Theory of Humor Series, part 19, Gervais and Wilson and the Origins of Laughter

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

I discuss here the following article:

Gervais, M. and D. S. Wilson (2005). The evolution and functions of laughter and humor: A synthetic approach. Quarterly Review of Biology, 80, 395-430.

I like this article and think it is important. Gervais and Wilson review extensive evidence for the evolution of laughter and humor, looking at physiological evidence, neurological evidence, and psychological evidence. While it is not the centerpiece of their paper, they include Wilson's "multilevel selection theory" and the observations that many of the evolutionary benefits of laughter and humor accrue to groups rather than individuals. While in general I agree with them, I think that they do not place enough weight on the social function of humor in adjusting group status hierarchies, which indicates an even larger group-level benefit. In their speculation about how laughter and humor evolved, they do not fully embrace the group-level selection pressure as the primary driving force. I would be willing to go that far.

Gervais and Wilson open their investigation with empirical evidence that laughter is an evolved instinct. Cross-cultural studies show the common feature eliciting Duchenne laughter is incongruity and unexpectedness. This laughter usually involves both a playful frame and a second interpretation of the event, which they call "an alternate type of intelligibility" (398). Here is a quote: "There is thus an intuitive family resemblance among the different proximate causes of Duchenne laughter, such that they can be characterized as sharing a single form or structure: a sudden unexpected change in events that is perceived to be at once not serious and in a social context—that is, nonserious social incongruity" (NSI) (399). NSI includes protohumor such as tickling, play, physical mishaps. This conclusion supports both the incongruity aspect and the social aspect of all humor.

I do not disagree with that view. In fact, the more I study the issue, the closer my own views move toward this conclusion. Back in February, 2018, the sound bite version of my theory of humor was "incongruity plus disparagement." Now, my theory is roughly "incongruity and social / emotional aspects often in a playful context, and the social is often disparagement. The emotions are often incongruous emotions; the motive for producing the humor is often a social function." Not exactly a sound bite. But it can be reduced to a true sound bite: "incongruity plus social." Or Gervais and Wilson's phrase "nonserious social incongruity."

The reason for my focus on disparagement is based on social psychology. The human social environment includes built-in but dynamic status hierarchies. A serious challenge to the status hierarchy can include violence and dehumanization and may cause a social group to split. The fact that most laughter is in a nonserious environment means that there is no direct and violent dominance struggle going on. A playful individual is usually one who is submissive. Because some humor can disparage its target to the point of terrorizing the target or inciting violence, I think that not all humor can be called nonserious, so I prefer my "incongruity plus social."

Gervais and Wilson offer a list of the many positive social functions of humor and laughter (404), including the reduction of in-group aggression, which I consider of huge group-level benefit. They note that laughter is a social lubricant, increasing in-group feelings, etc.

Gervais and Wilson discuss the contagious nature of laughter in relation to mirror neurons and the positive psychology of mitigating tension and building social bonds. They conclude, "Duchenne laughter is essentially a medium for emotional contagion operating through an intersubjective mirror system" (423). But they ignore that the content of much that is humorous has the effect of lowering social status.

They also discuss evolutionary psychology. The central question from this perspective is: why is it adaptive in the presence of NSI to elicit play from an individual? They bring in Wilson's multilevel selection theory. The social bonding benefits of laughter and play accrue to the group level. Laughter incurs low costs for promoting group beneficial behavior.

They offer hypotheses about the origins of laughter, suggesting that laughter developed before language. Reducing stress on the savannah, humor might have been an ersatz grooming activity. Dunbar hypothesized that language was an ersatz grooming behavior, but laughter fits the profile better than language. As the brain developed more sophistication, the positive emotion might become decontextualized from actual play and tickling.

Gervais and Wilson argue that there is a benefit to the stress relief of signaling that the group is in a safe situation. They see the status hierarchy functions of laughter coming late in human evolution. Joyous Duchenne laughter came first; it was then co-opted for hierarchy maintenance by non-Duchenne laughter (418). I disagree with them here. I believe that, for humans, one of the biggest dangers and sources of anxiety is being on the business end of the social hierarchy. So the status deflation of disparagement humor is a huge emotional relief. So humor whose social function is status lowering can be genuine, Duchenne laughter.

In short, I think this is an important paper for pulling together the many threads of evidence in the biological and psychological literature in order to analyze the evolution of laughter and humor. I think that they could have gone further with the group-level benefits, specifically the social function of adjusting status hierarchies, which should have been a major activity as humans evolved into an species capable of altruism due to group-level selection pressures. I think that group-level selection could be the primary driver of the evolution of humor from primitive pant-hoots of primates during mock aggression.

Theory of Humor Series, part 18, Rhetorical Event by David Wright review

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

In preparing for this study, I discovered a Ph.D. thesis that had a chapter discussing exactly my topic, the humor in A Confederacy of Dunces. I do not want to spend much time in my own paper discussing this dissertation (or perhaps even mentioning it), so this blog will allow me the space to do so. The author and I take very different approaches to the problem. The citation to the thesis is:

Wright, David A. The Rhetorical Event of Modern Southern Humor: A Requisite Element in Discourse. Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2013.

To Dr. Wright:

Please do not worry that my criticism will hurt your reputation. In my online Bibliography of Obscure Toole Criticism, the text I had the lowest opinion of--Ron Bell's thesis on nihilism in Toole--gets the most clickthrough traffic. So I did Bell a favor by criticizing him. Perhaps my criticism will help your exposure, too.

Part I: Theory of Humor

In Wright's dissertation, he begins by reviewing major categories of theories of humor. But rather than selecting one, he declares that the variety of them cannot be resolved into a single, definitive theory of humor. He then says he will use his own rhetorical theory of humor, which he defines as picking and choosing among the categories and using whichever element he finds most useful for the task at hand (10). This untheory is a meta-version of some modern literary theories, which value texts which are unresolvable and transgressive and which violate boundaries of genre, power, and gender. Because Wright sees humor as being elusive and unresolvable to a single theory, the rhetorical untheory of humor is the solution.

To his credit, Wright's rhetorical theory of humor does put the social aspects of humor front and center. Humor does have a social function as a core aspect, and Wright's examination of performers and audiences and how they negotiate the meaning of comic acts is laudable. While I disagree with some of the details of his examination, this focus on the social really is better than the cognitive theory of humor put forward by Hurley, Dennett, and Adams. Better to have some social functions described than no social functions at all.

In surveying existing theories of humor, Wright describes four major categories: 1) incongruity theories, 2) superiority theories, 3) Freudian theories, and 4) cognitive theories. He claims one and four are different. To me, one and four are two parts of the same thing. As for Freud, Freud actually had two different and opposing theories of humor, but the one Wright discusses is a subset of the category of release theories of humor. The theory I use--that humor has two fundamental aspects, incongruity and a social function--can handle most of his categories.

Early in the dissertation, Wright claims that he will devote a chapter each to these four different categories as related to southern humor; however, the dissertation does not focus on them. Instead, it veers off into more of a rhetorical analysis of comic performance. If I had to guess, I would suspect that, when he read Linda Hutcheon's Irony's Edge for chapter two, he shifted the focus away from a catalog of examples of theories of humor and toward an analysis of the relationship between the humor producer and the audience.

