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.