Henri Bergson "Laughter" Review: Theory of Humor Series, part 28

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include other topics, such as evolutionary literary criticism and the theory of humor. This being April Fools Day, I give you a post about humor. Enjoy.

In my investigation, I have read the following essay, and I will analyze it here.

Bergson, Henri. "Laughter" 1900. This essay can be found in many places.

(What self-respecting, or even self-denigrating, theorist of humor can go without commenting on the work of Henri Bergson? I mean, really!)

Bergson is usually included in the history of the theory of humor in part because he was in his day a well-respected philosopher, and not many philosophers have devoted some of their musings to humor. (One could say that humor is a-musing. Cue the rim-shot.) Bergson may also be popular in brief histories of the theory of humor because his theory is at times narrow. That narrowness makes it easy both to summarize and to criticize.

As a philosopher, Bergson heavily influenced Marcel Proust, so students of literature are more likely to read Bergson than to read other middling philosophers. (Bergson is no Plato.) Bergson's ideas are of especial interest to students of John Kennedy Toole because Proust influenced Evelyn Waugh, and Waugh in his turn influenced John Kennedy Toole.

Bergson begins his essay with a broad definition of humor which covers many cases and is similar to the theory that I have been using. (For my earlier blog entry summarizing my current theory of humor, click here.) However, Bergson, like any philosopher, then tries to fit all phenomena into his philosophical structure, and, in order to shoehorn humor into the framework, he has to narrow humor's scope. This narrower theory then obviously does not cover every possible case of humor, or even most cases. His theory starts out with promising validity across many instances of humor, but then it narrows and almost becomes a parody of itself. Despite its narrower form, for certain categories of humor, his theory hits the nail on the head (or on the thumb, as it were).

To put Bergson's ideas on humor into perspective, it helps to know something about the rest of his philosophy (though I am not an expert). He argues that human life is driven by a life-force, or a vitality. Mechanical devices lack vitality. Bergson wrote at a time when the industrial working conditions for the European proletariet were particularly brutal. It was at a time when Marx wrote that the worker was alienated from his own existence, and Bergson argued that the industrial existence of so many workers was being drained of vitality. Chaplin's movie Modern Times exemplifies this perspective.

In Bergson's system, humor is generated by envisioning a human being as a physical object without inner life or vitality. The man slipping on the banana peel ceases to be human and becomes merely a physical object, crashing to the ground. The person who goes through life acting robotically is ridiculous. (As Ionescu said, "If you want to turn tragedy into comedy, speed it up.") The ridicule and laughter are social cues to that person to correct his behavior; they signal to the person to stop operating like a robot on autopilot.

There are many aspects of this theory that work well. First, there is incongruity. The dichotomy between "human as a dignified personage" and "human as airborne object" often lead to competing linguistic scripts and incongruities. Second, there is disparagement. The physical human as object has less dignity than the person as a social actor in the abstract, and the sudden reminder of our physical nature has an aspect of belittlement. Third, there is a social function. The idea that laughter has a role to correct or modify behavior acknowledges humor's social functions.

However, it should be clear that many instances of humor do not fall into Bergson's narrow, mechanistic definition of what is funny (dry wit for example). Further, Bergson--convinced of the correctness of his entire philosophical system--insists that only this class of events are humorous. In a sense, his obsessive views themselves become comical. While his appeal to creativity and vitality are appealing--and his special class of events really are funny (just watch a Charlie Chaplin movie)--it is easy for even a two-bit critic like myself to refute his attempt at a comprehensive theory of humor.

Désolé Henri, pas de cigare!

Ignatius and Jay Gatsby: The Occasional series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 32

In The Great Gatsby, the narrator, Nick, has a low opinion of Jay Gatsby until he discovers that Gatsby is not amassing wealth and status for its own sake; rather, he is doing it in the quixotic pursuit of a woman. Suddenly, Nick finds Gatsby intriguing: "He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor."

Judith Saunders foregrounds this aspect of the novel in her essay on the evolutionary aspects of The Great Gatsby (citation below). Gatsby's wealth is a courtship display, much like the feathers of a peacock. Its purpose is to attract Daisy. For my earlier blog entry on Saunders' investigation, click here.

Naturally, when someone uses the word womb in a literary context, I think of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. That novel has more than one symbolic womb: Gus Levy is trapped in a womb from which he escapes, and, at the beginning of the novel, Ignatius Reilly enjoys occupying the womb of his mother's house and fights to stay there as she tries to eject him. Confederacy also features a relationship between Ignatius Reilly and Myrna Mynkoff that can be read as a carnivalesque parody of a stereotypical romance. Despite its ridiculous quality, could Ignatius's behavior in the novel be a courtship display, much as Gatsby's display of wealth?

In Confederacy, both Ignatius's Crusade for Moorish Dignity and his efforts to lead a political revolution of gays are undertaken because of the provocation of Myrna's letters. He wants to impress her. In the end of the novel, Myrna comes to New Orleans and rescues Ignatius. He would never admit to courting her, but he was trying to get her attention. In a backwards sort of way, his courtship has succeeded.

Saunders, Judith P. "The Great Gatsby: An Unusual Case of Mate Poaching," American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018): 138-174.

Thesis: Compare Ignatius Reilly to Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is undertaking a courtship, but is Ignatius doing so as well? Gatsby's efforts end tragically. Ignatius's efforts end comically.

Ignatius and Cosmo Kramer: The Occasional series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 31

Many of the entries in this series focus on some character who is similar to Ignatius Reilly or to the plot of Confederacy of Dunces. This is not one of those entries. Well, not entirely.

Ignatius Reilly is a slapstick hero. He conforms to all nine of the "Personality Traits of the Hero in a Physical Comedy" as detailed in the documentary "Laughing Matters" (see my blog entry from July of 2015). However, Ignatius is psychologically repressed. He defends his virginity. Despite being a physical comedian, he is learned, with intellectual pomposity.

Cosmo Kramer, a character on the 1990s sitcom "Seinfeld," is also a physical comedian. He falls, he crashes. He is an innocent fool who acts on his desires without worrying what others might think. He is not overly intellectual, and he is not pompous. On the show, many women are attracted to his honest expression of emotion (at least for brief relationships), much to the frustration of the other male characters. In season five, episode eleven, this sexual charisma is called "the kavorka."

Ignatius and Kramer can function in similar ways in a farcical plot. Both of them generate chaos in the social group which can reorder relationships. As I have stated in detail before, comedies often feature a small group where some members are lower in the status hierarchy than they should be, held down by a blocking character. The comic chaos reorders the relationships with the blocking character losing status and the deserving oppressed rising in status.

To give an example from Seinfeld, in season three, episode seven, called "The Cafe," George is trying to impress the woman he is dating, who is an educational psychologist, even though he does badly on intelligence tests. He agrees to take an IQ test, but then he passes the test out the window to Elaine, who is good at taking such tests. Elaine goes to the cafe to take the test. Kramer comes into the cafe, interacts with Elaine, and spills food on the test. George cannot pretend that he took the test. His false presentation as a smart person is undone by the chaos generated by the slapstick hero. His status is comically lowered in the estimation of a potential mate, thanks to the slapstick hero.

Thesis: Compare Ignatius Reilly to Cosmo Kramer. They are very different but can function in similar ways within the plot of a comic narrative.

Commedia dell'arte and Confederacy of Dunces ... Not!: The Occasional series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 30

A few years ago, a scholarly journal (which will remain nameless for confidentiality) asked me to review a submission related to the novel Confederacy of Dunces. I dutifully read the paper and critiqued it. The submitted paper explored the relationship between the Renaissance theatrical tradition of Commedia dell'arte and Confederacy of Dunces.

I am no expert on commedia dell'arte, but I have studied the subject a little, and I have contemplated writing a paper on Confederacy of Dunces and commedia dell'arte myself. The author(s) of the paper I reviewed described commedia dell'arte well. They then tried to argue that Confederacy of Dunces was an example of commedia dell'arte. What struck me was that, based on their own articulation of the genre, Confederacy of Dunces is not an example of commedia dell'arte. In my critique, I praised their attempt, but argued that they should reverse their conclusion, and I detailed why.

