The Odd One In: On Comedy

241 Pages·2008·2.39 MB·English

by  Alenka Zupancic

The Odd One In
Short Circuits
Slavoj Zˇizˇek,editor
The Puppet and the Dwarf:The Perverse Core of Christianity,by Slavoj Zˇizˇek
The Shortest Shadow:Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two,by Alenka Zupancˇicˇ
Is Oedipus Online? Siting Freud after Freud,by Jerry Aline Flieger
Interrogation Machine:Laibach and NSK,by Alexei Monroe
The Parallax View,by Slavoj Zˇizˇek
A Voice and Nothing More,by Mladen Dolar
Subjectivity and Otherness:A Philosophical Reading of Lacan,by Lorenzo Chiesa
The Odd One In:On Comedy,by Alenka Zupancˇicˇ
The Odd One In
On Comedy
Alenka Zupancˇicˇ
The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zupancˇicˇ,Alenka.
The odd one in :on comedy / Alenka Zupancˇicˇ.
p. cm.— (Short circuits)
Includes bibliographical references.
----(pbk.:alk.paper)
. Comic,The. . Comedy. I. Title.
. 
'.—dc

         
To Martin

Contents
Series Foreword ix
Introduction 2
I The Concrete Universal 11
The Absolute onthe Couch 12
The Universal-at-Work 22
Physics ofthe Infinite against Metaphysics
ofthe Finite 42
II Figures of Comedy 61
The Ego and the It 62
The Ego and the Ego 72
The other and the Other 88
III Conceptualizations 109
Another Turn of the Bergsonian Screw 110
Structural Dynamics and Temporality
of the Comical 128
Repetition 148
(Essential) Appendix: The Phallus 183
Enjoyment ex machina 184
Wozu Phallus in dürftiger Zeit? 200
Concluding Remarks 212
Notes 219
Bibliography 227
Series foreword
A short circuit occurs when there is a faulty connection in the net-
work—faulty, of course, from the standpoint of the network’s
smooth functioning.Is not the shock of short-circuiting,there-
fore,one of the best metaphors for a critical reading? Is not one of
the most effective critical procedures to cross wires that don’t usu-
ally touch:to take a major classic (text,author,notion) and read
it in a short-circuiting way,through the lens of a “minor”author,
text, or conceptual apparatus (“minor” should be understood
here in Deleuze’s sense:not “of lesser quality,”but marginalized,
disavowed by the hegemonic ideology,or dealing with a “lower,”
less dignified topic)? If the minor reference is well chosen,such
a procedure can lead to insights which completely shatter and
undermine our common perceptions.This is what Marx,among
others,did with philosophy and religion (short-circuiting philo-
sophical speculation through the lens of political economy,that is
to say,economic speculation);this is what Freud and Nietzsche
did with morality (short-circuiting the highest ethical notions
through the lens of the unconscious libidinal economy).What
such a reading achieves is not a simple “desublimation,”a reduc-
tion of the higher intellectual content to its lower economic or li-
bidinal cause;the aim of such an approach is,rather,the inherent
ix