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

Abstract

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.

The sad clown paradox: A theory of comic transcendence

“…The figures of the 'second modernity' were marginal, and through marginality they gained their privileged status to capture realities of social life beyond official discourse. In the Anglo-American context this article traces, theorists have noted a shift toward the mainstream for comedy (Smith 2021;Giamario, 2020).…”

“…Simmel's definition of transcendence is that, unable to escape itself, the modern self nevertheless remains oriented towards going beyond itself as a defining quality of its selfhood. Second, I conceptualise this view of transcendence through two sides of the sad clown paradox: on the one hand, comedians are both laughed 'at and with' (Smith, 2021), while, on the other, comedians pivot between thinking of themselves as 'sane in a world gone mad' or 'mad in a sane world'. This will be substantiated through an interpretation and analysis of Marc Maron's comedy as well as his 2011 Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival keynote speech.…”