The Joke-Secret and an Ethics of Modern Individuality: From Freud to Simmel

Why has comedy become one of our most abiding ethical preoccupations as well as a dominant mode of political critique? It is suggested that comedy appeals to contemporary persons because it provides an apt social-aesthetic form through which to face up to living with others at a time when it is hard...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTheory, culture & society Vol. 38; no. 5; pp. 53 - 71
Main Author Smith, Daniel R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.09.2021
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Attachment
Comedies
Comedy
Ethics
Jokes
Mutuality
Otherness
Simmel, Georg (1858-1918)
Simmel
ethics
jokes
comedy
Freud
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Summary:Why has comedy become one of our most abiding ethical preoccupations as well as a dominant mode of political critique? It is suggested that comedy appeals to contemporary persons because it provides an apt social-aesthetic form through which to face up to living with others at a time when it is hard to bear others or otherness. The article outlines an ethics of modern individuality by developing a theory of comedy as more about building social bonds and finding out what could be shared knowledge and experience than the toppling of dominant modes of thought or repudiating our mutuality with others. Drawing on Georg Simmel’s ‘The Law of the Individual’, the article develops a Simmelian reading of Freud’s Jokes to argue that comedy is one solution to resolving our mutual un-alikeness by way of forging knotted paths toward recognising how we could be alike.
ISSN:0263-2764
1460-3616
DOI:10.1177/02632764211000121