Alfie Bown - In the Event of Laughter: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Comedy

In the Event of Laughter

Psychoanalytic Horizons

Psychoanalysis is unique in being at once a theory and a therapy, a method of critical thinking and a form of clinical practice. Now in its second century, this fusion of science and humanism derived from Freud has outlived all predictions of its demise. Psychoanalytic Horizons evokes the idea of a convergence between realms as well as the outer limits of a vision. Books in the series test disciplinary boundaries and will appeal to scholars and therapists who are passionate not only about the theory of literature, culture, media and philosophy but also, above all, about the real life of ideas in the world.

Series Editors

Esther Rashkin, Mari Ruti and Peter L. Rudnytsky

Advisory Board

Salman Akhtar, Doris Brothers, Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, Lewis Kirshner, Humphrey Morris, Hilary Neroni, Dany Nobus, Lois Oppenheim, Donna Orange, Peter Redman, Laura Salisbury, Alenka Zupani

Volumes in the Series

Mourning Freud

Madelon Sprengnether

Does the Internet Have an Unconscious? Slavoj iek and Digital Culture

Clint Burnham

In the Event of Laughter: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Comedy

Alfie Bown

On Dangerous Ground: Freuds Visual Cultures of the Unconscious

Diane ODonoghue

Born After: Reckoning with the German Past (forthcoming)

Angelika Bammer

The Analysts Desire: Ethics in Theory and Clinical Practice (forthcoming)

Mitchell Wilson

At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva (forthcoming)

Alice Jardine

Contents

Many books on comedy begin with a little anecdote about how the author had a good laugh writing the book, perhaps even starting off the discussion with a joke or two, or at least with a humorous opening gambit of some kind. Sometimes the temptation to have a laugh creeps onto the front cover of the book, making its presence felt in the illustration or in the books subtitle, suggesting that within the book we might find a lighthearted academia that affords a much-needed relief from the all-too-serious attitudes that so often characterize the university. This is not a book which arises from this kind of atmosphere at all.

Instead, the book has come out of many years of study and academic discussion, very little of which has had the lightness that we often associate with comedy, even less of which has been fun or funny, and absolutely none of which could even be said to have been a relief. If there has been a laughter ghosting the decade of reading philosophy and literature that has finally resulted in this book, it has been a threatening and unsettling laughter that has pointed to the weakness of the academy, to the fragility of philosophy and to the anxiety of my own contribution. It was the power that laughter has to be something completely opposed to a light relief, something powerfully unsettling which leaves us feeling highly anxious, which caused me to undertake this project.

A number of people deserve a special thank you for their role in these discussions and, therefore, in making this book possible. These people are, in some kind of order, Mladen Dolar, Jeremy Tambling, James Smith, David Matthews, Anca Parvulescu, Gregor Moder, Alenka Zupani, David Alderson, Jonathan Hall, Jack Sullivan, Daniel Bristow, Ian Parker, Lucas Ballestin, Andreja Zevnik, Tony Brown and Alexandre Pais. I wish to make a special thank you to my wife Kim, without whom I would not have been able to finish this project; to my mother Tracy, without whom it would never have begun; and to my daughter Lyra, who is just beginning to laugh.

A version of has appeared in American Journal of Psychoanalysis (July, 2017) and is included here with permission.

References to Shakespeare are from The Norton Critical Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (London: Norton, 1997).

References to Freud are from Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al., 24 vols (London: Vintage, 2001).

References to regularly quoted Jacques Lacan texts are as follows: