Comedy and Critical Thought

Contents

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: Setting the Agenda

Part I: Comedy, Critique and Resistance

2 Diagrams of Comic Estrangement

3 ‘Against the Assault of Laughter’: Differentiating Critical and Resistant Humour

4 Can We Learn the Truth from Lenny Bruce? A Careful Cognitivism about Satire

5 Laughter, Liturgy, Lacan and Resistance to Capitalist Logic

6 Humitas: Humour as Performative Resistance

Part II: Laughter as Resistance?

7 Conformist Comedians: Political Humour in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

8 First World War Cartoon Comedy as Criticism of British Politics and Society

9 A Suspended Pratfall: Mimesis and Slapstick in Contemporary Art

10 ‘Life’ in Struggle: The Indifferent Humour of Beckett’s Prose Heroes

11 ‘Holiday in Cambodia’: Punk’s Acerbic Comedy

12 ‘What Can’t Be Cured Must Be Endured’: The Postcolonial Humour of Salman Rushdie, Sami Shah and Hari Kondabolu

13 Political Jester: From Fool to King

14 Three Easy Steps to a New You? Or, Some Thoughts on the Politics of Humour in the Workplace . . .

Index

About the Contributors