s genitals, she’s normally fully aware of the effect that will have. In my experience. Especially if he’s hooded and bound. In my experience’.⁸ What follows in the show is Lee’s trademark dissection of the audience response to these jokes: some like it because it’s topical and politically charged, others because it’s ‘got cocks in it as well’. As he says, ‘that helps bring the whole room onside’.⁹ In the transcript of this show, Lee dissects his own comedic practice in a footnote: ‘Here I am having my cake and eating it. I set up the audience to laugh at a pathetic cock joke, and then berate them for doing so’.¹⁰ He concludes his subsequent ruminations on this routine by saying, ‘sometimes going back over these transcripts, I hate myself for my hypocrisy. Shame on you, shame on you, Stewart Lee’.¹¹

Here we can see how another comedic performance is textualised, so to speak, but to different effect. Rather than draw out the critical potential of the humour as in the case of [Foucault laughs], we have a pointed self-critical reflection on how humour can be used to critical effect. Lee’s routine sets up the joke in terms that will divide the audience and then delivers the joke in a manner that unites those looking for political material and those looking for a cock-joke in an uncomfortable complicity: before reinstating critical distance. In doing so, the politically minded are reminded that they still like to laugh at cock-jokes, even if this is not very politically correct, whereas those looking for a cock-joke are reminded that there is always a politics implicit in these jokes, a gender politics that cannot be avoided. His subsequent sense of hypocrisy stems from his sense of how easily he has manipulated both parts of his audience, a form of manipulation that speaks of the politics that he is also calling to account in the joke itself. He has also subtly determined the way we read the joke, eliciting the desired political response against the intended target through a cock-joke. Moreover, to the extent that his feeling of ‘shame’ has a gently self-mocking character to it, it makes us laugh. We, the readers of the transcript, become embroiled in the complicities of the joke, many years later. Over the years, Lee increasingly consolidated a position where he can select his audiences and assume a shared ideological ground¹² – he hasn’t abandoned his divisive tactics, however such manipulation is less geared towards persuasion, and is more readily accessible and appreciable as part of the laid-bare joke structure. This allows him to focus his attention all the more on the ‘inner’ workings of comedy itself, always considered in its political dimension. Lee the humourist continues to make us laugh and think critically about why we are laughing.

This collection examines these, and many other, questions that arise when comedy and critique intersect. It does so by bringing together both critical theorists and comedy scholars with a view to exploring the nature of comedy, its potential role in critical theory and the forms it can take as a practice of resistance. Broadly speaking, there are two main themes: (a) comedy, critique and resistance and (b) laughter as resistance. The first theme speaks both to the way that critical theorists have analysed comedy – such as Bergson’s work on humour¹³ or, more recently, the work of Simon Critchley¹⁴ and Alenka Zupančič¹⁵ – and how critical theorists have mobilised comedy within the workings of their philosophical systems – such as Deleuze and Guattari’s use of humour in the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.¹⁶ That said, it is also important to consider the possibility that there is no useful link to be found between comedy and critical thought, especially in post-critical times (see Holm’s chapter later), such that the tasks of critique and resistance need to be considered separately. The second theme focuses on how those that make us laugh are often also those that make us think. The fool, the comic and the satirist have a certain licence to interrogate the social and political realm that is not always available to the politician, commentator or theorist. Of course, for all that comedy and critical thought do appear to have a close connection, we also know that comedy is often used to reinforce the status quo, and sometimes functions as an exclusionary mechanism in the service of hierarchical power relations. Indeed, it is not always easy to know when comedy is conservative and when it is radical, and this collection does not shy away from these difficulties. Indeed, many of the following texts address it head on in their analyses of the complex intersection of comedic practice and practices of resistance in different contexts.

The objective of this collection is to create an agenda-setting volume that carves out a new interdisciplinary domain. It is divided into two parts, ‘Comedy, Critique and Resistance’ and ‘Laughter as Resistance’. The first set of chapters begins with reflections on the nature of comedy and whether or not it should be thought to have critical potential, in itself. There are also chapters that focus on how comedy functions within the work of major critical theorists: for example, Deleuze, Kierkegaard, Bloch and Lacan. The second set of chapters examines whether or not making people laugh can be thought of as a practice of resistance. In particular, these chapters chart the difficult themes of social criticism, comedy and the possible recuperation of comedy by dominant cultural forms. The chapters in the second part are arranged in a loosely chronological order so that readers can appreciate the historical nature of these concerns. They have also been chosen to reflect different comedic media – from cartoons to TV satire to stand-up – to give a breadth of understanding of the complexities relating to different genre and practices.

