Posthumorism: The Modernist Affect of Laughter
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- Synopsis
- Examining the multiple non-humorous meanings of laughter, this book explores a unique strain of laughter in modernism that is without humor, without humans, and without humanism. Providing a bold new theory of modernism's affects, Posthumorism chronicles the scattered emergence of a particular strain of humorless laughter in twentieth-century literature, film, and philosophy. From William James's trippy experiments with laughing gas to the wide-open suicide shriek of Major Kong in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, modernity is strewn with examples of such laughter – defined by its ability to “crack up” and destroy, whilst opening new horizons of perception.Examining the creative operation of posthumorist laughter, this book explores how various stylists of the form-from Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut to Georges Bataille and Hélène Cixous-use it as a tool to unsettle, reconfigure the individual human, and shape different forms of humanist discourse.
- Copyright:
- 2022
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9781350264632
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781350264618
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Date of Addition:
- 01/26/22
- Copyrighted By:
- Frances McDonald
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Literature and Fiction, Language Arts
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.