Cynthia Willett
Biographic Data
| ID | 494239 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cynthia Willett |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cynthia |
| FAMILY NAME | Willett |
| SIGNATURE | WILLETT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Political Force of the Comedic
Uproarious
A radical new approach to humor, where traditional targets become its agents Humor is often dismissed as cruel ridicule or harmless fun. But what if laughter is a vital force to channel rage against patriarchy, Islamophobia, or mass incarceration? To create moments of empathy and dialogue between Black Lives Matter and the police? These and other such questions are at the heart of this powerful reassessment of humor. Placing theorists in conversa…
Uproarious
Placing theorists in conversation with comedians, *Uproarious* offers a full-frontal approach to the very foundation of comedy and its profound political impact. Here Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett address the four major theories of humorâ superiority, relief, incongruity, and social playâ through the lens of feminist and game-changing comics Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Hannah Gadsby, Hari Kondabolu, and Tig Notaro
The Sting of Shame
Our allegiance to individualism sanctions the insult, with or without humor, to a significant extent through free speech rights. But what if the sting of symbolic aggression––as seemingly minor as an insult dressed up in the pleasantries of a joke––in fact accounts in many instances for the more acute pain of the physical assault? To be sure, physical assaults can harm material well-being. But what if a dimension of violence cannot be understood …
Going to Bed White and Waking Up Arab
Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries a…
Ground zero for a post-moral ethics in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Julia Kristeva’s melancholic
The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter
Despite the perception that feminists lack a sense of humor, women have long used ridicule and other comic tactics to subvert conventional norms. In fact, post-structuralist perspectives on power and knowledge give us reason to suspect that forms of humor or irony might be a more appropriate means of philosophical suasion than fact or argument alone. Given that social norms shape cognitive habits, the disrupting of social norms through ridicule m…
Irony in the Age of Empire
Willett (Emory) explores how humor-in its multiple expressions of irony, satire, blackface, comedy of manners, wit, ridicule, carnival, camp, and farce-can be a strategy for the subversion of oppressive power and contribute to a more emancipatory democratic ethic. She offers the bold claim that "today no discourse expresses the stakes of freedom better than comedy... [which] provides one of the most important sources for a philosophical discussio…
Family Matters
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Family Matters
Irony in the Age of Empire
Comedy, from social ridicule to the unruly laughter of the carnival, provides effective tools for reinforcing social patterns of domination as well as weapons for emancipation. In Irony in the Age of Empire, Cynthia Willett asks: What could embody liberation better than laughter? Why do the oppressed laugh? What vision does the comic world prescribe? For Willett, the comic trumps standard liberal accounts of freedom by drawing attention to bodies…
Cornel West Matters
The Abolition of White Democracy
The Abolition of White Democracy. By Joel Olson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 248p. $59.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. Joel Olson's book is a provocative argument for the elimination of white power in the United States. He argues that whiteness is, unlike blackness, not an identity but an illegitimate source of political privilege. Whites have constructed U.S. democracy around conceptions of freedom, equality, and citizenship that s…
The Ethical Heart of Existential Marxism
Theorizing multiculturalism
Dilemmas of Justice in a Post-Socialist Age (Nancy Fraser) Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser's Dual Systems Theory (Iris Marion Young) A Rejoinder to Iris Young (Nancy Fraser) Recognition, Value, and Equality: A Critique of Charles Taylor's and Nancy Fraser's Accounts of Multiculturalism (Lawrence Blum) Ludic, Corporate, and Imperial Multiculturalism of the New World Order (Martin J. Beck Matustik) II Post-Marxism and Issues of Class …
Baudrillard, "After Hours", and the Postmodern Suppression of Socio-Sexual Conflict
r here was a time when films could end happily and yet make socially progressive contributions to conflicts that afflict American culture (Willett, Hollywood 15). This, however, is no longer prevailing view regarding classical films. Most critics now argue that screwball comedies of 1930s and 1940s, or what Stanley Cavell terms the comedies of remarriage, create a magical escape from very real class and gender struggles of Depression. My claim, o…
The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter
Despite the perception that feminists lack a sense of humor, women have long used ridicule and other comic tactics to subvert conventional norms. In fact, post-structuralist perspectives on power and knowledge give us reason to suspect that forms of humor or irony might be a more appropriate means of philosophical suasion than fact or argument alone. Given that social norms shape cognitive habits, the disrupting of social norms through ridicule m…
The Political Force of the Comedic
Going to Bed White and Waking Up Arab
Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries a…
Family Matters
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Baudrillard, "After Hours", and the Postmodern Suppression of Socio-Sexual Conflict
r here was a time when films could end happily and yet make socially progressive contributions to conflicts that afflict American culture (Willett, Hollywood 15). This, however, is no longer prevailing view regarding classical films. Most critics now argue that screwball comedies of 1930s and 1940s, or what Stanley Cavell terms the comedies of remarriage, create a magical escape from very real class and gender struggles of Depression. My claim, o…
Theorizing multiculturalism
Dilemmas of Justice in a Post-Socialist Age (Nancy Fraser) Unruly Categories: A Critique of Nancy Fraser's Dual Systems Theory (Iris Marion Young) A Rejoinder to Iris Young (Nancy Fraser) Recognition, Value, and Equality: A Critique of Charles Taylor's and Nancy Fraser's Accounts of Multiculturalism (Lawrence Blum) Ludic, Corporate, and Imperial Multiculturalism of the New World Order (Martin J. Beck Matustik) II Post-Marxism and Issues of Class …
The Ethical Heart of Existential Marxism
The Abolition of White Democracy
The Abolition of White Democracy. By Joel Olson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 248p. $59.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. Joel Olson's book is a provocative argument for the elimination of white power in the United States. He argues that whiteness is, unlike blackness, not an identity but an illegitimate source of political privilege. Whites have constructed U.S. democracy around conceptions of freedom, equality, and citizenship that s…
Cornel West Matters
Irony in the Age of Empire
Willett (Emory) explores how humor-in its multiple expressions of irony, satire, blackface, comedy of manners, wit, ridicule, carnival, camp, and farce-can be a strategy for the subversion of oppressive power and contribute to a more emancipatory democratic ethic. She offers the bold claim that "today no discourse expresses the stakes of freedom better than comedy... [which] provides one of the most important sources for a philosophical discussio…
Family Matters
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Family Matters
Irony in the Age of Empire
Comedy, from social ridicule to the unruly laughter of the carnival, provides effective tools for reinforcing social patterns of domination as well as weapons for emancipation. In Irony in the Age of Empire, Cynthia Willett asks: What could embody liberation better than laughter? Why do the oppressed laugh? What vision does the comic world prescribe? For Willett, the comic trumps standard liberal accounts of freedom by drawing attention to bodies…
Ground zero for a post-moral ethics in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Julia Kristeva’s melancholic
The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter
Despite the perception that feminists lack a sense of humor, women have long used ridicule and other comic tactics to subvert conventional norms. In fact, post-structuralist perspectives on power and knowledge give us reason to suspect that forms of humor or irony might be a more appropriate means of philosophical suasion than fact or argument alone. Given that social norms shape cognitive habits, the disrupting of social norms through ridicule m…
Going to Bed White and Waking Up Arab
Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries a…
The Sting of Shame
Our allegiance to individualism sanctions the insult, with or without humor, to a significant extent through free speech rights. But what if the sting of symbolic aggression––as seemingly minor as an insult dressed up in the pleasantries of a joke––in fact accounts in many instances for the more acute pain of the physical assault? To be sure, physical assaults can harm material well-being. But what if a dimension of violence cannot be understood …
Uproarious
A radical new approach to humor, where traditional targets become its agents Humor is often dismissed as cruel ridicule or harmless fun. But what if laughter is a vital force to channel rage against patriarchy, Islamophobia, or mass incarceration? To create moments of empathy and dialogue between Black Lives Matter and the police? These and other such questions are at the heart of this powerful reassessment of humor. Placing theorists in conversa…
Uproarious
Placing theorists in conversation with comedians, *Uproarious* offers a full-frontal approach to the very foundation of comedy and its profound political impact. Here Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett address the four major theories of humorâ superiority, relief, incongruity, and social playâ through the lens of feminist and game-changing comics Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Hannah Gadsby, Hari Kondabolu, and Tig Notaro
The Political Force of the Comedic
Sociology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works)