(iPoster) From Irreverence to Inoperativity: On the Destituent Potential of Humor

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Foundations of Political Theory III & Comparative Political Economy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory III

Abstract

Listening to Arlo Guthrie’s seminal classic Alice’s Restaurant is, for many, a Thanksgiving tradition. Yearly, scores of listeners tune in or turn on Guthrie’s eighteen minute and thirty-seven-second-long song to laugh and sing along. Except the song is not about Alice nor is it about a restaurant. What the song, which is crucially a recounting of actual events, is about, as Guthrie eventually lets on, is the draft and an overture against militarism and war. The wager of this paper is that Guthrie’s humorous subterfuge, which he barely makes an effort to conceal is about something else as well: the destituent potential of irreverent humor. Giorgio Agamben has long maintained that destituent power possesses the capacity to deactivate the machine of sovereignty. I argue Agamben’s most convincing expositions of how the inoperativity that is the object of deactivation can be conjured have emerged in his considerations of play. In play, so Agamben argues, acts, objects, and operations are freed of their previous uses associated with instrumentally rational ends, in effect transformed and made ready for novel uses. The prototypical example of this that Agamben mobilizes is children’s repurposing of disused items. Just as children free items and operations of their uses at play, fulfilling a destituent potential and achieving inoperativity, so too does Agamben think humanity might one day free the law from its current uses for good through play. Building on Agamben’s conception of play’s destituent potential, I mobilize Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant in pursuit of two claims: first, that humor can function as a cipher for play and facilitate a transformance from irreverence to inoperativity; and second, that in play, what is inaugurated can at best be described as a transitory alternative ontology rather than the fundamental ontological shift Agamben has long associated with the fulfillment of destituent potential. To that end, I first leverage research from the field of play-theory to substantiate the claim that humor is a form of play engaged in by grown people, thereby expanding upon Agamben, whose consideration of play’s destituent potential is limited to children. Next, I place Guthrie’s lyrical narrative, along with the biographical and historical experiences he drew upon to write it, into conversation with Agamben’s reflections on play. The analysis that follows suggests an understanding of Guthrie as a modern jester figure who plays with the law, in song and in fact, demonstrating how totems of legal authority, and their representatives, can be rendered inoperative with irreverent humor, albeit if only sporadically. Finally, I show how Guthrie’s performance of the tale is itself a staging of humorous play in which he fashions a new use for his audience, not as concertgoers, but as playmates, who he invites to play along with him in pursuit of the profanation of the law. In sum, this paper builds upon Agamben’s compelling claims regarding the destituent potential of play, yet simultaneously complicates them. This, as what the conversation between Agamben’s work and Guthrie’s song suggests is that the destituent potential of irreverent humor is real but is at best an episodic interruption.

Author

• Paul Londrigan, Pace University