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.

Cohen, Ted. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

In a book that includes more jokes than many on the topic, Cohen offers an accessible and readable a description and analysis of joking, with chapters entitled, "Jokes Are Conditional," "When Jokes are Assymetrical," "Problems and Occassions for Joke-Making," "Jewish Jokes and the Acceptance of Absurdity," and "Taste, Morality, and the Propriety of Joking." In his introduction, Cohen limits his object of study to two specific joke forms: short story jokes and formula jokes. Though in a less specific manner, he reinforces Douglas's point that jokes work because their audience brings certain awareness or assumptions to the joke (3). Unlike some others, Cohen begins by asserting his belief that no comprehensive theory of jokes is possible (10). He does suggest understanding jokes as a form of "performance" (11), a position which his text, rife as it is with jokes, reinforces. In this, he offers perhaps the most explicit linkage between performativity and humour studies.

His last chapter, "Taste, Morality, and the Propriety of Joking" offers an explicit consideration of black humour and dark jokes. He asks,

Do I think we should joke about absurdities? Should we be laughing at the fact of death? Death is a bleak topic. Jokes about death can be bleak. But apart from all that bleakness, joke-telling about death has a special dark side, which it shares with much joke-telling.

Though this statement is provocative, Cohen does not go on to suggest what this "special dark side" of jokes around death might consist of. However, he goes on to offer a discussion around contentious issue of morality and ethnic or other jokes often considered objectionable. At the beginning of this chapter, Cohen posits a line determining when a joke is "out of place," at the question of avoidance. He suggests a joke is objectionable when it is a mechanism used to avoid, rather than address a topic head on (69). At the same time, Cohen goes on to suggest that ethnic jokes are not necessarily objectionable because they "purvey stereotypes" (78). All jokes, he argues, portray fictions and falsehoods. With ethnic jokes, Cohen acknowledges there may be something "especially disagreeable or obnoxious in this particular idea's being believed" (79). However, he stops short of condemning jokes that take African Americans, for instance, as their butts because he believes making moral declarations on jokes is an impossible task. In trying to imagine the moral response of an "ideal observer"—a figure often used in analytical moral theory—to ethnically-charged jokes, Cohen argues that one cannot definitively say whether such a creature would object or welcome such jokes (81). So far, he goes on to argue, it cannot be shown that such jokes produce genuine harm to someone (81). Thus, rather than arguments over whether jokes are good or bad, funny or unfunny, Cohen argues that analysts should be interested in the fact that even objectionable jokes can be funny and wonder why this might be so (84).