What we talk about when we talk about humor: An extensive approach to the phenomenon of Political Humor

Abstract

In this work we propose an extensive and interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of humor, comic and laughter from the field of Discourse Analysis and Social Semiotics. We consider not only verbal humor but also another semiotics modes, that is, physical, visual, gestural, theatrical and audiovisual humor and not only the point of view of the production of humor, but also the mechanisms of its recognition. According to our point of view it is impossible to deeply understand the political significance of humoristic discourses without understand the differences between what we call humor and it’s opposite, the comical; both modes of what we have denominate the laughable, that is, the propriety of some discourses of being differentiated to the ones considered serious in a given society. In contrast to the comical, the humoristic subject presents itself as someone whose intentions we don’t really know, someone unapproachable, hard to pin down. While the comical founds the universe of representations that we use to build the reality; the humoristic, on the other hand, dismantles it, given that, recognizing the adversity of the world that surrounds us, it prevails over the circumstances through ingenuity. Or, for the opposite, through a funny remark free from pathos, it marks everything that in the universe of men can be perceived as a trauma: the death, the absurd of reality, reality itself, the real. If comical can be used as a political instrument, in order to fight against dominant discourse or, on the other hand, in order to preserve pre-existing conditions, humor can’t be used in either meanings, and that is its real political implication.