Critchley, Simon. On Humour. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Critchley's book has probably become one of the most-cited overviews of the topic of humour. He traces the three prominent theories of humour: superiority, relief and incongruity, along with descriptions of laughter from classical through to recent texts. His chapters deal with topics ranging from the question of whether humour is particular to humans, the body and humour, Bergson's notion of the mechanical and laughter, ethnic humour, the idea of humour as creating community and Freud's theories on humour. Much of the book simply and concisely outlines discussions that have occurred around these topics. For instance, in his chapter on ethnic humour, Critchley suggests that ethnic jokes reveal the repressed anxieties of the teller (75). In humour, Critchley argues that we align and differentiate ourselves with communities, both in ways we find pleasurable and positive and in ways we find uncomfortable.

Critchley offers Freud the last word on humour, focusing his final chapter on his late essay "Humor," in particular. The chapter moves from laughter and humour to a discussion of the smile. He writes, "a smile is the mark of the eccentricity of the human situation: between beasts and angels, between being and having, between the physical and metaphysical. We are thoroughly material beings that are unable to be that materiality. Such is the curse of reflection, but such also is the source of our dignity. Humour is he daily bread of that dignity" (109). The chapter finally closes with Beckett, a playwright whose humour is often not at all risible and whose smiles are rife with a range of emotions and negations. He concludes, paraphrasing Beckett between his hyphens,

For me, it is this smile—deriding the having and the not having, the pleasure and the pain, the sublimity and suffering of the human situation—that is the essence of humour. This is the risus purus, the highest laugh, the laugh that laughs at the laugh, that laughs at that which is unhappy, the mirthless laugh of the epigraph to this book. Yes, this smile does not bring unhappiness, but rather elevation and liberation, the lucidity of consolation. This is why, melancholy animals that we are, human beings are also the most cheerful. We smile and find ourselves ridiculous. Our wretchedness is our greatness. (111)

It's interesting that Critchley moves away from laughter at this moment and towards the smile. I think his focus on laughter (and smiling) stems from his interest in the bodily experience of humour, but the study of humour (as opposed to its physiological response) precludes distinctions between smiles and laughter (or smiles as laughter as this concluding quote seems to suggest) as evidence of humour's occurrence or as part of its analysis. I'm not sure that the smile in this case indicates a laughter at unhappiness, but does indicate the linkage between affect and humour, or the notion that humour acts as a microcosm of our affective relation to our existential situation. Moreover, privileging wretchedness as greatness seems a potentially problematic move without further analysis or support, though it's a provocative idea.

Freud, Sigmund. "Humor" (1927). The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and Its Discontents and Other Works, Standard Edition. Vol. 21. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961, pp. 159–66.

Freud returns to the subject of humour long after his book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious to offer several further thoughts on the subject started in his initial book. This essay's central question is summarized as follows, "In what, then, does the humorous attitude consist, an attitude by means of which a person refuses to suffer, emphasizes the invincibility of his ego by the real world, victoriously maintains the pleasure principle—and all this, in contrast to other methods having the same purposes, without overstepping the bounds of mental health" (163). Like his previous book, this essay draws on examples and those chosen to support his questions in this case are often examples of dark humour—for instance a man sentenced to death who looks up at his own hanging to say "well, the week's beginning nicely."

Freud adds four points to his initial analysis of humour in this essay. The first is that it is "not resigned; it is rebellious" (162); suggesting contra Morreall, that humour might precisely be a mode for revolution. Going further, Freud suggests that humour offers a person a defence, a means by which to "ward off possible suffering" (164). Freud adds to this the feeling of pleasure in a mutually shared enjoyment. Lastly, humour for Freud involves the superego, which, in the moment of joking reassures the ego. He writes, assuming the voice of the super-ego, "Look! Here in the world which seems so dangerous! It is nothing but a game for children—just worth making a jest about!" (166).

This later essay by Freud crystallizes many of the ideas that occur in Jokes in a more meandering form. Further, here he more pointedly accounts for instances of dark humour. At the same time, his emphasis on notions of relief theory and the psyche remain (perhaps obviously) his most prominent lines of analysis. I wonder how Freud's description of the superego/ego relationship here would relate to a subject/ideology dichotomy were one to map his analysis onto a broader reading of the subject in relation to culture. What role would humour play in such a shift?

Morreall, John. Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humour. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

The latest book from a man who has made it one of his academic missions to establish the parameters of the philosophical understanding of humour. The first part of the book summarizes work he has done in the past to collect and name the three central theories of humour: 1) superiority theory, which Morreall describes as seeing humour as anti-social; 2) incongruity theory, which he describes as the view of humour as irrational; and 3) relief theory, which sees humour as a kind of pressure valve that releases social or psychic tension. He adds to these the minority view of Aristotle and Aquinas and, more recently, Robert Latta, which sees humour as playful relaxation.

In "That Mona Lisa Smile: The Aesthetics of Humour," one of the more interesting chapters in the book for the purposes of this work, Morreall describes humour as an aesthetic experience aligning it with the Kantian notion of disinterestedness (or suggesting that the goal of aesthetic humour is disinterested, focused only on providing amusement), adding to his description of the aesthetic of humour the elements of surprise or a shift in perspective, which contribute to its aesthetic appeal or pleasure (70). He distinguishes this from "non-aesthetic" humour on the basis of the motivation behind the joke, with jokes focused on superiority, for instance, falling into the latter category (72). Morreall wants to distinguish humorous amusement from similar kinds of cognitive shifts at work in tragedy, horror, the grotesque or macabre, suggesting, "humorous amusement, by contrast, is by itself a positive state with no negative emotions" (74). He also separates the fantastic or bizarre from humour, citing the Surrealists as an example and suggesting that these elicit cognitive rather than emotional shocks and thus cannot be considered humour. In his effort to delineate a unique kernel that is humour, however, one wonders at the exceptions to these rules: black humour, Holocaust jokes, killing jokes or nervous laughter, and how these would be accounted for in terms of their aesthetic function.

In the chapter, "Laughing at the Wrong Time: The Negative Ethics of Humor," Morreall goes on to describe 8 basic moral objections to humour, which he claims as the most common objections; that it is: insincere, idle, irresponsible, hedonistic, reducing self-control, hostile, anarchistic and foolish. In each case, Morreall cites examples to debunk each claim, though, equally, in each case, some example could be offered in support of the initial objection as well. Overall, however, in his effort to defuse these negative objections, Morreall wants to get past an ethical argument against humour that focuses on its phthonic element (Ronald de Sousa), or malicious attitude (98). Instead, Morreall describes humour as offering a "practical disengagement" (101), in this separating laughter and humour from emotion (101). In support of this division, he writes, "when we want to evoke anger or outrage about some problem, we don't present it in a humorous way, precisely because of the practical disengagement of humour. Satire is not a weapon of revolutionaries" (101). Though unclear on how someone like Swift fits into such a claim, Morreall moves on quickly from this claim to suggest in this context that the negative implications of humour are better viewed as stemming from this practical disengagement. He describes three such negative ethics in the bulk of the chapter: irresponsibility, the blocking of compassion and the promotion of prejudice, each of which is relatively self-explanatory.

In the following chapter, entitled "Having a Good Laugh: the Positive Ethics of Humour," Morreall counters the negative ethics of humour by describing the "intellectual virtues fostered by humour" (112). THeseinclude: fostering open-mindedness and spurring critical thinking (113). Here, he cites Jon Stewart and Bill Mahar (sic) as examples of political satirists who "encourage us to think twice before accepting any political message" (113).

The descriptions Morreall offers of both the negative and positive attributes of humour seem anecdotal and heavily tied to whichever example he chooses to illustrate his point. For instance, humour can be said to promote prejudice when the example cited is Don Imus's "joke" about the Rutgers women's basketball team, but political (perhaps even revolutionary?) when referencing Jon Stewart. While Morreall's work reinforces the idea that critical analysis should be applied to the topic of humour, his approach is largely anecdotal and relies heavily on generalizations that don't hold when applied to a range of examples.

Freud, S. The Joke and its Relation to the Unconscious.

Freud, S. The Joke and its Relation to the Unconscious. Trans. Joyce Crick. New York, NY: Penguin, 2005.

The pleasure of a joke, Freud suggests can arise either from its “joke-technique,” an economy of phrase which produces mild amusement (“Jokes,” 85-91) or from its “tendentious” qualities, by which a joke circumvents socially-conditioned repression and allows one to take pleasure from normally inaccessible sources, such as sexuality, hostile mockery or cynicism (“Jokes,” 92-111). Tendentious humour achieves this breaking of social taboos by ‘bribing’ the listener with the pleasure of jest and joking, so that they might permit the expression of what is customarily repressed and suppressed which affords even greater pleasure. The humour of tendentious jokes, because it arises more from the statement they convey than the form they take, forces us to distinguish between the substance of the joke and the joking form, or “joke-work” which, in the case of tendentious humour, merely operates as a Trojan Horse, allowing the impermissible idea to be given expression.

While the tendentious elements might suggest the potential for the joke to act as a vehicle of political criticism, this is undercut by Freud’s account of the fundamental pleasure of the “joke-work,” which is explained as a source of play, wherein the pleasure arises out of “savings in psychical expenditure” itself caused by the recognition of the familiar and the repetition of the similar (“Jokes,” 119-24). Thus any critical political potential of tendentious humour stands in contrast with the conservative function of this joke-work, which, as in Bergson’s model, involves a return to that which is already known, here presented as a source of pleasure. Thus while Freud does not state his model in ideological or political terms – rather he understands the social motivation of the constructing and sharing of joke as a means to release psychic energy (“Jokes,” 135-43) – a certain conservative political aesthetic may be conceived within.