Posthumorism

The Modernist Affect of Laughter

von Frances McDonald

192 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

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.

• Reihe: Bloomsbury 3PL
• ISBN: 9781350264656
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 27.07.2023
• Größe: 234 x 156 mm
• Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC