2017 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Constructing a Theory of Laughter Founded on Deleuzian and Non-Western Approaches to Subjective Temporality and Concepts of the Self
| Project/Area Number |
15K01992
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| Research Institution | Nagoya University |
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Principal Investigator |
Weeks Mark 名古屋大学, 教養教育院, 特任准教授 (70514222)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | laughter / Deleuze / time / solitude / identity |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
I gave a paper titled “The Queerest Comic Corruption: Laughing Alone” at the 10th Deleuze Studies Conference. There I attempted to articulate ideas relating to an article published in the previous year about solitary laughter, titled "The Enigma of Solitary Laughter," in Deleuzian terms. Using survey data from that previous study, along with some new data, I argued in this presentation that Deleuze’s work, especially in the essay “Nomad Thought,” provides philosophical tools for comprehending a certain tendency in academic approaches to solitary laughter towards dismissing it as a form of vicarious sociality.
Based on feedback received there I completed and submitted for consideration for publication in the Deleuze and Guattari Studies journal an article titled “Nomad Laughing: Setting Laughter Adrift.” This manuscript locates Deleuze’s view of laughter in the essay “Nomad Thought” in the history of theories of laughter, specifically those centered on the concept of incongruity. My manuscript argues a case for Deleuze’s contribution to the understanding of laughter’s potential. A key conceptual shift effected in the manuscript is reconceptualizing incongruity as radical difference. I am awaiting a decision on that manuscript. I also completed an article titled “’Seriousness is an Accident of Time’: Steppenwolf’s Groundbreaking Philosophy of Laughter” and am about to submit this to the Journal of Modern Literature. This manuscript connects the philosophy of laughter, philosophy of time and Deleuzian philosophy.
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