MACMILLAN The Object of Comedy: Philosophies and Performances (Performance Philosophy)

What is the object of comedy? What makes us laugh and why? Is comedy subversive, restorative or reparative? What is at stake politically, socially and metaphysically when it comes to comedic performances? This book investigates not only the object of comedy but also its objectives – both its deliberate goals and its unintended side effects. In researching the object of comedy, the contributions gathered here encounter comedy as a philosophical object: instead of approaching comedy as a genre, the book engages with it as a language, a medium, an artifice, a weapon, a puzzle or a trouble, a vocation and a repetition. Thus philosophy meets comedy at the intersection of various fields (e.g. psychoanalysis, film studies, cultural studies, and performance studies) –regions that comical practices and theories in fact already traverse. Review “A brilliant, captivating collection ― sharply argued, wonderfully conceived, brimming with surprises and provocations.  I couldn’t put it down.  Philosophical reflections on comedy are usually so dreary and dispiriting.  This was the opposite.” (Rebecca Comay, Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto) “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness but this marvelous collection demonstrates how the funny nothing is always propelled by a ‘something’ that ought not to make us laugh. Relentlessly severe in its destruction of the human fantasy, The Object of Comedy is both an indispensable primer for watching today’s unfolding chaos and a vital lesson in thought’s own obstinate perseverance in the face of it.” (Sigi Jöttkandt, University of New South Wales, author of First Love: A Phenomenology of the One (re.press 2010) and Acting Beautifully: Henry James and the Ethical Aesthetic (SUNY 2005)) “When reading scholarly work on comedy, you can’t always count on the laughs. Funnily enough, now you can. This stunning collection of articles ― at once witty and erudite, philosophical and comedic ―  sets about reengaging with the multifarious object of comedy from performative, philosophical, and psychoanalytic perspectives. As Vanessa Place puts it here: ‘Art is vomit. And we are dogs, happy to lap.’ This is a book that is impossible not to enjoy.” (Justin Clemens, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne, Author of Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy) About the Author Jamila M. H. Mascat is Lecturer in Gender and Postcolonial Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is the author of Hegel in Jena: The Critique of Abstraction (in Italian, 2011) and currently preparing a book on partisanship and political engagement.  Gregor Moder is Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he teaches philosophy of art. He is the author of Comic Love: Shakespeare, Hegel, Lacan (in Slovene, 2016) and of Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (2017).