A Ticklish Subject


Slavoj Žižek

The anxious researcher is unsure about placing the entry on philosophical humour between phallic ritual and physical comedy. Encyclopaedic collisions and incongruities abound.

Is this a breach of academic decorum?
Would it be safer simply to abandon the alphabetical approach to comedy and humour in this book on Aspects of Comedy?

Another anxiety: is this entry concerned with the philosophy of humour, or humour in philosophy?

How much space should be allocated to Slavoj Žižek? (A philosopher, a public intellectual, and a comedian).

In parenthesis ---

("there is a case to be made that Slavoj Žižek is really the Ken Dodd of post-Lacanian Hegelianism." --- Lindesay Irvine, Guardian, 6 January 2012, here) ---

And how funny is Žižek's The Ticklish Subject: the absent centre of political ontology (Verso, 1999)? I have my doubts.

I guess his work will always divide opinion. Take a look at his highly controversial review essay on Benigni's film Life Is Beautiful:

Laugh Yourself to Death: the new wave of Holocaust comedies! (15 December 1999)
 
And this judgment might benefit from further critical analysis of the relationship between humor and irresponsibility:

"The Muslim is thus the zero-point at which the very opposition between tragedy and comedy, between the sublime and the ridiculous, between dignity and derision, is suspended, the point at which one pole directly passes into its opposite. If we try to present his predicament as tragic, the result is comic, a mocking parody of the tragic dignity, and if we treat him as a comic character, tragedy emerges. We enter here the domain that is somehow outside or, rather, beneath the very elementary opposition of the dignified hierarchical structure of authority and its carnivalesque reversal, of the original and its parody, its mocking repetition. Can one imagine a film rendering THIS domain?"

Further reading:
Shaw, Joshua. "Philosophy of humor." Philosophy Compass 5.2 (2010): 112-126.
By the way, I'm collecting quotations that deal with comedy and humour. Here.

At the current rate of writing my book will be finished by April 2016.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poems of Love and Loss: Remembering and Celebrating

Image
During bereavement we often want to express the sense of love and loss but find ourselves lost for words. In this case poetry can have a very powerful emotional and spiritual effect. Poems can also challenge and provoke different ways of thinking about difficult experiences. But it is often quite difficult to find a poem that is suitable for a public service that expresses both celebration and loss. In this blog I have selected several poems that may help you to mark your sense of loss, and aid reflection, commemoration and celebration. I have tried to encompass a variety of moods, tones and approaches to reflect the different phases of grief. Gitanjali -  Rabindranath Tagore I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards. Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil. Today the summer has come at my window with its
Read more

Comedy: famous quotes

Image
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” --- Charlie Chaplin. "Dramatic comedy, from which fictional comedy is mainly descended, has been remarkably tenacious of its structural principles and character types." (Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism ) "The days of Comedy are gone, alas! When Congreve's fool could vie with Moliere's bete :   Society is smooth'd to that excess,  That manners hardly differ more than dress." --- Byron "Man is the merriest species of the creation, all above and below him are serious." --- Addison “This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” --- Horace Walpole. “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.” --- Peter Ustinov “The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.” --- Moliere. "In the hands of a comic genius the pretence of stupidity is the triumph of irony." "In my mind, the
Read more

Sound must seem an echo to the Sense!

Image
The poetry of Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is sometimes associated with a cramped 'classical' approach to the imagination. However, rhythmic life and energy are bound up in Pope's rhyming couplets. He has an ear for music and movement. In fact, he often speaks about dance or employs its as a metaphor. Rhythm and dance provide a rich vein of physicality. Like Dryden, Pope perfected his ability to hear the inherent musicality of words and their sinewy rhythmic potential. He is a master of the soft rhapsodic cadences of lyric and elegy as much as the harsh, rough music of snarling satire. Although many of Pope's poems present formidable challenges to modern readers it eill eb apparent that a judicious selection of extracts will repay close reading and recitation. Students should also attempt to write their own couplets as this creative process will enable them to understand the levels of subtlety and complexity that can be achieved. Alexander Pope's Essay on Criti
Read more