For my purposes of defining humor, chapter two's attempt at studying the incongruity within southern humor is worth examining. Specifically, when Wright goes to apply his incongruity theory of humor, both of his examples also strongly feature disparagement, which is more appropriately handled by a theory of humor focused on humor's social function, such as a superiority theory of humor.

The first example of incongruity is the episode of The Beverly Hillbillies where Jethro Clampett is psychoanalyzed. Wright correctly studies the incongruity, but then off-handedly acknowledges that the episode is a put-down of "the pompous psychiatrist" (53), i.e. superiority. The second example is one where Barney Fife of The Andy Griffith Show complains about his status being diminished, but he does it in a way that further diminishes his status (55). While it does feature incongruity, it also features a social lowering, which fits a superiority theory of humor. Thus, in his chapter applying the incongruity theory of humor, Wright uses examples that have both incongruity and the social function of status lowering.

Chapter three studies the persona projected by stand-up comedians, southern comedians in particular. Chapter four examines the role of the audience in the comic performance, both as a passive body reacting to the rhetorical acts of the comedian and as the body passing judgment on those acts. Finally, chapter five studies Confederacy of Dunces in the context of the grotesque and its transgressive qualities.

Part II: Specifically about Confederacy of Dunces

When reading the chapter of the thesis on Confederacy, it struck me that Wright did not understand the book at all. In that sense, Ignatius Reilly has scored a triumph: he has confounded the budding Dr. Wright. And considering that some of the reasoning in the dissertation is similar to logic used by Myrna Minkoff, it is a double triumph for Ignatius. But on to the details.

To start off the chapter, it is obvious that Wright dislikes the book and strongly disapproves of it, quoting a theorist on the potentially harmful effects of humor. He seems not to understand that Ignatius's racism, sexism, and homophobia are being ridiculed by the text, so he thinks the book itself is racist, sexist, and homophobic (139). Because these are cultural positions he opposes, he hates the book. Although he says that Ignatius is hilarious, he also describes him as horrifying, disgusting, and despicable (148). It is doubly ironic that Wright uses Hutcheon's Irony’s Edge, which is a book that warns of the political risk of recipients who misunderstand attempts at irony, because he then proceeds to miss the glaringly obvious ironic gap between Toole and Ignatius.

(I had for years wondered how Confederacy, with its stereotypic portrayal of gays, was viewed by members of the gay community, but in 2017 I had a conversation with Stewart Van Cleve, historian of gay Minnesota, and he opined that Confederacy was one of his favorite novels. Clearly, not everyone shares Wright's view that Toole’s book is harmful to contemporary understandings on race, gender, and sexual orientation.)

Wright tries to use the carnival theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to study Confederacy. First, I will review his use of Bakhtin's comic mechanisms, then I will reflect on Bakhtin in general. For my own study of Bakhtin's theory of humor, see Theory of Humor Series, Part 16.

Wright takes three comic mechanisms from Bakhtin and analyzes Confederacy’s use of them. They are: 1) ritual spectacles, 2) comic verbal compositions, and 3) curses and popular blazons. For the first, he declares, “In a very real sense, Ignatius is one sustained walking, eating, pontificating, belching ritual spectacle that draws the somewhat episodic novel together” (150) Wright focuses on violations of the norms of decorum of the comic form and argues that Ignatius violates those norms both on the high-brow and on the low-brow end of the spectrum.

For the second mechanism, Wright points to Ignatius’s journal entries, letters, and scraps of attempted scholarship as comic compositions. Wright notes “The key to Ignatius’s character, and in some ways the novel as a whole, is that he does not mean this letter or his other writings as jokes whatsoever” (155) His point is valid: while Ignatius acts as a court-fool or Lord of Misrule, he does not see himself performing that role. For the third mechanism, curses and stereotypic labels, Wright compares Ignatius’s profusion of verbal abuse to the circumspect sarcasm of Burma Jones.

Unfortunately, Wright misses part of the point of Bakhtin and ends up supporting theories of carnival that contrast with Bakhtin. For Bakhtin, carnival was a continuous people's revolt against the established political hierarchy. The class inversion that is often featured in carnival-like festivities was not a temporary release that allows the official order to continue. Instead, it is a second life, in which hierarchy is abolished, a parallel reality which reveals itself when it cannot be contained in the town square.

Umberto Eco criticized Bakhtin's ideas and argued that carnival does indeed act as a release valve, allowing the oppressed of society a brief holiday carefully controlled by the social hierarchy. So it is with some surprise that one finds Wright claiming Bakhtin as his theoretical framework but then saying that carnival is a social release valve (149). He calls his chapter "Releasing the pyloric valve," and he sees Ignatius as a release valve for the other characters.

An even older tradition of understanding carnival comes from the school of anthropology that culminated in James Frazer's Golden Bough. That tradition featured an individual who represented the god of agriculture. That god was to die at the end of the year and become reborn, renewing life to the earth for the next planting. Roman Saturnalia was such a tradition, in which an individual was selected as the Lord of Misrule, who oversaw festival inversion of the social order and who was put to death at the end of the festival. Other such traditions featured a scapegoat who was subjected to mock death or who was expelled from the community in order to renew it. I have pointed out in Evidence of influences that Frazer's model was the one available to Toole when he wrote Confederacy, and in fact Ignatius identifies himself as a scapegoat, and he is expelled at the end of the book, as the community is renewed.

Bakhtin's vision of carnival was quite different from this sacrificial scapegoat. His carnival features all participants exchanging abuse, heckling each other in a process of rebirth through the lower bodily stratum, which features the grotesque. There is no expelled or killed representative of a god dying and reborn. Ironically, Wright cites Bakhtin but arrives at Frazer’s conclusion, “For growth and change to happen in this story, in this place and time, the grotesque symbol must be purged”(156-7).

Wright sees Ignatius as a release valve for the rest of the society around him (155). But that is not the case. Ignatius is the agent of chaos, upsetting corrupt social relations, such as those of Mrs. Levy and Lana Lee, so that a healthier social order can occur after he is expelled from the community. Ignatius is the chaos before the rebirth. But Wright is correct that the final renewal occurs because the other characters finally act with agency and purpose (156). And he is correct that Burma Jones is the counterpoint character to Ignatius (159).

Wright ends by saying that any resolution to the novel must come from the reader. Which means that he could not find a resolution in the text itself, despite the fact that the book features a classic comic resolution for everyone except Ignatius. He thinks we are supposed to stand in harsh judgment of the characters in the book (160), when the opposite is true. It is clear that he did not understand what Toole was trying to do, and, as I say, the novel confounded and repulsed him.

Score one for Ignatius Reilly.

Theory of Humor Series, part 17, Hutcheson, Bergson, Koestler, Spencer: How many theories of humor are there?

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

For a quick recap, humor has IMHO two fundamental aspects: incongruity, a contrast that causes the brain to try to resolve a puzzle of interpretation, and social functions including especially disparagement, which is a non-violent way to adjust the dynamics of a group status hierarchy, an adjustment which can be either gentle or aggressive. I will try to refrain from calling it MY theory of humor, as the theory is largely pieced together from various strands from others.

In preparing my current book chapter, I have been going back and reading the original text of various humor theorists through the years. Earlier, I had been relying on modern historians of the theory of humor to distill for me the wisdom of the earlier humor theorists. In those histories, each theorist is given a few sentences. Hobbes: sudden glory of superiority. Bergson: human as automaton. Etc. Then the historian laments that there are such a multiplicity of theories, none of them has fully capture humor, UNTIL NOW. Hurley, Dennett, and Adams make this claim. Others have also. And I cannot deny that I am to a certain degree in the same business.

Reading the original theorists has given me a surprise. Many of them largely agree with each other. They might have slightly different takes on the same basic ideas, but the commonalities are much greater than the differences. And that makes sense: they are all talking about basically the same phenomenon. They might plug it into different philosophical systems or theories of the function of the mind, but it is basically the same thing.

For example, Francis Hutcheson is described as the earliest philosopher to discuss the incongruity theory of humor. He was in fact directly refuting Hobbes, who was as good at devising a theory of humor as he was at squaring the circle (which is to say, not good). Yes, Hutcheson does put forward incongruity, which is my first aspect of humor, but then in part three of his treatise, he also talks about the social functions of humor, which is my second fundamental aspect.

Likewise, Bergson is known for saying that laughter is generated when we see a human acting like a mechanism. The ultimate would be Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. However, his definition of being an automaton was broad, including absent-mindedness for example. And he argued that humor always has a social aspect. He saw laughter as a signal from the viewer to the person acting comical to snap out of it and be mindful or to conform to group norms. One can see the automaton as a form of incongruity. So Bergson also saw humor as incongruity plus a social function.

Arthur Koestler is best known for the word "bisociation," which means an event is connected to two associations. In other words, an incongruity. But he saw that in order to have a jolt of humor, there needs to be at least a trace of aggression. He then defined aggression so broadly that it covers a number of social functions. To me, humor's most common social function is to lower social status tension within a group, which would fall under Koestler's definition of aggression.

I have not read Herbert Spencer yet, but I think the situation will be similar. He is known for the hydraulic theory in which nervous energy builds up and through hydraulic pressure has to have an outlet. Laughter is the overflow valve. This theory influenced Freud's first theory of humor. But Spencer's briefest phrase is "descending incongruity." Although he meant descending more broadly than social status reduction, it certainly includes that as a major portion of the cases. So I would put Spencer in with the others about the two fundamental aspects of humor.

So in the histories of humor theory, these four thinkers are treated as though their ideas are much different, and much different than the theory I use. I now see them as largely the same. I guess I am a lumper, not a splitter. Call me a Lumper Kerl.

Bibliography

Hutcheson, Francis. "Reflections upon Laughter," in Reflections upon Laughter and Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees. Originally published in a magazine in Dublin in 1725, then compiled Glasgow: Baxter, 1750. Reprinted New York: Garland, 1971.

Bergson, Henri. “Laughter,” in Comedy: An Essay on Comedy. Ed. by Wylie Sypher. Originally published in 1900. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956.

Koestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation. London: Hutchinson, 1964.

Spencer, Herbert. "The Physiology of Laughter," Macmillan's Magazine, 1 (1860): 395-402.

Theory of Humor Series, part 16, Mikhail Bakhtin "Rabelais and his World" Review

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

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

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Rabelais and His World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968. All unattributed page references below are to this text.

Although in the past (Evidence of Influences, 30n16) I questioned the validity of using Bakhtin's Theory of Carnival to study John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, I did not mean that Bakhtin's theory of humor was thereby completely invalid. I believe it is useful to compare the theory of humor I use to Bakhtin's, especially since other scholars freely use Bakhtin's theory.

In his book Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin put forward a vision of humor and society, especially claiming its existence historically in medieval Europe, which some have argued was a veiled substitute for Soviet Russia. Although he was criticized by some historians because he offered little actual documentary evidence for his vision, his theory has been influential among literary critics. His ideas did not appear before an English-speaking audience until he was around seventy years old, and they became popular around the time of his death at 79.

Bakhtin's basic idea is that in the mists of time there were two social orders which were equally sacred (6), an order with a social hierarchy, and an order ruled by festive laughter and equality. With the rise of the state, the hierarchy became official and the festive order went underground. But in events such as Roman Saturnalia and medieval Carnival, the festive order came to the surface. This festive order was a Second Life (he may have been the source of the phrase "second life") in which the oppressive hierarchy of the formal medieval society was cast aside.

This utopian Second Life is freed by laughter from dogmatism. In earlier time, it was characterized by a celebration of the grotesque and the free heaping of insults and abusive language (16), especially scatalogical insults, with perhaps some urine and scat thrown in, literally (147). One of Bakhtin's innovations is to argue that the grotesque and scatalogical bring people down below the waist, which is also where the reproductive organs are found. So abusive language and earthiness also mean regeneration, renewal, and productivity in the "material bodily lower stratum" (78). So flinging abusive language and other things liberates and renews the society. Also, modern literary scholars are fond of the concept of transgression, and Bakhtin saw the grotesque of Second Life featuring ambivalence and transgression (26). He links insanity to the grotesque (49). In our Internet start-up era, Bakhtin even resonates with the phrase "creative destruction" (121).

As a theory of humor, this system has interesting qualities. On the one hand, it recognizes disparagement and celebrates the suspension of status hierarchies. On the other hand, humor has the social function of uniting the community in a play mode. As far as incongruity goes, the grotesque and scatalogical are in sharp contrast to traditionally valued beauty, intellect, and order. However, there is no snap of linguistic frames, no bisociation where the audience jumps from one possible interpretation to another. There is no element of surprise, unless some official didn't see the insults or horse apples coming at him. It has a bit of Freudian relief theory, in that the official order represses our animal urges and our pent up resentments toward the status hierarchy, which are released in carnival.

As far as it goes, I like the fact that Bakhtin's theory has a play aspect, which a theory of humor should have. I also like Bakhtin's application of disparagement within a social hierarchy. His is not a strict Superiority Theory: the producer of the humor does not necessarily need to feel superior to the target. So in that sense, Bakhtin's theory is not too distant from the theory I use. The idea of Second Life is like Mulkay's "humorous mode" or Apter's "paratelic zone." Yet another aspect of Bakhtin's theory is the presence of the bodily nature of the human animal, and the content of humor often deals with that animality and physicality, a fact that I do not focus on in my own thinking. These aspects are all to Bakhtin's credit.

Bakhtin's theory has problems, though. It does not recognize that most disparagement humor has a specific target, either an individual, who to some degree had it coming, or a social group. Also, Bakhtin sees the entire society partaking in generating the humor, whereas most humor has a specific author whose humor production constitutes a claim toward status. Most humor is generated conversationally among small social groups, which does not fit into the Bakhtin theory. More seriously, although Bakhtin celebrates ambiguity, his grotesque does not have the listener or spectator jump quickly from one possible interpretation of the statement or event to another, which many humor researchers have shown is a major aspect of humor.

