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?

Douglas, Mary. “Jokes.” Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London: Routledge, 1975. 90-115.

The opening lines to Mary Douglas's essay on jokes and joking practices highlight a key problem in the study of humour by not only anthropologists (whom she names), but among theorists of humour more generally. She writes, "Anthropologists tend to approach ritual joking from scratch, with merely an introspective glance at the cases in which they themselves feel impelled to joke. Consequently they have treated joking rituals as if they arise spontaneously from social situations and as if the anthropologist's sole task is to classify the relations involved" (90). She positions her look at joking in terms an analysis that seeks to articulate modes of thought or expression in relation to social experience, rather than the classification of types of social experience—what she sees as the direction in which anthropology must develop in the mid-1970s. She also describes the importance of looking at joking in terms of its everyday use and its subjective character, though again tying these analyses to the consideration of larger social structures (92). Joking, for Douglas, is a "play upon form" that acts in a similar way to a kind of "ritual pollution" (92). Her essay is primarily concerned with the practices of joking in the Dogon tribe in Africa, which are scatological and based on the exchange of what western anthropologists in the past saw as "gross insults" (92). In this, Douglas pinpoints a central problem in the study of humour: its cultural specificity. She asks whether jokes can be understood outside of the culture that produces them, following this with a tantalizing question around interpretation: "When people throw excrement at one another whenever they meet, either verbally or actually, can this be interpreted as a case of wit, or merely written down as a case of throwing excrement? This is the central problem of all interpretation" (92).

Douglas explicitly separates her analysis of joking from the study of laughter: "it would be wrong to suppose that the acid test of a joke is whether it provokes laughter or not" (92)—a useful division and precedent for ongoing analyses of humour. She bases this distinction on the work of Bergson, whose essay on laughter speaks about joking and humour, but not about laughter specifically. She offers an insightful analysis of Bergson and Freud, saying that both assume a structure characteristic to humour; however, she finds it difficult to map their structure onto the joking rituals of the Dogon, and so she extrapolates from their analyses to find instead that the form of a joke lies less in the utterance alone, but "can be identified in the total social situation" (93). In Bergson's definition of humour, Douglas balks at the moral judgment implied between the "good" joke—the human—and the "bad" mechanism at which the joke pokes fun (93-94). Douglas offers a more expansive definition, saying, "A joke is a play upon form. It brings into relation disparate elements in such a way that one accepted pattern is challenged by the appearance of another which in some way was hidden in the first" (96), and in this description betrays her affinity with Freud's definition of joking.

The rest of Douglas's chapter concerns a specific analysis of Dogon joking rituals, which, though interesting is less vital to this project. However, her careful positioning of the topic, largely in order to justify it as an object of study within 1970s anthropology offers a useful framework by which to begin similar work in reference to other theorists of humour who have similarly limited or expanded the topic of humour, sometimes seemingly arbitrarily, until its limits seem not to offer any kind of useful field within which to work. Her work also offers an explicit connection between the everyday, ritual and questions of larger cultural or ideological meanings.

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.