Special Issue: The Opportunities of Laughter: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Humour in Walter Benjamin

edited by Kevin Drews and Szilvia Gellai

 https://academic.oup.com/fmls/issue/61/3 

Exploring the diverse contexts and historical constellations of humour in Benjamin’s work underscores the opportunities for thinking with laughter. The approach taken to such opportunities in this issue is far from exhaustive. In their different conclusions, our contributors touch on additional problems raised by Benjamin’s aesthetics and politics of humour: problems that, in what is meant as a first, foundational effort, could not be explored with the depth they merit. They point to one issue in particular, an issue that has been emphasized throughout this essay: humour in Benjamin is neither democratic, nor non-violent, nor innocent. This prompts our final question: at whose expense is laughter gained in terms of gender, race and class? To assess the answer to this field of enquiry remains a desideratum; Benjamin’s humour is a new way of critically entering that intriguing terrain.

Articles