Bakhtin's theory supposes that within Second Life everything is a big party and everyone is happy about it (more or less). I agree that some social functions of humor are to lighten the mood within the entire social group and, if everyone is joyfully heaping earthy abuse on each other, the activity could be a form of play with an affiliative social function, but in the real world the targets of humor often can be embarrassed, offended, or humiliated by it, or even terrorized if the intent of the humor is to dehumanize. Let's not forget that in the ancient Roman Saturnalia, the person chosen as the Lord of Misrule was put to death at the end of the festival.

I argue that one of the primary social functions of humor is to non-violently adjust the status hierarchy, not suspend it entirely. Terrion and Ashforth showed that when disparagement is used as affiliative teasing, the target of the humor has high enough status within the group not to be threatened by it (Human Relations, 55: 55-88). For non-affiliative social functions, Zillman and Bryant (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10: 480-488) showed that subjects had an increased feeling of mirth to an aggressive joke if they felt that the target deserved retaliation. For truly abusive disparaging humor, the evidence supports the idea that the social function is to bring down a peg those perceived as deserving it. Bakhtin's theory misses the fact that humor can be pointed and can have a serious social function within our first life. The utopian Second Life hides the fact that we actually only live in one life, and that the humorous mode and the serious mode are linked. So as a general theory of humor, Bakhtin's ideas have major problems.

So, as they say at the carnival: Close, but no cigar.

Robert Byrne and Ignatius: Communication with Maurice duQuesnay

Since this blog is supposed to be about John Kennedy Toole and his novel A Confederacy of Dunces, and since I have spent the last six entries on articulating a general theory of humor, I thought I would pause that series and add an entry on Ken Toole.

A while ago, Prof. Maurice duQuesnay contacted me. He is a contemporary of Toole's and had known him and his family back in the day. I was familiar with his name, because he had written a forward to a lecture by Robert Coles that had been printed as a pamphlet, which I reviewed in my bibliography of obscure Toole criticism. He had learned about me because of the bibliography.

He then sent me some texts, some of which relate to John Kennedy Toole. One was the 2009 issue (Volume 9) of an annual serial called Explorations. It contains three items relevant to Toole studies. First, duQuesnay wrote a memorial to Robert Byrne, the person many have argued was the model for important aspects of Ignatius Reilly's personality. The second item was a poem by Robert Byrne. And the third item was a review by duQuesnay of the Nevils and Hardy book, Ignatius Rising. I will briefly discuss each of the three here.

Prof. duQuesnay is a defender and supporter of Robert Byrne. He sees it as unfair that Bryne is identified with Ignatius Reilly. What I found interesting about the memorial is that, although Ignatius is not an exact copy of Byrne--and Byrne had many qualities Ignatius lacks--even in duQuesnay's positive description, you can easily see that Ignatius is indeed an exaggerated caricature of Byrne. So even an essay arguing against the Byrne-Ignatius relationship provides evidence for it. For more details, I refer you to the essay itself.

The poem by Byrne does not dispel the theory that Ignatius is a caricature of Byrne, either. It is not as ridiculous as a poem by Ignatius would be, but it has enough of a whiff of pomposity to suggest Toole had hit the mark.

I found the review of the book Ignatius Rising noteworthy because some contemporaries interested in the Toole legacy have seriously condemned the book, and duQuesnay does not. Joel Fletcher (writer of Ken and Thelma) and Kenneth Holditch (executor of Thelma's estate) both have heavily criticized Ignatius Rising for mishandling sources and using unreliable testimony to argue that Toole was gay. duQuesnay does not bring up that issue at all. For the most part he accepts the book's presentation uncritically. He spends most of his review showing that the book is as much about Thelma as it is about Ken. So not everyone who knew Ken Toole well hates Ignatius Rising.

Hopefully, if Prof. duQuesnay reads this blog entry, he will not be offended by my observations.

Theory of Humor Series, part 15, A Sex Joke in Two Contexts

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

Back in the early 1990s, I was reading Eric Johnson's A Treasury of Humor (Prometheus, 1989). Johnson was the former headmaster at an elite private K-12 school in Philadelphia. A joke on page 18 struck me because I recognized that I could modify it slightly and use it at the fortieth wedding anniversary of my parents, where we were having a bit of a roast.

The reason I am recounting this experience is that it highlights how the same joke told in a slightly different social context can have a much different effect. This joke told between two people gets the laugh on the incongruous ending. However, told before a large crowd that has been warmed up by other speakers and their jokes, the laugh comes on the disparagement line. So in a small setting, the dominant aspect is the joke's incongruity, but told in a large setting, the dominant aspect is the social function of disparagement.

Here is the joke:

Well, this is a story from when my parents moved back to town with their two children in the 1950s. My father had set up his practice as the area's obstetrician and gynocologist. The local high school principal came to him and asked him if he would give a talk to some of the high school girls about human reproduction, and, well, sex. He was a bit nervous but agreed, and the date was set.

When he was going to the event, my mother asked him where he was going, and he said he was going to give a talk at the high school. She asked him what about, and, embarrassed, he said, "Sailing." "Sailing?" she said incredulously. "Sailing," he insisted.

The next day, the principal ran into my mother in town. He told her that my father's talk was very good and so appropriate. She said, "Well, I don't know why you asked him to talk about that. I mean, he's only ever done it three times. The first time, he was sick to his stomach; the second time, he got all tangled up in the sheet; and the third time, his hat blew off!"

Some features of this version should be noted: Although the mistaken schema in the fictional mind of the principal belittles the husband's sexual prowess, it does not require that husband was cockolded or that the wife was unfaithful, a man could have had sex three times yet have two children. (Later I found some variations on this joke that did require cockolding and infidelity.) The principal's use of the word "appropriate" should be a signal to the wife that he talk was not about sailing. The last sentence of the joke has a strong setup and punchline: one of the ropes on a standard sailboat is called "the sheet." The mention of a sheet reinforces in the imagined mind of the principal the schema (or committed belief) where the wife really is talking about sex. The final punch suggests that the husband was wearing a hat the third time he had sex, which is absurdly ridiculous. And the ending creates such an absurd image in the mind of the principal that the listener of the joke might well assume that the truth will be sorted out between the fictional principal and wife, and that the husband's humiliation will be temporary.

The joke worked for my father, because he was an overworked doctor who owned a sailboat, but who did not have enough free time to become a skilled sailor. Also, he was a private person who would not want to be embarrassed. Although he did not as a general rule lie to cover up his behavior, he was very guarded in areas that could be embarrassing, so one could imagine him avoiding the truth if it would be an embarrassing admission.

I do not have much experience telling a joke to a large gathering. When I practiced this joke with individuals, no one laughed at the line, "he's only ever done it three times." However, they laughed heartily when the hat blew off in the final snap of absurd incongruity. So the incongruous aspect of the joke was dominant.

However, in front of a crowd of people who knew the targets of the joke well, and knew that the specifics of the joke fit their personalities well, the line "he's only ever done it three times" caused the house to explode with laughter. My mother especially laughed a solid thirty seconds. I could barely eke out the joke's true punchline, which hardly anyone could hear or understand.

