Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)

Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)

Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting were the foundation of a kind of universal culture from which friendship, camaraderie and solidarity could emerge. Now, comedy is characterized by edgy humour and misplaced jokes that provoke personal and social anxiety, causing divisive cultural warfare in the media and among people. Our comedy is fraught with tension like never before, and so too is our social life. We often hear the claim that no one can take a joke anymore. But what if we really can’t take jokes anymore? Post-Comedy (Polity, 2025) argues that the spirit of comedy is the first step in the building of society, but that it has been lost in the era of divisive identity politics. Comedy flares up debates about censorship and cancellation, keeping us divided from one other. This goes against the true universalist spirit of comedy, which is becoming a thing of the past and must be recovered. Alfie Bown is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Kings College London. His research focuses on psychoanalysis, digital media and popular culture. He has also worked as a journalist, writing for The Guardian, Paris Review, New Statesman, Tribune, and others. His books include The Playstation Dreamworld, Post-Memes, and Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships. He is the founder of Everyday Analysis which publishes pamphlets and essay collections with contemporary social and political issues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

Jaksot(394)

Jordan Osserman, "Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Jordan Osserman, "Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

It is not terribly controversial to say that castration fear is one of the key conceptual engines driving the psychoanalytic project overall. Whether one thinks of it manifesting as a looming, retribu...

15 Elo 202255min

Mark Solms, "The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness" (Norton, 2021)

Mark Solms, "The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness" (Norton, 2021)

If you have ever been skeptical about whether neuroscience has anything to teach psychoanalysis, or vice-versa, you will be stimulated by this book which engages the two disciplines in a fascinating d...

12 Elo 20221h 6min

Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)

Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)

How well do we understand our relationship to sex? According to Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, authors of the new book Hatred of Sex (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), we tend to overlook the “unpleasu...

11 Elo 202246min

Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue

Transgender Children: From Controversy to Dialogue

How do we go forward in our psychoanalytic understanding of transgender children? This highly contested issue is at the core of an interesting edition of the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Ch...

11 Heinä 20221h 1min

Helen Morgan, "The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective" (Routledge, 2021)

Helen Morgan, "The Work of Whiteness: A Psychoanalytic Perspective" (Routledge, 2021)

'Whiteness' is a politically constructed category which needs to be understood and dismantled because the system of racism so embedded within our society harms us all. It has profound implications for...

6 Heinä 202252min

Mark Neocleous, "The Politics of Immunity: Security and the Policing of Bodies" (Verso, 2022)

Mark Neocleous, "The Politics of Immunity: Security and the Policing of Bodies" (Verso, 2022)

Our contemporary political condition is obsessed with immunity. The immunity of bodies and the body politic; personal immunity and herd immunity; how to immunize the social system against breakdown. T...

12 Touko 202248min

Death Drive

Death Drive

Kim talks with Michelle Rada about the death drive in psychoanalysis. Michelle references Todd McGowan’s Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, University of Nebraska Pr...

25 Huhti 202216min

Fort/Da

Fort/Da

In this episode, Kim talks with Saronik about the game “Fort / Da” — a game played by Sigmund Freud’s grandson in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (which you can borrow from the amazing Internet Archive...

11 Huhti 202211min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
tiedekulma-podcast
rss-poliisin-mieli
utelias-mieli
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-laakaripodi
rss-ammamafia
rss-opeklubi
docemilia
sotataidon-ytimessa
menologeja-tutkimusmatka-vaihdevuosiin
rss-vaasan-yliopiston-podcastit
rss-mental-race
rss-ylistys-elaimille
rss-lihavuudesta-podcast
rss-sosiopodi