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

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Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied” (Stanford UP, 2013)

Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied” (Stanford UP, 2013)

Theoretical and historical accounts of postcatastrophic societies often discuss melancholia and trauma at length but leave processes of mourning underexplored. In Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undea...

26 Juli 201550min

Brenda Berger and Stephanie Newman, eds., “Money Talks in Therapy, Society, and Life” (Routledge, 2011)

Brenda Berger and Stephanie Newman, eds., “Money Talks in Therapy, Society, and Life” (Routledge, 2011)

What meaning does money have in psychic life? And where does clinical psychoanalytic work fall in the realm of commerce? Does money play an inherently alienating role with regards to the psychoanalyti...

9 Juli 201551min

Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler, eds., “Lacan on Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t” (Routledge, 2015)

Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler, eds., “Lacan on Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t” (Routledge, 2015)

Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler reminded me of something very important and unsettling: I have a brush with madness every night. Most of us do – when we dream. Or fall in love; or write poetry...

20 Juni 20151h 1min

Emily Kuriloff, “Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich” (Routledge, 2013)

Emily Kuriloff, “Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich” (Routledge, 2013)

In her new book, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Third Reich: History, Memory, Tradition (Routledge, 2013), Emily Kuriloff details a dimension of psychoanalytic history that has never been so exte...

2 Juni 201552min

Michelle Ann Stephens, “Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and the Black Male Performer” (Duke UP, 2014)

Michelle Ann Stephens, “Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis and the Black Male Performer” (Duke UP, 2014)

Why would Bert Williams, famous African-American vaudeville performer of the early twentieth century, feel it necessary to apply burnt cork blackface make-up to his already dark skin, in order to emph...

28 Maj 201555min

Frank Summers, “The Psychoanalytic Vision” (Routledge, 2013)

Frank Summers, “The Psychoanalytic Vision” (Routledge, 2013)

In The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process (Routledge, 2013), Frank Summers has written a wholly original work of theory, technique and cultural...

13 Apr 20151h 2min

Jean Petrucelli, “Body-States” (Routledge, 2014)

Jean Petrucelli, “Body-States” (Routledge, 2014)

Responding to a significant lacuna in psychoanalytic literature, Jean Petrucelli has put together an impressive book that approaches the eating-disordered patient from interpersonal and relational per...

1 Apr 201556min

Susan Kavaler-Adler, “Anatomy of Regret” (Karnac, 2013)

Susan Kavaler-Adler, “Anatomy of Regret” (Karnac, 2013)

The metaphorical construction of Susan Kavaler-Adler‘s Anatomy of Regret: From Death Instinct to Reparation and Symbolization through Vivid Clinical Cases (Karnac, 2013)evokes the complexities that ha...

17 Mars 20151h

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