So the reception of a joke changes dramatically depending on the context of the telling. A crowd has different expectations than a lone individual does. To the individual, the absurdist ending and the cognitive surprise were what counted. The disparaging "three times" did not generate mirth. To the crowd, the delight in the ridicule of the target took hold as the dominant aspect of the joke. The joke changed from being absurdist and playful to being primarily and aggressively disparaging. Perhaps in the public space, dignity and status are of higher importance, and the disparagement was therefore more salient and fraught with tension.

The contrast in the reception was very educational.

I thought my father would enjoy the joke, and if he had heard it alone, he might have. As it was, he was able to maintain a calm exterior, but the embarrassment so upset him he destroyed the recording of the event. At the time, he just politely said to my mother, "Well, perhaps it is just as well we only had the one son."

Theory of Humor Series, part 14, Inside Jokes by Hurley, Dennett and Adams, Review

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

In my investigation, I have read the following book, and I will analyze it below.

Hurley, Matthew M., Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams. (2011). Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse Engineer the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Admittedly, Hurley, Dennett, and Adams announce in the subtitle of this book that they are aiming for a target other than merely a theory of humor. But theories of humor do not exist in a vacuum: they are usually part of a larger theory of psychology and human nature. So this effort is not unusual. That having been said, these authors minimize the social, and especially the disparagement, aspect of the humor, although it should be noted that they don't specifically disparage it per se. Their belief, naturally their active belief, is that the exploration of humor gives them entry into a process within the human mind that helps propel general intelligence. They argue that a truly intelligent computer would need a sense of humor.

(Now, they might counterargue that they have a definition for humor more narrow than mine, so within their narrow domain, their theory holds. They might then argue that they do not try to offer a theory for the broader domain that concerns me. I don't quite buy that argument, though it has some merits. See my discussion of Question #3 below.)

The book claims to be a new theory of humor; however, to me it is largely a very sophisticated and welcome update to Incongruity Theory. For example, the authors reject the theory of frames (Minsky) and the related theory of scripts (Attardo), but they put forward "mental spaces," which are dynamically created, light-weight frames in working memory. They then argue that the brain thinks using a lazy algorithm called "just in time spreading activation" or JITSA, using those mental spaces. If one uses the computer as a metaphor for the mind, one could say that they basically upgraded from the bulky design of Windows 98 to the light-weight, threaded architecture of Windows XP. To a cognitive scientist, it might be a big difference to go from scripts in long-term memory to activated mental spaces, but for the rest of us, it is, like, big whoop.

Now, to be fair, the theory is more sophisticated than the above computer analogy. For these authors, humor is generated by the discovery of a false committed active belief that was surreptitiously introduced into a mental space. So for the paraprosdokian "I've had the most wonderful evening, but this wasn't it," the first part of the sentence leads the listener to form a mental space in which the speaker is referring to the present evening. However, that committed belief was inferred by the listener as a customary flattery. The second half of the sentence causes the mind to reevaluate that covert committed belief and discover that the speaker was not referring to the present evening after all. Snap! Because the mind has to comprehend the world on the fly, it is regularly discovering that some beliefs it committed to are in fact false. But again, to me this amounts to a refinement of the general Incongruity Theory of Humor.

The major problem with their theory is that they start with an isolated mind; whereas, humans are essentially social animals. So, despite the fact that laughter (here a Duchenne belly laugh, not a polite laugh) is an involuntary mechanism and a social signal that is clearly contagious, they somehow argue that "Basic Humor" is a solitary activity of the isolated mind doing data-integrity maintenance on "committed beliefs." (For example, read pages 130-132.) They do modestly address the value of social capital (139), but that is about as far as it goes. In contrast, I fully agree with Gary Fine (1983): "... any adequate understanding of the dynamics of humor must include a social analysis" (Handbook of Humor Research, v. 1, 159).

During their review of earlier theories, Hurley and company acknowledge that Superiority Theory is the second strongest class of theories of humor behind Incongruity Theory, and they admit that it can offer insight into a large fraction of humor data, but then they proceed to minimize it. For example, when discussing Wyer and Collins, they wave off a need for the concept of diminishment (204). Why? Because it doesn't fit their goal of designing a new (non-social) artificial intelligence system that uses a sense of humor for data-integrity. To illustrate my point, here is an example from the book where they do discuss interpersonal humor:

Person A and B were wading across a river (151). (For the sake of pronouns, I will consider B male.) B slipped and fell in. If B had been genuinely and appropriately cautious, the authors argue that his fall would not have been funny to either A or B. However, A might have laughed at B because A may have attributed B's fall "to overzealousness or overconfidence, in which [B] hubristically assumed the task was easier than it proved to be."

My commentary: The authors argue that A's mirth was generated merely by the discovery of B's false belief that the crossing would be easy. The purpose of the laughter was to signal that A should helpfully point out the flaws in B's reasoning. But the use of the word "hubristically" indicates something deeper. B didn't just commit to a false belief, he apparently deserved that dunking in A's estimation.

We can highlight this by elaborating on the fictional scenario. Maybe B was head of the expedition and was lording his position over the others. Maybe the rest of the group thought it was crazy to cross the river at that spot, but B was insisting that the group had to cross there. The dunk in the river proved B wrong to the delight of A and the rest. Ha, that B, what a pompous ass! Crow is on the menu for B.

As I have stated earlier in this series, the theory I support posits that a major function of humor within a social group is to adjust the social status hierarchy, specifically by diminishing the status of some member or members. It is a non-violent way of adjusting the dynamics of the group. In the typical group, high-status members enforce the group's rules for correct behavior, and their version of reality is the version acted upon by the group, so false committed beliefs are not usually limited to an isolated mind; instead, they are of deep concern to the whole group. For its part, self-deprecating humor allows the humorist to lower his or her own status, at times to improve the functioning of the group and group cohesion.

To further examine where Hurley and company have gone wrong, it is useful to know something about Dennett's philosophical work. Dennett calls the modern Theory of Mind "the Intentional Stance." The theory of mind is: we humans are able to perceive other beings in our universe, specifically other beings with minds, as having their own set of beliefs and intentions and mental states (143), and we can act accordingly. Children tend to develop this theory of mind or intentional stance around the age of four or five. You need a well-functioning intentional stance to be a good liar. Dennett had been promoting the intentional stance long before writers such as Alison Gopnik started promoting the theory of mind as a mainstream concept.

In this book, the authors state: "Using the intentional stance is how we manage our social lives, by modeling what other people believe" (144). That statement is at best very incomplete. We were a social species long before we evolved the ability to take an intentional stance. When I take my dog to the park to play with other dogs, it does not have an intentional stance, but it knows all about the dynamics of a pecking order, who is top dog and who is an underdog. We might manage some of our social behavior using an intentional stance, but we also manage it by establishing and negotiating status within a group, and the group status ranking system almost certainly predates the intentional stance by millions of years.

These authors claim that interpersonal humor is an "offspring" of their within-brain Basic Humor, but how we understand our world is very shared and social and always has been. To quote Penny from The Big Bang Theory, "Oh, so, you believe your friend, and your friend's wife and your own eyes over me?? Wow." I would say that emotional and psychological precursors to interpersonal humor very much predate the rich inner lives of homo sapiens with our intentional stances, complex mental spaces, and logical pre-frontal cortices. They call social play "kidding around" and "horsing around" because young goats and horses play, too.

To go back to our paraprosdokian, certainly the snap of surprise is triggered by the discovery that the "wonderful evening" was not the present evening of the utterance. But the zing that causes the laughter is generated by this new interpretation being a put-down. The speaker is disparaging the present evening, possibly breaking social decorum by challenging the evening's host, and doing so in a humorous mode that deflects a violent response. In 1974, Zilman and Bryant found that the intensity of humor was not related to the listeners sense of superiority, but was greatest when the target of the put-down was perceived to have deserved it (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 10, pp. 480-488). So this joke would be mean-spirited if the present evening had actually been pleasant, but it would be very funny if everyone else at the party had been thinking the same thing, but they were too polite to say it out loud.

Twenty Questions

I apologize for making this review overly long, but I would like to discuss relevant details. The authors early in the book posed twenty questions that any theory would have to address, and at the end of the book, they summarize their theory by answering them. In the following section I will discuss some of those answers. What I find amusing is that they stick to their theory in some answers, but other answers address some of the shortcomings I see in their theory.

In the answers to question one and two, the authors stick to their theory. Question one is "Is humor an adaptation?" and question two is "Where did humor come from?" They maintain that, as our ancestors evolved more sophisticated brains, we had a greater need for data integrity checking, so there was selective pressure for that feature of the mind. They admit that laughter probably comes from the play panting similar to that displayed by chimps, but that it was co-opted by humor. Because chimps do not have a full Theory of Mind, "the breadth of humor that is due to social circumstance and others' perspectives (which is the bulk of humor) is lost to them, and presumably to all other species" (291). Again, the authors cannot see precursors to interpersonal humor without an intentional stance.

In question three, "Why do we communicate humor?" the authors finally offer a origin story for humor with which I can agree. "The communication of humor may have begun as a way of causing our conspecifics to know that we were only half-serious with them during mock-aggression and play" (291). I would argue that that is the origin of all humor, as a signal of playful non-aggression, which has been co-opted as a tool to negotiate status within human groups. The authors agree: "Later, laughter was co-opted for usage in more complex social circumstances, especially the mate-attracting display of intellect and the trading of social capital in various manners" (291). Thus the widely observed social functions of humor sneak in as part of laughter's "trading of social capital." This scenario to my mind is the actual origin and one of the two major aspects of humor, the resolution of false committed beliefs being humor's other major aspect. The authors finish up this section on communication arguing that the sharing of jokes is an instance of the spreading of parasitic memes. (Dennett likes memetics, the poor dear!)

At the beginning of this essay, I said that these authors may be using a more narrow definition of humor, and I think this section shows it. What I consider to be the origin of humor they limit to the origin of laughter. If one limits humor to being strictly the snap of a correction to a false belief, then much of what I consider to be humor is merely the somewhat related phenomena of using humor toward social ends. I believe this argument is wrong, because of the deep social nature of humor, especially its status challenging edge, but it is an argument one could make to reconcile the present text with my own position.

Question seven finally attacks my issues head on: "Why does humor often get used for disparagement?" I will quote their answer at length. "Putting someone down by humorously demonstrating an infirmity in their cognitive capacities efficiently makes the humorist and the addressed audience look superior in comparison, enlisting the audience as like-minded allies and at the same time making the humorist appear good natured, not just angry or aggrieved. This is a common use of humor in modern society, but not its original or even secondary purpose, which is more plausibly the demonstration of intellectual prowess (with or without a target or butt of the joke) to potential mates and allies" (292).

Notice that the authors go to great lengths to insist that disparagement is not even be a secondary purpose of humor? I would agree that it is not secondary, but would suggest that employing humor toward social ends, such as adjusting the group status hierarchy, is, if not the primary driver, than at least one of the main drivers of the evolution of humor. And non-violently adjusting social status within the group preceded humor's function for data integrity or for displaying intelligence. And I'm not just kidding around.

Question thirteen is: "Why can humor be used as a social corrective?" In their answer, the authors limit the correction to errors in logic and inference, but a major type of correction that they ignore is the enforcement of social norms. Why not? Such behavior, in my humble opinion, would inch too close to group selection theory for Dennett. Boyd and Richerson, stay away!

On the positive side, Dennett and company are proponents of applying evolutionary theory to human psychology, so at least their theory has well-thought-out evolutionary justifications. But again, Dennett's agenda intrudes. I believe he is not a fan of David Sloan Wilson's Multilevel Selection Theory, which adds group selection to evolution and could help provide the needed explanatory framework for the evolution of such a social phenomenon as humor and laughter. The 2005 paper by Gervais and Wilson, "The evolution and functions of laughter and humor: A synthetic approach" (Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. 80, pp. 395-430) is briefly discussed in this book, but its main point about group selection is neglected. So we are left with humor as a data-integrity process largely in a social deprivation tank. It is good as far as it goes, but it misses one of the two core aspects of humor.

Theory of Humor Series, part 13, The Sociologists Had it Right

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. In early 2018, I was invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

I had been pacing myself at one posting per month, because I was running low on ideas about Confederacy of Dunces, but now that I am looking at all of humor, the entries have been piling up.

In my intense research leading up to my book chapter, I have stumbled across the research programme of the sociological analysis of humor. I believe that I need to modify my theory of humor (and the more I investigate, it has turned into my own theory of humor).

I found this sociological programme through this article: Weisfeld, Glenn. (1993). "The adaptive value of humor and laughter." Ethology and sociobiology 14 (2): 141-169. I read it because of the evolutionary angle. Weisfeld reflexively dismissed group selection citing the old canard of Williams, 1966. So I disagree with his evolutionary assessment. But then Weisfeld helpfully pointed to Fine's paper from 1983 and Martineau's paper from 1972. See citations below.

Fine and Martineau have opened up for me a world of studying the social functions of humor. The research programme has stretched back to the 1940s. Their work has caused me to reevaluate my theory of humor, broadening the "disparagement aspect" into a general "employment of humor for social ends."

The problem I see with the sociological programme is that the various researchers have mixed the interpersonal and small group social functions with the social functions operating at the scale of a mass industrial society. The reason that is important is because humor and laughter as instincts evolved in small groups. By focusing largely on ethnic groups and class conflict in large societies, the programme obscures the fact that the social functions of humor are part of the core of humor. That allows researchers, such as Hurley, Dennett, and Adams (see Part 14 of this series), to argue that the evolutionary origin of humor comes from the solitary functioning of the isolated brain.

I would write more, but I am just embarking on the exploration of this body of work.

Martineau, W. H. A model of the social functions of humor. In J. H. Goldstein & P. E. McGhee (Eds.), The psychology of humor. New York: Academic Press, 1972.

