The Odd One in On Comedy

Why philosophize about comedy? What is the use of investigating the comical fromphilosophical and psychoanalytic perspectives? In The Odd One In, Alenka Zupancic [haceks over bothcs] considers how philosophy and psychoanalysis can help us understand the movement and the logicinvolved in the practice of comedy, and how comedy can help philosophy and psychoanalysis recognizesome of the crucial mechanisms and vicissitudes of what is called humanity. Comedy by its nature isdifficult to pin down with concepts and definitions, but as artistic form and social practice comedyis a mode of tarrying with a foreign object--of including the exception. Philosophy's relationshipto comedy, Zupancic [haceks over both cs] writes, is not exactly a simple story (and indeed includessome elements of comedy). It could begin with the lost book of Aristotle's Poetics, which discussedcomedy and laughter (and was made famous by Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose). But Zupancic[haceks over both cs] draws on a whole range of philosophers and exemplars of comedy, fromAristophanes, Molière, Hegel, Freud, and Lacan to George W. Bush and Borat. She distinguishesincisively between comedy and ideologically imposed, "naturalized" cheerfulness. Real,subversive comedy thrives on the short circuits that establish an immediate connection betweenheterogeneous orders. Zupancic [haceks over both cs] examines the mechanisms and processes by whichcomedy lets the odd one in. Alenka Zupancic [haceks over both cs] is Senior Research Fellow at theInstitute of Philosophy, Slovene Academy of Sciences, Ljubljana. She is the author of The ShortestShadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two (MIT Press, 2003).