ABOUT THIS BOOK

Only a Joke Can Save Us presents an innovative and comprehensive theory of comedy. Using a wealth of examples from high and popular culture and with careful attention to the treatment of humor in philosophy, Todd McGowan locates the universal source of comedy in the interplay of the opposing concepts lack and excess.

After reviewing the treatment of comedy in the work of philosophers as varied as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Alenka Zupancic, McGowan, working in a psychoanalytic framework, demonstrates that comedy results from the deployment of lack and excess, whether in contrast, juxtaposition, or interplay.

Illustrating the power and flexibility of this framework with analyses of films ranging from Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers classics to Dr. Strangelove and Groundhog Day, McGowan shows how humor can reveal gaps in being and gaps in social order. Scholarly yet lively and readable, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a groundbreaking examination of the enigmatic yet endlessly fascinating experience of humor and comedy.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

TODD MCGOWAN is a professor of film and television studies at the University of Vermont.

REVIEWS

"Only a Joke Can Save Us offers a master class in psychoanalysis masquerading as a master class in comedy. McGowan’s theory yields powerful, persuasive, original insights into examples as varied as classic cinema, Jewish jokes, Kierkegaard, and Shakespeare. This master class will be thoroughly enjoyed by philosophers, cultural critics, affect theorists, and psychoanalytic thinkers alike." —Anna Kornbluh, author of Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Realist Form

"Comedy is a complicated subject and, to McGowan's credit, this book is relatively short on jargon and rich in instructive examples, which makes it refreshingly accessible for those not deeply versed in the works of Freud or Lacan... the book makes an interesting contribution to the discussion, one that is certainly worthwhile for a first foray into Continental-style, theoretical work on comedy. Recommended." —CHOICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments                                                      iii

Introduction: The Similar and the Dissimilar              1

1. Lack and Excess                                                    28

2. Theory and Opposition                                          78

3. Tragedy and Pathos                                               106

4. Philosophy and the Finite                                      139

5. Signification and Desire                                        179

6. Distance and Proximity                                         206

7. Outside and Inside                                                233

8. Politics and Comedy                                              263

Conclusion: Speculation and Levity                           292

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