Fine. G.A. Sociological approaches to the study of humor. In Handbook of Humor Research, P.E. McGhee and J.H. Goldstein (Ed). New York: Springer-Verlag. 1983, Vol. 1, pp. 159-181.

NOTE from June 30th: In looking back over my notes, I see that a book I have been heavily influenced by, Michael Mulkay's On Humor (Basil Blackwell, 1988), bills itself a sociological study of humor. So my discovery of the sociological school is a bit backwards. I started in the sociological school. My bad.

Theory of Humor Series, part 12, Hey Dummy! Christie Davies Theories and Targets of Stereotype Humor about Stupidity

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After about ten posts, I only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. I have now been invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

For a quick recap, humor has IMHO two fundamental aspects: incongruity, a contrast that causes the brain to try to resolve a puzzle of interpretation, and disparagement, a non-violent way to adjust the dynamics of a group status hierarchy, an adjustment which can be either gentle or aggressive. I will try to refrain from calling it MY theory of humor, as the theory is largely pieced together from various strands of the long tradition of trying to define humor.

In the last blog post, I affirmed the fact that, in a mass culture, stereotype humor is common and is used to assert the prestige hierarchy among different groups and classes within the society. In the book Jokes and Targets by Christie Davies (Indiana, 2011), he puts forth a theory regarding jokes about stupidity. Stupidity jokes are, according to Davies, far and away the most common jokes in the folklore collections available. Davies even has a chart, showing for many nations which other nationality or regional group tends to be the target of their stupidity jokes. (He could have also had a chart of the states in the United States and of the neighboring state targeted within each of them.)

Davies rejects the idea that stupidity jokes are strictly about superiority and power within the society, because some occupational groups which are targeted for stupidity jokes are in fact high status. His theory is that the targets of stupidity humor are more likely to be seen as working more closely than others with physical objects and the soil rather that mental activities. So a theoretical physicist will have stupidity jokes about engineers. Neurosurgeons will joke about orthopedic surgeons, who use hammers and saws on bones. Davies theory seems to disprove my theory.

Naturally, I don't see this as disproof. Within the small social group, higher status individuals are more likely to be concerned with the political dynamics of the group, to maintain their status. The leader has to use a broad intelligence to assess not only the immediate situation but its long-term implications for the leadership and the group. So an individual who is an expert at handling the material basis for the group's survival is necessary for the group, but that individual might not be awarded the highest status by other group members. One joke Davies tells is of the engineer who dies in the electric chair because he points out the faulty wiring before he sits down. The engineer is focused on the immediate physical problem but does not see the long-term implications of having an electric chair that works.

So I see these stupidity jokes about occupations as still being about adjusting status within a social group. Another group I have noticed that my own society finds worthy of being a gentle target are dentists. Two of the comic strips in my daily newspaper have a family whose patriarch is a dentist. Again, we need dentists, but they make their living by sticking their hands in other people's mouths, which has a natural element of physical comedy. They are given wealth and a secure place in the economic hierarchy, but they don't have to compete politically within the broader society to earn that place. So there is a tension between their secure status and their lack of stress over fighting to maintain that status. Joking about them brings them down a peg and reasserts the dominance of those who have status due to their political skills and social intelligence. Within the household of the dentist, there are no financial worries, so it is a safe environment where one can afford playfulness and joking. But the head of the household cannot be described as heroic, and that leader can be portrayed as goofy without losing the status inherent in his or her profession.

On a side note, I am not a student of Davies, only having dipped into one of his books, but I have read elsewhere that he rejects the claim that jokes themselves can be tools in social action. He has claimed that a joke is a thermometer, taking the temperature of the masses, rather than a thermostat, which can manipulate the crowd. I completely reject that position. I see humor as fundamentally about status dynamics within social groups. The play of children is often in a make-believe world, disconnected from the adult status hierarchy, but with its own play hierarchy. The absurd humor of youth can be an escape from the unitary worldview of the dominant forces within the adult group. Ridicule and satire can challenge the status position of members of the adult group. Those in power can use humor to delegitimize others who are trying to claim some dignity within the group. (One reason so much humor about African Americans is now so toxic is because it was used to promote a culture in which that segment of the population was belittled to the point of being dehumanized.)

So no, humor can be part of the toolkit of social action, for good or ill.

Theory of Humor Series, part 11, Sociology of Status

This series of blog posts began as an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole. After eight posts, I had only just laid out the theory of humor I am using to frame the analysis. I have now been invited to write a book chapter on Toole and Confederacy, so now I will only use this series of blog posts to more fully articulate that theory of humor.

For a quick recap, humor has IMHO two fundamental aspects: incongruity, a contrast that causes the brain to try to resolve a puzzle of interpretation, and disparagement, a non-violent way to adjust the dynamics of a group status hierarchy, an adjustment which can be either gentle or aggressive. I will try to refrain from calling it MY theory of humor, as the theory is largely pieced together from various strands of the long tradition of trying to define humor.

In part 4, I described a theory of humor in which humor is set within the context of a small human group, where a status hierarchy exists among the members of the group, who all know each other. Humor can act as a method of playfully challenging or reasserting the status of members without threatening to tear the group apart or commit violence against group members. I made the point that social psychology shows us that status orders arise naturally within human groups and are unavoidable.

In part 5, I emphasized that, while all groups have status orderings and humor can act as a gentle way to adjust the group status structure, sometimes the ordering within a group is oppressive to some members. Humor in those situations can be used as a mechanism of oppression. In part 8, I talked about stereotype humor as a pathology of humor within large groups, an easy way to get a laugh without a detailed knowledge of the target of the humor.

I was recently reading a sociological study. That book demonstrated for me that some sociologists (perhaps all) have viewed status hierarchies strictly through the lens of large groups in a mass society, rather than through the lens of personal interactions in small groups. This particular sociologist defined "social classes" as groups within the society united by economic interests, whereas "prestige groups" were defined by a common social status afforded members of those groups.

From the perspective of prestige groups within large societies, I would have to say that stereotype humor is the norm, not the exception. Stereotype humor is a mechanism that one prestige group can use to adjust the status level of another group, specifically downward. When leaders of a group want to challenge the position of their group within the prestige hierarchy, they reject the stereotype humor as unacceptable. Such jokes become politically incorrect.

I would like to argue, nonetheless, that such use of humor between prestige groups does not have to be oppressive. Just as gentle teasing can be inclusive in small groups (see part 6 of the series), not everyone within a target group of stereotype humor might take offense. What comes to mind is the example of the Prairie Home Companion. Garrison Keillor would joke about the Bachelor Norwegian Farmer. Knowing many Norwegian-Americans, I am unaware that they in general took offense, and my sense was that many Minnesotans of Norwegian ancestry were flattered by the attention. The teasing indicated that Norwegian Americans were part of the in-group, though perhaps not at the peak of the status hierarchy. It also acted as a mechanism for putting forth a Midwestern cultural identity and celebrating it.

