It's Funny Because It's True? Reflections on Laughter, Deception, and Critique

• In Event: Comedy and Political Theory

Abstract

This paper challenges the prevailing view among critical theorists that the emancipatory power of laughter consists in its ability to speak the truth. First, I demonstrate the untenability of this position by turning to the accounts of laughter offered by Plato, Hobbes, and Nietzsche. This historically and ideologically diverse group of philosophers understands laughter not as enjoying a privileged relation with the truth but as a performance of deception – that is, as an enactment that makes something that is not the case appear as if it were, and in doing so, helps turn that appearance into reality. Second, I argue that because speaking the truth does little more than expose the falseness of existing life, only a conception of laughter as deceptive explains its transformative power. Laughter’s capacity to emancipate hinges on how it can deceive in such a way that prompts the imagination and construction of new, more democratic institutions and modes of relating. I conclude by considering the implications of this argument for how we understand the role of truth in critical theory today.

Author

• Patrick Giamario, University of North Carolina, Greensboro