In the Event of Laughter

Psychoanalysis, Literature and Comedy

AvAlfie Bown,Esther Rashkin

Häftad, Engelska, 2020

Del i serien Psychoanalytic Horizons

530 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar. Fri frakt över 249 kr.

Fler format och utgåvor

Inbunden

1 808 kr

Beskrivning

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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2020-05-28
Mått:140 x 216 x undefined mm
Vikt:200 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Psychoanalytic Horizons
Antal sidor:168
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:9781501364136

Utforska kategorier

Populärfilosofi inom Filosofi och religion
Freudiansk psykologi inom Psykologi och pedagogik
Litteraturteori inom Skönlitteratur

Mer om författaren

Alfie Bown is author of The Playstation Dreamworld (2017) and Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (2015). He is editor of Everyday Analysis and writes for The Guardian and The Paris Review, among other publications.

Recensioner i media

I read In the Event of Laughter with real pleasure. It is smart and confident, but also ruminative and genuinely philosophical, and balances a distinct central thesis with many diverse case studies. The notion that there is something penny-pinching and parsimonious about existing accounts of 'the event' ('a rare and unusual occurrence, something that occasionally interrupts the trajectory of things'), and that rather, wouldn't we be better off thinking about how it happens all the time?, is a very sympathetic one; and it's an inspired twist to locate it in the act of laughter. The book will certainly have readers in the growing area of comedy and laughter studies, as it is a combative (though courteous) shakeup of that field.

Innehållsförteckning

List of FiguresPreface and AcknowledgmentsNote on the TextIntroduction: Laughter’s Doubleness1. Laughter as Liberation2. Laughter and Control3. Laughter as Event4. Laughter and AnxietyConclusionBibliographyIndex

174 kr

Post Memes

Alfie Bown, Dan Bristow

Alice Jardine, Mari Ruti

Alfie Bown

Häftad

205 kr