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Aesthetic Practices

Comic LiteraciesCultural Techniques of Comedy/the Comic

If you laugh, you possess knowledge – even if it is implicit and difficult to articulate. People will not grin, feel embarrassed, or react with laughter if they are unaware of the social practices or aesthetic conventions that comedy references. This implicit or tacit knowledge is part of what we call comic literacies: culturally specific knowledge formations that must be accessed both to produce and to recognize artistic representations or everyday situations as comic.

But how can we uncover and analyse this non-verbal knowledge? What cultural functions and effects does it perform, and how does it change over time?

To answer these questions, the network Comic Literacies: Cultural Techniques of Comedy/the Comic brings together experts from cultural studies, theatre and literary studies, sociology, and gender and performance studies. The project combines praxeological and performative approaches to comedy, media studies perspectives on cultural techniques, and insights from affect studies. By examining the factors that make something funny, the concept of cultural techniques allows us to analyse the comic historically and praxeologically, providing access to its implicit knowledge. At the same time, the network investigates the interplay between cultural techniques that shape the perception of the comic and the comic itself as a multifaceted cultural technique that significantly influences culture(s).

The network explores these questions through a three-year thematic program. The first year examines how cultural techniques – such as scaling or copying – make materialities appear humorous, addressing gaps in research on implicit knowledge. In the second year, techniques of arrangement (for example, comedic timing) are analysed as spatial and temporal operations that generate the comic on both micro and macro levels. The third year focusses on the affects mobilized by the comic, examining how it organizes and disrupts collective emotional landscapes as a cultural technique.

Contact: Dr. Roxanne Phillips

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