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

Episoder(393)

Lawrence R. Samuel, “Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America” (Nebraska UP, 2013)

Lawrence R. Samuel, “Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America” (Nebraska UP, 2013)

Before the Second World War, very few Americans visited psychologists or psychiatrists. Today, millions and millions of Americans do. How did seeing a “shrink” become, quite suddenly, a typical part o...

20 Jun 201344min

Donald Moss, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man: Psychoanalysis and Masculinity” (Routledge, 2012)

Donald Moss, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man: Psychoanalysis and Masculinity” (Routledge, 2012)

Psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has been, albeit perhaps implicitly, a theory of masculinity. Freud’s Oedipus Complex, for example, charts the development of masculine identity in the boy while ...

10 Jun 20131h

Christopher Bollas, “Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown” (Routledge, 2013)

Christopher Bollas, “Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown” (Routledge, 2013)

What if analysts took steps to keep their analysands out of the hospital when they were beginning to breakdown? What would that look like? In Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdo...

26 Mar 201359min

Jon Mills, “Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2011)

Jon Mills, “Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis” (Routledge, 2011)

In this interview, Canadian philosopher, psychologist, and psychoanalyst Jon Mills speaks with us about his book Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysiss (Routledge, 2011). In the book...

19 Des 201257min

Sandra Buechler, “Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career” (Routledge, 2012)

Sandra Buechler, “Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career” (Routledge, 2012)

In Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career (Routledge, 2012), Sandra Buechler suggests that shame and loss are key components of a clinical career, and we would be best served t...

25 Aug 201255min

John Burnham, “After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)

John Burnham, “After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)

Perhaps most of us interested in psychoanalysis in the United States have the idea that, in 1909, when Freud lectured at Clark University, his first and only visit to this country, the profession was ...

31 Jul 201256min

Patricia Gherovici, “Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism” (Routledge, 2010)

Patricia Gherovici, “Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism” (Routledge, 2010)

In Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratization of Transgenderism (Routledge, 2010), Patricia Gherovici unpacks the ways in which hysteria, Lacanian-style, function...

21 Mai 20121h 5min

Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, “Intimacies” (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, “Intimacies” (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

In Intimacies and in this interview, Leo Bersani asks “does knowledge of the Other create a foundation for intimacy?” Troubling certain psychoanalytic models that survey the analysand’s past, gatherin...

19 Mar 201254min

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