Bataille’s Laughter: Comedy, Irony, or Wonder?
Examining Ecstasy as an Anthropocentric Limit
Abstract
This article applies a reading of Georges Bataille’s Laughter of Death to the comedic, the ironic, and the wonderful, to determine whether these functions are amenable to the dissolution of subjectivity that his laughter implies. This dissolution, in turn, repositions humans within an ecology of death identified as the food chain. Bataille’s laughter thus serves as a litmus test for the extent to which these functions – representing humanism (the wonderful), postmodernism (the comedic), and posthumanism (the ironic) – rely on identity and, consequently, anthropocentricity.
Submitted: July 29, 2024 | Accepted: Sept. 11, 2024 | Published Dec. 6, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Alenka Zupančič • Wonder • Donna Haraway • Postmodernism • Bataille • Clowns • Cyborg • Comedy • Posthuman • Eye of the Crocodile • Irony • Philosophical Animism • Clown • Georges Bataille • Ravencene • Immanence • Humanism • Søren Kierkegaard • Plumwood • Val Plumwood • Anthropocene • Hegel • Postmodern • Continental Philosophy • Posthumanism • Crocodile • Caroline Walker Bynum • Laughter
Copyright © 2024 Rachel Holmes. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2024/02/002