One could even argue that Keillor was offering a rural American cultural identity which was an alternative to Southern cultural identity. Many rural Americans have been attracted to the humor of Jeff Foxworthy and others and identify themselves as Southern, even when they do not live in an area that was part of the former Confederacy. Keillor's Norwegians offer a rural identity that is decidedly not Southern. My own family is from Appalachia, and could choose to identify with a hillbilly cultural identity, as celebrated in such shows as Hee Haw. Sometimes Appalachian identity is lumped into Southern identity, but in the American Civil War, Appalachia generally fought for the North against the Confederacy (Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, West Virginia, which was the only region to secede from the Confederacy, and Western North Carolina and Maryland, etc.). I found it interesting that my own father passionately embraced Keillor's Midwestern vision rather than a cultural identity with the South, though he did enjoy watching Hee Haw just to annoy my mother (perhaps challenging her pretension that we were not culturally part of Appalachia).

In putting forth a theory of humor as a status adjustment mechanism, I focused on small group status dynamics. I believe that the small group is the origin of the status instinct within humans, and the dynamics of the small group long predates humans, being part of the behavioral repertoire of all social animals. Hominids have lived in small groups millions of years before we humans formed mass societies. So when trying to define humor as a characteristically human behavior, small group dynamics and personal interaction should be used as the base context within which to understand it as a social behavior.

Nevertheless, in hindsight, I should have acknowledged that stereotype humor fits neatly into the sociology of status within mass societies.

Theory of Humor Series, part 10, Changed Priorities Ahead, No Joke

Someone contacted me and invited me to write a chapter for a prospective book of criticism on John Kennedy Toole. I have accepted the invitation. Good thing I dragged this series out without ever getting to the meat of the issue. I plan to take this topic and create the book chapter. I will continue in this series to articulate my own general theory of humor, but not use it to analyze Confederacy of Dunces. You will have to buy the book for that. Or interlibrary loan it. However, if the book project falls through, I may finish this series as originally envisaged here online.

Photo use allowed, credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/petereed/138369750

Blog Interrupted by Father's Death

I had a post written and ready to put on the John Kennedy Toole Research blog for March 1st. However, my father died on February 21st. I am now dealing with my father's estate far from my home computer with the text of the post. Click here for the obituary.

What is relevant for my writing on the theory of humor is that my father had a keen sense of humor, which he enjoyed cultivating. He helped educate and inform my sense of humor. In the obituary on the website, we even slipped in a joke. It says, "And some say because of his reputation for punctuality, his portrait now hangs in the waiting room of the hospital’s new Family-Centered Maternity Suite." But his reputation was that he was never punctual. For those in the know, that explains why his portrait hangs in the hospital waiting room.

Much of his humor was in context and usually related to the foibles of individuals around him. Once when I was young, he was driving a crowded car. I passed gas that was extremely foul smelling, and it filled the silent car. He cleared his throat and in a calm voice said, "You know Vernon, it's not the smell we mind so much ... it's the burning of the eyes."

Because of his humor, he was often asked to MC the roasts for doctors at the hospital who were retiring.

In his last year of life, despite a severe stroke, he was able to enjoy humor, and once in that last year, I was able to get him to laugh until he cried. He will be missed.

Theory of Humor Series, part 9, Two Schools of Thought Become One Theory

This series of blog posts has as its ultimate goal an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, though I am not in any rush to get there. I am as much interested in developing a general theory of humor.

I have been rereading my blog entries from May to December of 2017, the first eight parts of this series, and I have discovered that I unconsciously practiced a sleight of hand, which I now want to point out and make explicit.

In Part 3 of this series, I tried to characterize the two main schools of theories of humor. At the end of the entry, I simply stated that theories that claim a.) humor deals with incongruity and b.) humor deals with disparagement are not incompatible. What I did not say was that the theory to which I myself subscribe includes both incongruity and disparagement.

In Part 4 of this series, I focused in on what I consider to be a core fact of human nature, that, because we are a social species, we naturally form status hierarchies within groups. I then argued that one can understand the disparagement aspect of humor within the context of small group status hierarchies. So I slipped quietly from saying, a.) "many theories of humor focus on disparagement," to saying, b.) "all humor does in fact have a disparaging aspect." I then added to my theory that humor acts as a social status regulator to Mulkay’s theory that the humor mode allows a diversity of interpretations of reality within a group.

In Part 5, I tried to define comedy, and I did so in the context of a theory of humor focused on small group social regulation. So I was applying a theory of humor that I hadn’t explicitly defined, but slid into sideways. In Part 6, I discussed the fact that some disparagement in humor can be oppressive, but emphasized that not all disparagement has to be oppressive. But again, I was presuming that all humor has a disparaging aspect. In Part 7, the topic was a comic device that employs incongruity, but I then discussed how it is often used in a context in which there is disparagement. In Part 8, I showed how stereotypes allow for convenient incongruity and disparagement, assuming a theory of humor that contains both.

So there you have it: the theory I use posits that all humor has two aspects: incongruity and disparagement, and that the disparagement can be used to regulate social status within a group. That regulation can be oppressive but does not have to be. I defined it very clearly in paragraph two of part 7, but I presented it as though I was simply recapping something earlier arrived at. Now I am stating clearly that that is the theory of humor I am using in this study.

Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #16: Rudnicki 2

For the last eight months, I have been writing a series that is exploring the nature of humor in general and the humor of A Confederacy of Dunces in particular. Because my ambition is to articulate an entire theory of humor, even after eight installments I have not even gotten close to bringing up Toole's book. So for this post, I thought I would pause with my humor theory series and actually have a blog post that talks about Confederacy of Dunces.

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure). Here is item number sixteen:

Citation: Rudnicki, Robert. "Euphues and the Anatomy of Influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the Construction of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius." Mississippi Quarterly 62, no. 1-2 (2009): 281-302.

Annotation: This article has the distinction of being the first scholarly article on Confederacy to use information from the Toole Papers at Tulane University. Rudnicki has two main theses: first, that Ignatius's overwrought style was influenced by Toole's study of the Renaissance dramatist John Lyly; and second, that Toole is an interesting subject to use when studying the question of literary influence. On the first thesis, Rudnicki shows evidence from Toole's B.A. Honor's Thesis that he was quite familiar with Lyly's trademark rhetorical style called Euphuism. Rudnicki then demonstrates that Euphuistic elements are present in the discourses of Ignatius Reilly. As for the second thesis, Rudnicki shows how Toole's style matured by comparing his juvenile work, The Neon Bible, with his later work, Confederacy. For theory, he refers to Harold Bloom.

Oddly, Rudnicki does not seem to have extensively studied the archives, and he repeatedly makes assertions about the influence of a given writer on Toole without offering any evidence or analysis to support the claim of influence. For example, he off-handedly refers to Salinger’s possible influence, without having mentioned Toole’s written praise for Salinger found in the Toole Papers. It would not be such a big deal, except that his thesis is the use of Toole as an example of literary influence. One might suppose that he would therefore be careful about documenting actual evidence of potential influence. This weakness is one reason this article only made it to sixteenth place in my rankings.

Despite these issues, this article is good, as it was the first to use anything from the archives, and it does a good job of both demonstrating the influence of Euphuism and discussing the general problem of speculating about influence.