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"------.. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. V·M·I University Microfilms International A Beil & Howetl tnrorrnation Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. M148106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800521-0600 Order ~uxnber 9230477 Another book of laughter and misunderstandings: A field guide to chuckles, smiles and guffaws Callahan, William Arthur, Ph.D. University of Hawaii, 1992 V·M·I 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor,MI48106 ANOTHER BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS A FIELD GUIDE TO CHUCKLES, SMILES AND GUFFAWS A DISSERTATION SUBMITIED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE MAY 1992 By William Arthur Callahan Dissertation Committee: Michael J. Shapiro, Chairperson Kathy E. Ferguson Henry S. Kariel Deane E. Neubauer Steven Goldberg 1...---.. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee for supporting such an unorthodox dissertation, or should I say "stab at a dissertation." Mike Shapiro and Kathy Ferguson each gave me great help throughout the process, and I especially thank them for that. Many people in addition to my committee added to the dissertation with their critical comments: Roger Ames, Betty Buck, Sumalee Bumroongsook, Wimal Dissanayake, Milena Dolezelova, Linda Hutcheon, Pat Masters, Craig Mulling, Steve Olive, Larry Smith, Tu Wei-ming, Yang Yu-wei, Geoff White, and Hayden White. The Institute of Culture and Communication at the East-West Center supported me throughout the Ph.D. program, right up to the week that I defended the dissertation. I also learned much from my advisors at the ICC, Wimal Dissanayake and Betty Buck. It was at the ICC that I started a conversation with Walwipha of Thammasat University -- this conversation soon became a letter, then an essay, a proposal, then an article, and when I couldn't get the article published, it became a dissertation. Friends and family did their part too. I want to especially thank Sumalee for critically listening to my stories, some of which found their way into this dissertation, some of which wandered their way in and out again, and some of which remain to be written down. iv Abstract Philosophy and psychology have added much to the study of humor by addressing the questions of what laughter is and why we laugh. Yet often these questions separate a concept of humor and a spirit of comedy from the practice of laughter. This more metaphysical approach can easily lead to the reduction of laughter to an ideology of humor where many forms of laughter are restrictively measured in terms of their morality. Laughter has to be PURE, GOOD and RATIONAL to be real. This dissertation assumes a more social and literary stance towards the bodily practice of laughter. Laughter is a multi-coded utterance; it is involved in both projects of oppression and projects of resistance. Rather than examing the "what" and "why" questions, the focus of the dissertation is "how" laughter is produced, and then how its meaning functions in political space. Structural methods are used to locate laughter in social space, tracing out who is laughing, where they are laughing, and at what time. Post-structural methods are employed to examine how laughter is not only rational, but grows out of misunderstandings; moreover, it is also used to resist the social strictures of rationality. Laughter is political in a basic sense in that it is involved with the notion and practice of managing social relationships in "community" - it not only engages in community and identity construction, but also resists those communities and deconstructs them. The explosive power of laughter helps us question the present and the status quo, and it especially helps us to question the construct of "us." Laughter v is intertwined with difference. Laughter is powerful because it is a productive practice, often opening up a politics of possibility for further laughing and crying. As one community is questioned, a new set of relations develops -- the politics comes out in tracing how these relationships interact. The dissertation addresses both the productive and repressrve residences of laughter. The boundaries across which laughter is heard are multiple; the analysis not only engages the geographic barrier of the Pacific Ocean, but also the disciplinary borders of the humanities and social sciences. It utilizes the literary and social texts of China and the West in a comparative arena: frameworks of Western critical theory are used to examine the funny stories of China and Chinese cultural concepts are employed to question Western theory's universals and explain familiar American humor 10 different ways. VI Table of Contents Acknowledgements.. iii Abstract..................................................... IV Introduction: laughter and mis/understanding....................................... 1 Part I: Some Normal Laughing........................................................................ 37 Chapter 1: A Report on Laughter................................................................... 38 Section I: Special Issues......................................................................... 38 Section II: Normal Laughter and Heterotopia.............................. 59 Chapter 2: The Canon and its Dissidents: Laughter and Politics in the Zhuang zi...... 75 Section I: A Genealogy of Mysticism & Utopia............................. 77 Section II: Laughter and Politics................................................... 109 Section III: Dissidence 140 Part II: Explosive & Implosive Laughter.................................................. 150 Chapter 3: Laughter, Empowerment, Resistance................................... 151 Chapter 4: Court Jesters, Johnny Carson and the Myth of Political Humor.. 184 Chapter 5: laughter, anger, desire................................................................ 235 Section I: desiring laughter/laughing desire............................... 235 Section II: ironies and stories........................................... 251 Afterword: "Irony: ya can't live with it; ya can't live without it".. 270 Bibliography 285 ==~--_ __ - ---------_._._._. 1 Introduction laughter and mis/understanding There has been an echo of laughter in the quadrangle lately. In the past few years humor has once again entered on the academic stage as a topic worthy of serious consideration: there have been numerous "special issues" of academic and professional journals which address this topic, and many conferences have had panels on this matter.! The subject of this dissertation then is yet another reconsideration of the story, but with an important twist. I wish to address laughter -- not humor which some might theorize about, and often romanticize about, in search of truths, essences, principles which can be discovered once stripped bare of obscuring layers of representation. No, this project is about laughter as a practice that people engage in. The focus, then, is on laughter in its many incarnations, especially In laughter which is not necessarily related to anything "funny." Laughter can be said to come in multiple forms, one of which is unquestioning and tends to reinforce the discourses and institutions which construct the present (e.g. common sexist and ethnic jokes): a monovocal sort of laughter, and another sort of ! Just a sampling of these include special issues from journals as diverse as Philosophy East and West, Alternatives, and Women's Studies. It cropped up on academic conference panels in the late 1980s: the Association of Asian Studies Conference, Society of International Educational Training and Research (SIETAR) Convention, a psychology conference, and many more. In the early 1990s it is found often at medical conventions. 2 laughter which can be said to be polyvocal in its irony. Polyvocal laughter is constituted by a clash of codes, by a mis/understanding of the present which problematizes its discourses. Indeed, let us examine the dynamic between laughter and mis/understanding, and how such chuckles can lay bare certain power relations: polyvocal laughter can be used as a technology of resistance just as monovocal laughter is used as a means of oppression. With these chuckles,