Lacan, Psychoanalysis, and Comedy

This collection presents a traversing across the theories of Jacques Lacan that moves toward theories about comic art and comic laughter, but, like the arrow in Zeno's paradox, never quite arrives. The title suggests this scenario, for the volume of essays is surely about Jacques Lacan and psychoanalysis but not much about its third term, “comedy.” At least, not about comedy as a genre, as in stage comedy, though certain plays are mentioned and even analyzed. Rather than “comedy,” maybe “jouissance” should have been the third term, but in any case the basic objects of study in the essays are human subjectivity and the psychoanalytic method for explaining it. Sigmund Freud taught everyone that jokes are momentary glimpses into the unconscious, and that insight serves as keystone for the commentary on comic art and comic laughter found in this collection. Lacan built on and revised Freudian theory, but that task...