I realize that negative results are less likely to be reported, whether they are in the physical sciences, the social sciences, or elsewhere, but they are important to the scholarly endeavor. They are not glamorous, but they are important. The paper I reviewed has not, to my knowledge, been published, nor has any other paper on the topic. Still, such a study is worth doing.

Thesis: Describe commedia dell'arte and show why Confederacy of Dunces is not best described through the framework of that theatrical genre. This thesis cannot be handled in a run-of-the-mill term paper, but at least a master's thesis.

Yes, Those Bloody Monkeys Again; de Waal's *Different*, Part 2

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include evolutionary literary criticism. This blog entry relates to evolutionary psychology.

I have been enjoying the recent book by Frans de Waal called Different: Gender through the Eyes of a Primatologist (Norton, 2022). In my previous blog entry about de Waal, I discussed de Waal's perspective on status hierarchies and egalitarianism. Here I will tackle the main topic of his book: gender and sex.

de Waal threads a tricky path through a topic that is politically charged. de Waal strongly distances himself from those thinkers who would argue, first, that men are, in some fundamental sense, superior to women and, second, that our legal structures should reflect that fact. He uses as a negative example the influential study published in the 1930s by the primatologist Solly Zuckerman called Monkey Hill. The Monkey Hill study seemed to imply that humans, if left to their primate nature, would create a society where life is brutish, nasty, and short. de Waal shows that primates do not generally behave that way, and that the observations from primatology do not limit human nature to the Monkey Hill stereotype. He is inclined toward a more liberal interpretation of the data from primatology. Despite this liberal leaning, de Waal insists that there really are biologically-derived sex differences among us. The title of his book is, after all, Different.

Some thinkers who are opposed to the ideological position of male superiority go so far as to deny that biology has anything to do with human gender. de Waal argues that this position is also extreme and flat out wrong. An example that de Waal uses is Judith Butler's claim from the 1980s that gender is not a (biological) fact but a social construct. de Waal gives many examples from both humans and other primates to show that, in fact, biology matters a great deal. Most of the book probes the relationship of biological nature and cultural nurture. He argues that primates mature so slowly so that their young can learn a complex culture. Our biological nature is to be culturally nurtured. One thesis he puts forward is that among primates the young are attracted to imitate adults of their own sex, and they take on gender roles through self-socialization, not through explicit instruction.

de Waal contrasts humans with those primates to which humans are most closely related: the chimpanzees and the bonobos. [Note: de Waal uses the term hominid to refer to humans, chimps, and bonobos. I think paleontologists would have an issue with that label.] Chimps have a patriarchal and sometimes violent society, while bonobos have a more peaceful, matriarchal society. Even within the more male-dominated chimp social groups, females exert political power and show leadership.

For example, within the group of chimpanzees at the Burgers' Zoo, the alpha female Mama was looked to by the others as the actor who had the interests of the group as a whole most at heart, a group function which de Waal calls the "control role." Warring males within that group would seek Mama out to effect reconciliation.

de Waal agrees (at least in part) with the fundamental conceptual division that is the basis of modern gender studies; namely, that one can differentiate biological sex from socially-defined gender roles. "Gender refers to the learned overlays that turn a biological female into a woman and a biological male into a man" (12). He acknowledges the diversity of sex and gender, such as those persons who are intersex or transsexual, but he maintains, "Nevertheless, for the majority of people, gender and sex are congruent. Despite their different meanings, these two terms remain joined at the hip" (13). In this way, he diverges from gender theorists who believe that gender is completely divorced from sex. Because gender in most cases is intimately linked to the biological fact of sex, de Waal argues that gender is not entirely socially constructed. Margaret Mead is often seen as the originator of the 'gender is cultural' concept, so de Waal quotes from Mead's writings to show her support for his position.

One of de Waal's novel arguments in this debate comes from the study of transsexuals: "The existence of transgender people challenges the notion of gender as an arbitrary social construct. Gender roles may be cultural products, but gender identity itself seems to arise from within" (56). He argues that gender identity is strongly formed early in a person's development and that the existence of transsexuals refutes Butler's social construct theory.

de Waal is sympathetic to the concern about gender inequality, but he rejects the idea that the way to achieve gender equality is to claim that gender is a choice. The focus of efforts toward equality need to be on the second word in the phrase: inequality. "Whether the push for gender equality will succeed doesn't hinge on the outcome of the eternal debate about real or imagined sex differences. Equality doesn't require similarity" (14).

de Waal's perspective is important for evolutionary psychologists and therefore evolutionary literary critics because gender and sexuality are important components of those fields, and he critiques their treatment with deep observational experience. He directly criticizes naive versions of the theory of sexual strategies, which he refers to as the Bateman's Principle. He strongly criticizes the Thornhill and Palmer theory about of rape as a natural phenomenon. While he insists that biology, including in-born tendencies shaped by evolution, is important, he also emphasizes that behavior is highly flexible and dependent on context, especially cultural context.

In the last chapter, (pages 310-311) de Waal lists human psychological patterns that do seem to be strongly governed by our evolutionary biology and those that do not seem to be. For those behaviors that are strongly biologically based, he argues that they are not stereotypical but archetypical. In this category, females are more nurturing of young, and males are more status-oriented and violent. Behaviors that other theorists have attributed to biology, but which do not seem to be, include: leadership skills, tendencies to form status hierarchies, tendencies toward sexual promiscuity, and competitiveness.

de Waal argues that humans do have unique aspects of our evolutionary psychology that are not shared by even our closest primate cousins. First, he argues that pair-bonded male-female relationships are part of our biology. "I believe it is this pair-bond that sets us apart from the apes more than anything else" (275). Second, he points out that it is not rare among many species of primates for females to cooperate with one another, but it is rare for males to do so. "Male teamwork is a hallmark of human society" (231).

de Waal discusses the fact that there are deep and subconscious differences in how all people treat women and men. The people who know this fact best are transsexuals who have experienced interpersonal behavior first as one gender and then as the other. He describes some of their observations but then emphasizes that this discussion is not an endorsement of the biased behavior they describe. "Instead, it highlights how deeply primate sexual dimorphism sticks in our subconscious" (252). One example de Waal offers of this deep inequality is a trolley problem experiment in which the subject can imagine pushing a man or a woman onto the trolley tracks to save five other people. Ninety percent of both sexes would prefer to push the man rather than the woman (180). Women may suffer indignities such as not be taken seriously in a debate in part because of their high-pitched voices, but men are the preferred sex for cannon fodder.

One of the book's theses is that a diversity of sexual orientations and sexual identities are natural. de Waal devotes one entire chapter to the bonobos, whose social groups feature a high degree of female-female sex, and he has a later chapter on same-sex sex throughout the natural world. He rejects the claim that this is unnatural. With regard to sexual identity, he cites research that suggests that, in some transsexuals, brain development leads to brain structures similar to the other sex, thereby indicating a biological basis for a transsexual's early and strongly held perception that he or she has a gender other than their sex.

The final chapter of the book discusses philosophical dualism, the idea that the mind and body are fundamentally separate. de Waal rejects this philosophical position. He believes that it comes from male orientation toward the world. "This dualism is quintessentially masculine, concerned less with the human mind than with the male mind" (313). He finds it ironic that second-wave feminists, by arguing that gender is a social construct, have adopted a form of masculine dualism. Gina Rippon once protested against arguments from biology by saying "Not those bloody monkeys again!" de Waal's response is, yes, those bloody monkeys again.

The Egalitarian Delusion, de Waal's Different, Part 1

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include evolutionary literary criticism. This blog entry relates to social psychology and therefore evolutionary psychology.

I have been enjoying the recent book by Frans de Waal called Different: Gender through the Eyes of a Primatologist (Norton, 2022). I find that de Waal has many wise observations about the subject of sexuality and gender. After finishing the book, I am inclined to think that you should only listen to someone's opinion on the nature of human gender if that person is a primatologist. This blog entry, possibly the first of several, is not about gender per se.

In the third chapter of the book, de Waal anchors the chapter on the fact that he was one of six brothers who had no sisters. He discusses some of the physiological differences between males and females. Most of the way through the chapter, however, he suddenly gets on the topic of his student days, when he was part of revolutionary student organizations that protested against authority and hierarchy. The student leaders claimed that they could overthrow the power structure and found an egalitarian society.

Meanwhile, de Waal was studying a colony of chimpanzees in the Burger's Zoo. There, he observed dominance hierarchies. As he writes, "In the evenings, I'd listen to bohemian-looking ideologues holding forth on the evil of hierarchies, while during the days, I'd observe power plays in the chimpanzee colony. This alternation induced a serious dilemma due to the contradictory messages. ... In the end, I found behavior to be so much more convincing than words that I placed my trust in the chimps." (76).

As for the revolutionaries, "Despite all their talk of equality, my fellow revolutionaries exhibited a distinct hierarchy, with a few driven young men at the top." (77) de Waal concludes, "We collectively suffered an egalitarian delusion. We engaged in fiercely democratic rhetoric, yet our actual behavior told a different story." (78)

de Waal then recounts that he was later hired into the Psychology Department at Emory University. He describes a fundamental problem faced by psychologists: they belong to the very group of organisms they are trying to study. "This explains why psychology textbooks read almost like ideological tracts. Between the lines, we gather that racism is deplorable, sexism is wrong, aggression is / to be eliminated, and hierarchies are archaic." (78-79)

He quickly adds, "For me, this was a shock, not because I necessarily believe the opposite, but because such opinions interfere with science. ... Every time I received a psychology textbook from a publisher, I made a point of checking the index for entries on power and dominance. Most of the time, these terms were not even listed, as if they didn’t apply to the social behavior of Homo sapiens." (79)

de Waal found Machiavelli's The Prince very informative of the behavior he was observing among the chimpanzees. He concludes, "The egalitarian delusion of the social sciences is all the more astounding since we all work at a university, which is one huge power structure." (79)

This studious act of ignoring the status hierarchy we are part of can be seen in texts on evolutionary psychology. The textbook by David Buss strongly features status and dominance hierarchies, while the textbook by Workman and Reader ignores them, as I wrote in June of 2022. I like de Waal's treatment of this topic, because he is keenly aware of the limits of social dominance. Still, it is easy to see why one might want to ignore status hierarchies, despite their centrality to human behavior. de Waal himself admits that conservative politicians mischaracterized the nature of the Alpha Male in his book Chimpanzee Politics. He became famous in the 1990s precisely because his discussion on dominance was distorted.

Explication versus Interpretation, a Lesson in Literary Theory

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include the theory of humor and evolutionary literary criticism. This blog entry is strictly about literary theory, but it uses one of my studies of Confederacy as an example.

I have been reading an old textbook on literary theory, to discipline my mind while thinking about evolutionary literary criticism. The textbook is Jeremy Hawthorn. Unlocking the Text: Fundamental Problems in Literary Theory. London: Edward Arnold, 1987. I like this text. It is clear and incisive, IMHO. It promotes an understanding of literary theory that studies the entire process of literary production and use, not just the text itself.

In the text, Hawthorn makes a distinction between explication and interpretation. "In English, 'explication' normally denotes the uncovering of what we may refer to as a literary work's 'primary meaning', as distinct from those deeper levels of meaning and signficance produced by interpretation" (23). The primary meaning relates more to what the words mean, the sentences mean, what direct references the text holds, etc. The interpretation is more abstract, and it also might be more creative, such as when an actor interprets the words in a screenplay.

I tried to think of an example of the distinction, and one immediately came to me. In my 2012 article "The Dialectic of American Humanism", I begin by showing that A Confederacy of Dunces can be viewed as a detailed parody of the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. Then I argue that at a deeper level, the novel can be seen as offering up two versions of humanism, and engaging them in a dialectic, hence my article's title.

My claim "that Confederacy is a parody of Ficino" is established by a detailed mapping of particulars in the novel to points in Ficino's philosophy. Therefore, such a claim is an explication. My claim "that Confederacy is a dialectic among competing versions of humanism" is more of an interpretation. It is less tied to the words on the page and is more abstract.