The volume begins with James Williams’s chapter, ‘Diagrams of Comic Estrangement’. In this chapter, Williams charts a course away from those theories of comedy that either identify its nature or that give it value in terms of the ends it purportedly achieves, towards a process philosophy understanding of the complex ways in which humour functions within the diagrams that give signs their meanings. No comedy is intrinsically funny (or not), and no form of comedy is essentially critical (or not). According to Williams, these effects can be evaluated only in relation to the ways in which the sign connects with other signs to form comedic diagrams. Moreover, these diagrams are more than simple semantic networks; they are networks of affect that condition what counts as funny (or not). This affective dimension is, in principle, always open to other diagrams and, as such, infinite. This sense of infinite connection is neatly stylised by Williams in the numbered paragraphs of his chapter; indicating, as they do, that one can always add to the structured but open connections that can be made between signs. As a result of this openness to other diagrams, that which makes us laugh always has the potential to make us cry; or, equally, the satirical assault on hegemonic power always has the potential to be complicit in the maintenance of that power. This process philosophy perspective therefore enables a richly textured set of remarks about the nature of comedy and also establishes nuanced engagements with a wide range of theorists. Williams criticises, among others, Critchley and Freud for failing to understand these complexities, but he also warns against the all-too-easy appeal to an affective philosophy of joyful passions that one finds in thinkers who employ Spinoza, including Deleuze. For all that Williams cautions us against fixing the critical nature of comedic signs, he does embrace the power they have to ‘ripple’ across the diagrams and thereby produce ‘social and material transformations’. We are reminded though that these ripples are never without other connection to other affects and that we should be wary of treating them ‘innocently’, as necessarily benevolent transformations of the social world. Whatever critical force comedy has, it must be evaluated in terms of pragmatic assessments about the process of the comedic sign within and through a whole series of diagrams that may lead to its estrangement.

Laughter may launch an attack – but are there other ways to conceive of the critique it enables? The assumptions lurking beneath the frequent decontextualised quotation of Mark Twain’s line – ‘Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand’ – come up for scrutiny in Nick Holm’s chapter. In ‘ “Against the Assault of Laughter”: Differentiating Critical and Resistant Humour’, Holm restores the line to its original context and reminds us of its troubling undercurrents in Twain’s work. Drawing on Boltanski, Holm moreover suggests that the existing model for critique is too readily aligned with current neo-liberal trends, rather than being in a position to offer a real challenge to the dominant. He calls for a more careful rethinking of humour and examines the assumptions which underlie the widespread acceptance of its ‘radical’ critical role. Holm follows Latour and Rancière in questioning the destructive strategies of critique and proposes an alternative view of humour based on constructive resistance, as an approach that would do justice to the cultural complexities of humour and the variety of consequences it could entail.

The complex and multifarious functions of humour in society have too often created a polarised debate over its critical worth. This is particularly true for varieties of humour that are explicitly critical or political, such as satire. In ‘Can We Learn the Truth from Lenny Bruce? A Careful Cognitivism about Satire’ Dieter Declercq aims to moderate both overly optimistic and pessimistic positions by arguing that satire has the power to teach important truths about our world, but that overstating the value of satire as a tool for resistance may in fact limit its critical power. Declercq’s chapter focuses on the ways in which satire and the related arts of caricature and cartooning selectively exaggerate and simplify their subject matter. Satire must be entertaining and make a digestible narrative of often complex political issues in order to be effective. Declercq argues that the necessary abstraction present in satire means we should be cautious in discussing satire’s ability to speak truth to power – to do so misunderstands satire as a tool for knowledge acquisition. Instead, the value of satire comes from its ability to present the essence of a subject quickly, and cue immediate responses. Declercq closes by pointing out that while satire often fails to live up to the optimistic position of being a tool of resistance in itself, a moderate position might provoke further investigation of how satire’s cognitive value equips a society to process the limits of critique.

While several chapters in the book’s first section are rightly cautious about the power of humour as a form of critique, Francis Stewart’s chapter seeks to develop a new path for a critique of capitalism by recovering the humour present in Christian liturgy. In ‘Laughter, Liturgy, Lacan and Resistance to Capitalist Logic’, Stewart draws out connections between the tradition of risus paschalis and Lacan’s conception of ‘drive’, via Alenka Zupančič and Marcus Pound. Stewart begins by analysing the Bakhtinian interpretation of carnival to revive the association between laughter and Christian practice lost by authors who follow in Bakhtin’s footsteps. With the historical reality of the humour of liturgy established, he then considers the parallels between comedy and liturgy through a Lacanian tradition, focusing on drive and desire. In the final section of the chapter, the connections between the two are turned towards an emancipatory purpose, proposing the humour of liturgy as a method of disrupting the absent-present of capitalism’s social authority. Stewart argues that by turning our attention to what is absent from the symbolic order, a new resistant practice can be developed from the tradition of laughter in liturgy.

Kate Fox’s ‘Humitas: Humour as Performative Resistance’ examines the role of humour in different contexts and dis...