\u201cIt is equally fatal\u2026to have a system and to have none: one must therefore embrace both.\u201d (Fr. Schlegel)<\/p>\n
I propose a paper on how comedic art distinguishes<\/i> itself from\u2014hence relates to\u2014its matter (comic events, situations, characters).\u00a0 I draw on three sources: Hegel, Bergson, and Niklas Luhmann.<\/p>\n
An earlier paper on \u201cHegelian Comedy\u201d presented the paradox whereby Hegel says next to nothing on what is for his theory the ultimate art\u2014an art moreover ending in self-dissolution (it emerges from only to merge with reality).\u00a0 Here I expand on the paradox, comparing it with epic implicature.\u00a0 Late in his study titled Laughter<\/i> (1900) Bergson turns from the comic element to its artistic treatment: unlike other arts, comedy lives between<\/i> art and life; while author\/spectator distance themselves from the ridiculed \u201ctype\u201d it is to restore social order (for Bergson, not conformism but elastic individuality). \u00a0The sociologist Luhmann contends that the art system 1) employs a mechanism of self-distinction to establish both itself and the autonomous artwork, 2) initiates a modern \u201cautopoiesis\u201d (self-observation) in a continual effort to take account of the blind spot constitutive of any social position.\u00a0 Luhmann (1995\/2000) has occasional remarks on Romantic \u201chumor,\u201d \u201cirony\u201d and \u201cwit,\u201d if not on comedy proper.\u00a0 But comedy exemplifies<\/i> this double logic of artistic distinction\/relation\u2014just what my paper aims to track.<\/p>\n
The Menandrine tradition of assumed social superiority, hegemonic in practice and theory from Aristotle to Frye (Hokenson 2006), was challenged by an inclusive 18C \u201chumor,\u201d the Romantics\u2019 return to Aristophanes, and Bakhtin\u2019s late populist reaction. \u00a0I agree with John Bruns (Loopholes<\/i> 2009) that \u201ccomedy is sovereign,\u201d\u2014if it\u2019s anything.\u00a0 Comedy takes a non-exclusionary approach to the world, willing ultimately to forgo knowledge even of its own blind spots (Bergson\u2019s \u201cdistraction\u201d).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIt is equally fatal\u2026to have a system and to have none: one must therefore embrace both.\u201d (Fr. Schlegel) I propose a paper on how comedic art distinguishes itself from\u2014hence relates to\u2014its matter (comic events, situations, characters).\u00a0 I draw on three … Continue reading