Comedy as dissonant rhetoric

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11340992
AutoresSimon Lambek (0000-0003-1067-9566, University of British Columbia, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume49
Fascículo9
Páginas1107-1127
Data de publicação2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPhilosophy & Social Criticism (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0191-4537 • E-ISSN: 1461-734X
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01914537221079677
PMID37846294
OpenAlexW4224236438
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas24

This article considers the normative and critical value of popular comedy. I begin by assembling and evaluating a range of political theory literature on comedy. I argue that popular comedy can be conducive to both critical and transformative democratic effects, but that these effects are contingent on the way comedic performances are received by audiences. I illustrate this by means of a case study of a comedic climate change ‘debate’ from the television show, Last Week Tonight. Drawing from recent scholarship on deliberation, judgment and rhetoric, I highlight both critical and transformative dimensions of the performance. I attribute these to the vignette’s likely reception, which I describe as ‘dissonant’ – unresolved, affectively turbulent and aesthetically attuned. I argue that comedy is uniquely positioned to spur such ‘dissonant’ modes of engagement and, in so doing, to promote acknowledgement and reflective judgment

Aesthetics · Art · Comedy · Consonance and dissonance · Deliberation · Democracy · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Normative · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Scholarship · Sociology · Transformative learning · Value (mathematics · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Humor Studies and Applications · Law · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy