ragland _ the language of laughter

The Language of LaughterAuthor(s): Mary Eloise RaglandSource: SubStance, Vol. 5, No. 13 (1976), pp. 91-106Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684344 .Accessed: 30/04/2014 22:01

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THE LANGUAGE OF LAUGHTER

Mary Eloise Ragland

The increasing status given to theory in current literary criticism has stimulated radical reconsideration of many critical concepts, creating within the field a kind of meta-criticism, informed by new theories in philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, psychology and sociology, thus bringing literary analysis out of the realm of static description, into the realm of dynamic dialectic. Among the varied approaches used for re-evaluation of literary meaning, a structural approach views the text in terms of the processes which bring about its creation: whereas man has traditionally been viewed in terms of fabricated meanings, a structural analysis looks at him in the act of fabricating meaning and text is correspondingly seen being endowed with meaning.

In this study one will reconsider the conceptual significance of comedy, a fertile and necessary area for re-examination because of the multiformity of comic elements in literature. A structuralist re-evaluation of the traditional staples of comedy, such as technique (role-playing, counterfeit, verbal twists and so forth), situation, and character, views these comic features as surface structures which, although they describe the elements of comic effect, do not explain cause, either in terms of the underlying structures or in terms of the dynamics of the structuring itself. Thus, in order to cast a different light on the meaning of comedy, one will go outside the text, into the realm of theory: a re-analysis of laughter-the result of comic effect- may provide another view on the necessary link between man and text, thus adding to our understanding of the nature of comedy.

Viewing laughter as a means of communicating a wide variety of emotions, according to personal and cultural setting, one is concerned here with the observa- tion that laughter, nonetheless, leads back to the same psychodynamics. In this essay I shall discuss the psychodynamics of laughter first in terms of Freudian theory and then, using Lacan as a referent, I shall interpret Freud's findings within a structural framework. In 1905 Sigmund Freud's Der Witz und Seine Beziehung zum Unbewus- sten appeared, providing an analysis of laughter in terms of his ongoing redefinition of human motivation and behavior. Dismantling the cartesian model for reason, Freud upset man's view of himself as an essentially rational, logical, unified creature who occasionally has outbreaks of emotion, by postulating a controlling subconscious which, although it exists below the level of conscious awareness, actually structures feeling, thought and behavior in light of its recording of all past experience. Thus, consciousness becomes one organ of perception, rather than the organ of perception. 1

In his Introductory Lectures Freud designates as " 'unconscious' any mental process the existence of which we are obliged to assume-because, for instance, we infer it in some way from its effects-but of which we are not directly aware."2 Re- vealed in conscious life as neurotic symptoms, dreams, errors, laughter and so forth,

Sub-Stance No 13, 1976 91


92 Mary Eloise Ragland

these "effects" have traditionally been considered absurd, irrational, accidental or unexplainable behavior. By explaining the meaning of such behavior, Freud proposed a logic of the irrational, depicting the subconscious as a unifying force which underlies apparent diversity, providing continuity and connection between the unconscious and conscious self, explaining the unseen links between desire and deed, elucidating the rapports between internal and external realities.

In order to understand the Freudian view of the psychodynamics of laughter, one must look specifically at the basic emotional nature of subconscious structure (made up of unconscious and preconscious). Reiterating Freud's rejection of a cartesian opposition of emotion to reason, Arthur Koestler points out that although thought belongs to brain cells, emotion combines thought (memory) and physiological reactions. 3 Viewing thought as encompassed by emotion, and emotion as a complex of tensions, it follows that we, who are our thoughts and feelings, embody tension.4 Insofar as works of art are depictions of human thoughts and feelings, it is not surprising that various critics have called attention to the element of tension in all the arts, both in form and content. Although the specific causes of the various tensions are unique to each person and culture, the fundamental tensions conform to such commonly recognizable patterns of reaction as tears or laughter; thus, certain literary works express basic tensions in genre patterns such as the comic or tragic, thus objecti- fying the subjective.

Describing the psychodynamics of tension in terms of a primary language of unconscious instinct which generates psychic energy, Freud represents instincts as impersonal, ambivalent, indestructible bodily forces (energy) with no unified will, which force their way toward pleasure or power. Although he was initially concerned with the antagonism between sexual (libidinous) and ego (self-preservation) instincts, Freud later included in the concept of instinct, individual drives and the "cosmic" instincts of Eros and Thanatos (warfare between erotic and aggressive instincts)5 However, whatever view one takes of instinct, one must see it as inherently characterized by tension. Striving to gratify its desire for pleasure and power and thus straining against the repressive demands of culture, as well as against the equally repressive demands of other instincts, the unconscious, structured in terms of instinct, paradoxically carries with it an implication, not only of will, but of resistance, thereby continually preparing the ground for conflict and contradiction (Rieff, 35). Thus, one can see in Freud's portrayal of the unconscious, the framework of the original ambi- valence of human emotions which, in their very structural essence, do battle with the forces of civilization and the denials of the conscious mind.

Carried into consciousness as somatic demands upon mental life, psychic energy (instinct) exists at all times in variable amounts which are normally used either to defend against certain thoughts and feelings, through repression, sublimation and so forth, or to analyze (understand) situations, people or information, or to convey empathy or sympathy. In laughter, psychic energy is not channeled into the anticipated work of defense, understanding or sympathy; rather, a surprising event thwarts one's sense of logic or continuity, ending in the release of tension which we call


The Language of Laughter 93

laughter. "laughter arises when the sum of psychic energy, formerly used for the occupation of certain psychic channels, has become unutilizable so that it can experience free discharge." 6 Wit, or the comic, or humor, prevent the normal transference of energy from one path to another, thus producing laughter through an automatic physiological process which is made possible by keeping one's conscious attention at a distance (Freud, 738-39). In other words, one perceives a situation, or idea, or word in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference or matrices, a matrix being defined as "any ability, habit or skill, any pattern of ordered behavior governed by a 'code' of fixed rules" (Koestler, 38). When some "insight" shows a familiar situation, idea or use of language in a new light, when a pattern of imagined logic is disrupted, two previously unconnected matrices of experience are connected and the response is either a collision of the matrices ending in laughter or their fusion in tragic catharsis or a new intellectual synthesis (Koestler, 45).

In order to understand why an unexpected use of language, logic or affect may trigger a reaction in the unconscious domain of one's repressed memlories, admitting them to conscious life through a rechanneling of psychic energy known as laughter, one must look at the specific kinds of feelings involved. Falling into two general emotional contexts, the varied feelings which elicit laughter tend to belong to a self-assertive category of emotions. The first kind of laughter, which is not greatly discussed by critics, perhaps because it does not seem mysterious, denotes either the removal of some fear (de-tension, relief) or a sudden pleasure which raises general feeling tone, thus manifesting vital feelings such as joy or saturation of pleasure. The second kind of laughter is a reaction to feelings which make one uncomfortable and have thus been repressed (censored) from consciousness: attributed to this class of emotions, which one may call aggressive/defensive (as well as self-assertive), are feelings of indiscretion, degradation, incongruity, aggression and superiority. Since emotional discomfort often revolves around sexual and aggressive feelings, much laughter is an admission of related tensions. And, since in Freudian thought, all individuals both have and hide varying degrees of sexual and aggressive feelings, when a verbal joke or comic incongruity breaks through the barrier of repression, psychic tension (instinctual conflict) is dissipated; thus. viewed, laughter is a bodily reaction to stresses placed on man's physical, even animal nature by the social demands to deny or at least curb that very nature and thereby serves as a safety valve for the release of repressed discomfort and aggression, common to all and inherently necessary to psycho/ physical/social well-being. 8 "Law prohibits violent hostility, Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner robs us of the capacity to become angry. Verbal invective defeats our enemy by. ..laughter" (Freud, 697-98).

In his extensive analysis of wit, Freud lays the theoretical groundwork for his analysis of all laughter-producing situations. However, before looking at specific characteristics of wit, one must note that "wit" is used in this study in the sense of wit-work or that use of words (such as joke, pun, witticism) which produces a comic effect. Pointing out that some witty creations are funny because of their emphasis on form (word-wit) and others because of emphasis on content (thought-wit), Freud



stresses, however, the final inseparability of form and content: although word-wit is primary ("it is in the first place, the naked form which is responsible for the perception of wit" (Freud,640), wit-work, in the final analysis, makes use of content by its very deviation from normal thought, through various techniques such as displacement, condensation with or without substitutive formation, modification, formation of mixed words, ambiguity, representation through the opposite, double meaning, nonsense, indirect expression, omission, comparison, sophistic faulty thinking. The techniques function to deflect word and thought expectations, thus, achieving a surprise effect which results in laughter.

To understand the psychodynamics of wit techniques (formation), one must look at technique in connection with tendencies which underlie and interact with the word distortion. "It is easy to guess the character of the witticism by the kind of reaction that wit exerts on the hearer" (Freud,688). Sometimes wit is wit for its own sake and serves no other purpose (abstract or harmless wit); when not used as a means to its own end, wit places itself in the service of a tendency (tendency or harmful wit), expressing hostility (aggression, defense) or obscene sexual exhibition (Freud, 693). Since much wit is tendency (harmful) related, one may think its primary function is to avoid instinctual/cultural pain and stress: however, laughter would then be lacking in the connotation of freedom and fun which is its hallmark. So, one is not surprised when Freud points out that the essential psychological function of laughter is to gain pleasure. Referring to wit, Freud says, "The psychogenesis of wit has taught us that the pleasure of wit arises from word-play or from the liberation of nonsense, and that the sense of wit is meant only to guard this pleasure against suppression through reason" (Freud, 721). Such pleasure, in terms of the psychodynamics involved, is derived from an economy of psychic expenditure: in wit there is economy in the expenditure of inhibition or suppression, while the comic is characterized by an economy in the expenditure of thought and humor by an economy in the expenditure of feeling (Freud, 712).9 Thus, energy which is usually channeled into the work of logic, propriety or sympathy is sidetracked, surprised and, thereby, suddenly released, resulting in an economy of investment in emotional/mental effort through a return to a primary, symbolic language of instinct. With the overthrow of critical reason, the rules of language, logic and culture are removed, liberating the spirit of play and the absurd.

In further explanation of the joy acquired from laughing, Freud points out that the pleasure is (re)gained for the laugher at no intentional cost or purposeful economy of energy. Laughter is, thus, a spontaneous and free gift of pleasure which occurs when conscious perception is momentarily dipped in the unconscious, releasing psychic energy from its civilized, rational efforts. To illustrate this point, a brief analysis of a famous literary joke may prove helpful. Having been sexually rebuffed by one of the great ladies of Paris, Rabelais's Panurge seeks revenge in Church where she is preparing to hear Mass. "Equivoquez sur 'A Beaumont le Viconte'," says Panurge. 10 Since the lady does not understand the joke, Panurge gleefully explains: "C'est (dist il), 'A beau con le vit monte' " (Pantagruel, 329). If one is not too



offended (defended) to laugh, his laughter derives from an economy in inhibition which permits him to rebel against the authorities which demand repression of sexual and aggressive instincts. Expressing both discomfort (instinctual conflict) and recognition, laughter acknowledges one's own asocial impulses. In explanation Freud says, "Wit permits us to make our enemy ridiculous. .. in other words, wit affords us the means of surmounting restrictions and of opening up otherwise inaccessible pleasure sources" (Freud, 698). Through his joke Panurge has both sublimated his sexual desire and aggressively punished the lady for her rejection, thus creating for the listener a context in which "the cathexis utilized in the inhibition has now become superfluous and neutralized because a forbidden idea came into existence by way of auditory perception and is thus ready to be discharged through laughter" (Freud, 735).

Freud's stated goal of finding unity in the variety of techniques which may be used to create wit is achieved through his discovery of the pleasure obtained from the interplay between technique and tendency. For example, Panurge uses the techniques of condensation with mixed word formation through change of order, double-meaning and ambiguity; the underlying tendency is a desire for economy of expenditure of inhibition and repression ( wish to by-pass the censor) through the use of hostile and obscene words. The combined effect results in a return to childhood freedom of word play (technique), brought about by the reprieve from authority (tendency), thus culminating in pleasure. Such freedom (pleasure) is frequently caused by the smutty joke which "is like a denudation of a person of the opposite sex toward whom the joke is directed. Through the utterance of obscene words the person attacked is forced to picture the parts of the body in question, or the sexual act, and is shown that the aggressor himself pictures the same thing ... One of the primitive components of our libido is the desire to see the sexual exposed . . . ..It makes possible the gratifi- cation of a craving (lewd or hostile) despite a hindrance which stands in the way; it eludes the hindrance and thus derives pleasure" (Freud, 694 and 696).

In his extensive analysis of wit or verbal situations which elicit laughter, Freud compares wit-work and dream-work, indicating that in dreams, as in wit-related laughter, the restrictions of civilizaiton, adulthood and rationality are abolished. "Wit is the best safety valve modern man has evolved; the more civilization, the more repression, the more need there is for wit. Only relatively civilized people have a sense of humor. The child and the true primitive show no such mechanisms. The child like the savage is still natural and frank. When the child begins to dream, which shows that repressive forces are already at work, he also shows the beginnings of a sense of humor." 11 Thus, a release of unconscious material in dream and wit points the way to their strucutral similarities. Dreams are formed when a similarity of objects (represented in the unconscious) or of word-presentations (represented in the preconscious) between two elements of the unconscious material is taken as a cause for the formation of a third; the compromise formation, remembered in the conscious state, is the dream. In wit-work a preconscious thought is left for a moment to unconscious elaboration and the results are grasped by conscious perception (Freud, 750). Since



they are formatively similar, it follows that dream and wit use some of the same psychic techniques, the major ones being condensation and displacement (distorted logic) which take substitutions or contaminations in speech as the beginning of their work." 12 The "mistake" brings two incompatible matrices together, thus triggering the formation of a "new" representation of reality which appears, as a condensation of experience, thought, emotion or fantasy, in a single or series of images, telling an epic story in five minutes or five seconds. Thus, wit uses condensation in its striving for the shortest possible expression, thereby adhering to the condition of being easily understood in order to achieve the surprise effect which throws conscious reason off- guard (Freud, 738). Purposely using the techniques of condensation or displacement, through twisting of meaning, substitution, nonsense or impropriety, the creator of wit hooks the listener(s) at the level of the subconscious, undoing a repression and thus affording the freedom of play and absurdity through an elevation in feeling tone. Paradoxically, the creator of verbal humor does not laugh because he achieves the same pleasure afforded the laugher by undoing his own inhibitions and by his illogical use of language.

Although Freud speaks mostly of wit in his analysis of laughter, he also describes a second source which he calls the comic. While its origin may be linguistic or visual, its effect comes from a sudden conscious perception of a disproportion in mental or physical effort, a recognition that the actions or appearance of something or someone else are immoderate and inappropriate. Thus, while wit is limited to the confines of a linguistic milieu and a first person creator, the comic has wide sources or origination such as motion, mimicry, caricature, unmasking, repetition, exaggeration and so forth. Also, while wit-activity calls for an intellectual appreciation of an intentional use of language, the comic comes suddenly and unexpectedly to one's attention, conveying an image of incongruity. Freud says we laugh at the comic "because we compare the motions observed in others with those which we ourselves should produce if we were in their place. . . . The comic found in the mental and psychic attributes of another person is apparently again the result of a comparison between him and my own ego. Thus the object person becomes comic through his inferiority in comparison with my momentary superiority, or his momentary inferiority in comparison with his ordinary superiority" (Freud, 769 and 772). Ex- plaining Bergson's theory that one laughs at the human when it is deflected toward the mechanical or inanimate, Freud says that we are taught by experience to expect that all people are different and demand some expenditure from our understanding. When we see this not so we are disappointed in giving no new expenditures, but relieved and the superfluous expenditure of understanding is discharged in laughter (Freud, 783).

Concluding that the nature of the comic is found in the preconscious association of the infantile, Freud finds that comic pleasure is connected with comparison to the child who is yet unschooled in the rules of civilizaiton (language, logic and propriety). Thus, one compares self and other where other seems a child (inferior) and self is adult (superior); comparison within the other where he puts himself on the level



of a child; comparison within one's self where one releases the child in oneself. More specifically, the various sources of the comic relate to different characteristics of the child. For example, in the comic of movement, one makes a comparison based on the inferior physical development of the child. In the comic of situation, degradation, unmasking, imitation or caricature, one compares with the embarrassment and helplessness of the child. In repetition, exaggeration or imitation the adult degrades himself (or other) to the level of the playful, helpless child. And in the comic of expectation one encounters the gullibility of the child.13 However, whereas the comic relies on comparison in a way that relates to the infantile (pre-socialized, prelogic), wit relates to the infantile through the pleasure gained from the medium of language. Childish word play and repetition is prohibited by reason and adult expectations; thus, wit relies on intellectual cleverness or farcical vulgarity to re-open the pleasurable channels of nonsense use of words.

Looking again to Rabelais, one finds many examples of the comic. Illustrating the comic of character, Panurge is funny, in part, because of the incongruity between his image of himself as omnipotent (superior, adult) and his incapacity to put his boasts into action (inferior, child). Although he brags endlessly about his stupendous sexual prowess, when he is sexually rebuffed by the lady of Paris, he ultimately runs away for fear of a beating (helplessness and embarrassment of the child) (Panta- gruel, 331). As well as being comic, Panurge is also an agent of many comic situations. In chapter xix of Pantagruel Panurge uses silly, farcical tricks to win the debate with the famous English scholar, Thaumaste. Making noises and gestures like small children at play, these two adults appear in a most humorous light. The incongruity between one's expectation of what a serious intellectual debate should be and the actuality of the farce portrayed by two adults will probably elicit laughter. In another comic situation Panurge sews a priest's alb onto his gown and shirt. Saying Mass before the gentlemen of the court, the priest removes his alb and unknowingly disrobes himself altogether (Pantagruel, 304). The spectator may laugh at the incongruity because he is superior (adult), not subject to ridicule like the priest (inferior, child); thus, one punishes the priest (aggression of ridicule) for pointing out the varied feelings and fantasies one has about one's sexual self. And, in this comic instance of degradation and unmasking, one laughs, not only through comparison to the helplessness and embarrassment of the child, but also from the sheer aggressive pleasure of seeing God, Father and Society debunked in one blow.

Although much of literature contains linguistic and comic humor, such in- stances do not make the author a humorist. In Freud's view, a humorist is one who consciously weaves a total vision of reality, a philosophy of life, which advocates the use of humor as the only viable route to finding equilibrium and vitality while admitting that this particular route is chosen in order to detonate suffering. His art depicts a new world created in and of the real world, a world where life is affirmed against death and dying; thus, the humorist must appeal to his reader's ability to smile and laugh, must provide the arena for a release of aggressive, repressed emotion, must make a philosophical statement about the survival value of metamorphosing tears



into laughter. Ultimately, humor represents a failure of repression, a disdain of withdrawing from conscious attention the ideas connected with painful affect (Freud,802). "Humor is thus a means to gain pleasure despite the painful affects which disturb it; it acts as a substitute for this affective development emotional feelings of anger, sympathy, compassion and so forth and takes its place" (Freud, 797). Thus, the humorist by depicting a situation which could be painful, but which instead loses its gravity, acts as a kind of parental figure, striving to be tolerarnt and wise, assuring his readers that reality is not so terrible afterall, thereby adopting an attitude toward himself in order to ward off possible suffering.14

Although humor may be fused with wit or the comic, its psychic localization is the same as that of the comic, the preconscious; consequently it is more frequently associated with the comic than with wit. It differs, however, from wit and the comic in withdrawing from the affect part of its energy (conflict), resulting in a creation which takes its pleasure from smiling under tears (Freud, 801). Humor, then, is a comic pose consciously adapted as a filter for viewing the world as well as a defense for coping with that world. Once more, Rabelais, literary humorist par excellence, provides an example: "Je suys, moiennant un peu de Pantagruelisme (vous entendez que c'est certaine gayet6 d'esprit conficte en mespris des chose fortuites, sain et de- gourt; prest a boire si voulez)".15

In concluding this discussion of Freud's theory of the psychodynamics of laughter, one cannot find more apt words to describe the significance of laughter than those of Freud. Referring to wit, the comic and humor, he says, all three strive to bring back from the psychic activity a pleasure which has really been lost in the development of this activity. "For the euphoria which we are thus striving to obtain is nothing but the state of a bygone time, in which we were wont to defray our psychic work with slight expenditure. It is the state of our childhood in which we did not know the comic, were incapable of wit and did not need humor to make us happy" (Freud, 803).

In order to analyze laughter in terms of Jacques Lacan's interpretation of Freud, one must first look closely at Lacan's linguistic analysis of the unconscious for such theory is intricately related to laughter in the sense that the medium of comedy is words (wit) or word images (the comic, humor). While Lacan does not address himself specifically to the problem of laughter, he draws attention to Freud's analysis of language in word association, slips of the tongue, wit and dreams, suggesting that Freud was concerned with uncovering the structure of the language of the unconscious (The Structuralists, xviii). However, one must remember that despite Freud's attention to language, his essay on "Wit" views the unconscious in terms of instinct theory. Nonetheless, it is the issue of how the unconscious is structured which leads Lacan to re-interpret Freud; disagreeing with the idea of innate or maturing instincts, Lacan chooses, rather, to view the unconscious as subjective and symbolic.16 Insisting that man's mental apparatus is formed in terms of subjective/symbolic representations of language and that the key to the unconscious depends on its being seen and analyzed as a language system, Lacan attacks the supposedly causal relationship between



"reality" and language with its usual implication that language is a system of markers which hides meaning or stands as a screen between the mind and reality and is, thus, subordinate to "reality." 17 Whereas a traditional view of language assumes that whether the purpose of words is to inform, communicate or persuade, the words originate in the rational, conscious mind, remaining essentially static and subject to the mechanics of articulation and time in a nonessential way (Wilden, 164), Lacan views language as originating in the unconscious which is correspondingly structured like language itself. Although Lacan's primary language of the unconscious is the same as Freud's in that it has the same affect, the same defensive properties of repression, denial, etc., the same ways of revealing itself when conscious reason is thrown off- guard, his view of how the unconscious is structured differs; he attributes the cause of primary tensions to the initial process of identification rather than to instinctual conflict.

Lacan describes two primary sources of formation: the paradigm for perception of self(identity) and a network of symbolic representations or figures. Although these sources are dynamically inter-related, one will look first at the original paradigm for identity. A child's first perception of a relationship to self is in terms of a relationship to "others" (stade du miroir); root of all later identifications, the concept of a "self" is marked by the child's realization that he is there when looking in a mirror and gone when the mirror is gone (Fort/Da). This physical curiosity is paralleled and repeated by the presence or absence of the primary significant "other" (usually the Mother). Beginning outside the order of language, the child, in need of something from the other (food, attention and so forth) constructs himself for an-other in order to fill his lack; that is, he acts in a way to get a response from the other, to obtain the presence which assures him of having (being) a "self." Thus, the child established his identity in terms of a basic dialectic (conscious/unconscious) of desire and fulfillment. Seeking to perpetuate unity, which validates his being, the child learns the language (behavior, affect and later words) which will supply a presence (Mother) when he feels lack (absence, need). Thus, the primary question of "Who am I?" can be answered "Another," in the sense that one's identity, one's initial language of perception, is the discourse both permitted and conveyed by the other (Wilden, 167-68). Because of this initial structuring of the unconscious, man's desire finds its meaning in the desire (word) of the other, not so much because the other holds the key to the object desired, as because the first object of desire is to be recognized by the other (Lacan, 31). In this context, one's self concept motivates and governs one's words, unmasking the emotional desire behind one's use of language. A word, thus, becomes an evocation, a movement toward fulfillment of symbolic lack; language functions to establish relationships and to mediate between self and others.18 This is, then, the condition which makes it possible to discover a person's "truth" in the linear movement of his discourse, where a word is a signifier for, as well as of, since all relationships, fantasies, and so forth will eventually be represented at this level of dialectical meaning (Wilden, 163-64).



While the "discourse of the other" is a uniquely personal feature of the unconscious, Lacan postulates a less personal structure, made up of the language of tradition, culture, myth and expressed in the unconscious as symbolic figures which may be described as condensed images of word (and affect) memories, inner representations of residues of seeing and hearing the word (Wollheim, 191). While Freud supposed a discontinuity between the word, the image and the thing (Wilden, 238), Lacan found these to be continuous structures, signifiers which, like language itself, have the pro- perty of possible articulation and which anticipate on meaning (Wilden, 295). In other words, images, things, feelings are originally structured in terms of word representations and memory and obtain their meaning from the unconscious affect (desire/lack) behind them. In this sense, words seen as articulatable signifiers have the same structural characteristics as the unconscious, primary symbolic order. 'L'homme parle donc, mais c'est parce que le symbole l'a fait homme."19 Thus, through a merging of the language of identity (self developed through primary object relations) and symbolic representations of linguistic forms, one is able to generate and structure "reality"; the language of the unconscious is seen to precede perception and order it. "L'inconscient, a partir de Freud, est une chaine de signifiants que quelque part.., se r6pete et insiste pour interf6rer dans les coupures que lui offre le discours effectif et la cogitation qu'il informe." 20

One can also view the signifier as the articulated word which precedes and determines the signified (unconscious), which in turn becomes the hidden, unseen power behind the movement of one's words, only clearly exposing itself when its silent language is transformed by dream, wit and so forth. "There is nothing in the signified-the lived flux, wants, pulsions-which does not present itself marked by the imprint of the signifier" (Wilden, 241). One must then conclude that meaning (signification) is only sustained in its reference to another signifier; thus, the signification of the system of language itself is circular, for if a signifier refers to a signified, it can only do so through the mediation of the rest of the signifying system making up language (Wilden, 240).

In Freudian thought the primary symbolic language of condensation and displacement (distortions of logic) is revealed through neurotic symptoms, dreams, laughter and so forth, when the censor relaxes, ceasing to guard civilized logic and propriety, either because of sleep or because the psyche has encountered stress which must be released. Representations of a primal language of need and desire, condensation and displacement do not, however, in Freudian thought, arise from a subjective desire created by the lacks of the "self"; rather, they are symbolic expressions, charged with the energy of instinctual conflict. In Lacan's thought the techniques of condensation and displacement can be seen as literal statements about the personal desires (lacks) of one's self. For example, if one dreams of the "wolf at the door," he is not necessarily expressing a primary wish to consume or be consumed (damming up of libidinal or aggressive energy); rather, the dream may express a literal fear of loss of food or work. The dream becomes a statement of affect expressed in the structure of



a sentence. "The structure of language itself which enables us to read dreams is the very principle of the meaning of dreams" (Lacan, 304-5).21

Before looking at laughter in terms of Lacan's theory which lends itself to viewing the techniques of condensation and displacement as figures of style, one must turn once again to Freud. Dream condensation, according to Freud, is a formation of new unities or symbols which give a disguised representation to latent thought, through creation of composite persons and mixed images. Likewise, in wit, condensation aims at unity or fusion through use of techniques such as substitutive formations in mixed words ("famillionaire") or modification. However, while dream language condenses elements from the unconscious and preconscious in an effort to cope with pain through wish fulfillment, wit language condenses conscious and preconscious elements in order to re-experience the pleasure of denying the unconscious stresses and pains. Thus, both use condensation as a means to regain a lost (or fantasized) sense of unity and wholeness.

Lacan's theory links external linguistic devices with internal (unconscious) ones; thus, the psychic mechanisms of condensation and displacement can be viewed as literary techniques. Using mixed word images, substitutions and modifications, condensation and displacement relate to the realms of metaphor and metonymy. Laughter can, thus, be seen as dually related to metaphor and metonymy in that their psychic correlates (condensati9n and displacement) are used to produce wit, the comic and humor, and also in that laughter shares the properties of metaphor and metonymy in its primary psychological function.

In metaphor one word is substituted for another, that is one signifier (articulation or image) is taken for another; a meaning is produced which is creative or poetic (Lacan in The Structuralists, 310). The substituion of a new signifier for the anticipated one results in a condensation of words or images, creating a new perception by connecting the conscious linguistic order with the primary symbolic order of the unconscious (signified). In metonymy the part is taken for the whole (absence of the signified); meaning is created through displacement. Thus, by implying an unstated whole (such as "30 sails") metonymy relates to lack, while metaphor, by structuring a new relationship of wholeness, relates to being; both devices, nonetheless, seek fusion of conscious and unconscious orders, as do condensation and displacement.

One can now say that laughter is like metonymy in the sense that it reveals the lack (repression, inhibition) of childhood wholeness or the lack of unity with the original object ("other") of desire; it is like metaphor in that the "new" connection which causes laughter undoes the repression, releasing tension, thereby restoring harmony and fullness. Laughter is thus, a paradoxical structure, deriving its inherent tension from its combined metaphoric and metonymic properties.

In laughter, as in metaphor, the anticipated logical signifier (a word or image conveying a sense of continuity and propriety) is replaced by another signifier. This superimposition of signifier creates laughter, a behavior characterized, like metaphor, by tension and discontinuity between the conscious and unconscious, the logical and the absurd, secondary and primary language. And, in laughter as in metaphor, the



result of the tension is passage of signifier into the signified, through the replacement of the anticipated signifier; the conscious self has been thrown off-guard. It might, at this point, prove helpful to explain Panurge's joke, "A beau con le vit monte," in metaphoric terms. One might call the joke a metaphor of ridicule. The signifier, the joke itself, is superimposed on the logically anticipated signifier, (unexpressed) anger at having been sexually rebuffed (non-recognition of "self" by the "other"). Passing into the signified (primary language of aggression and libido or of symbolic lack), the joke creates a new link, thereby re-establishing for Panurge ( and the listener) a feeling of wholeness through release of tension. Yet, paradoxically, the joke is a displacement of anger; it is at this level of the use of words to convey a sense of primary lack or repression that one can view laughter in terms of metonymy as well as metaphor. In a metonymic analysis of the joke, one could, rather than viewing the signifier (joke) as superimposed on another signifier (repressed affect), consider the pun ("Beaumont") as one signifier which refers itself in juxtaposition to another stated signifier, the reference to sexual desire. The unstated term is the implication that there is another meaning (a signified) to be discovered; in this joke, the implied meaning behind the juxtaposed signifiers is the lack of woman, the lack of wholeness (primal lack of unity in self (identity); lack of non-recognition by the "other").

Although the cognitive function of comedy differs from that of metaphor and metonymy, metaphor redescribing the unfamiliar and comedy redescribing the familiar, metonymy stating lack and comedy providing the means for restoring wholeness, they are structurally alike in that the unexpected links serve the creative function of restructuring perception, thereby providing the potential for altering feelings, attitudes and thoughts. Thus, laughter (comic metaphor), like metaphor and metonymy, rebels against norms, aiming not to destroy, but to restore harmony and freedom through fusion, through momentary wholeness.

In the dialectic (tension) created by the combined properties of metaphor (fullness) and metonymy (lack).laughter becomes a "natural" language, pure representation of the emotional energy which derives from primary instinct or lack, thus taking on the properties of the primary symbolic order or the properties of symbol, that meta-language which belongs to the realm of irreducible coin. One can define symbol as a structure which is not distinguished by its differentiation from other symbols as is the signifier, nor can it be replaced by other symbols (Wilden, 232). Providing the primary source of language "the primacy of the symbolic is that it makes the ordering of reality possible at the same time that it provides and constitutes the 'real' referents which are erroneously supposed to 'cause' language" (Wilden, 226). Laughter, like symbol, is a meta-signifier, non-commutable, a "natural" language, much like the language of gesture. As a "natural" language, laughter reveals the "truth" of the subconscious domain, conveying the full word of the subjective subconscious, thus speaking the language of Lacan's moi, that alienated part of the self which cannot but reveal the "truth" of one's most basic reality. Belonging to the domain of satire and rebellion, to the wish to regain le perdu by subverting self and society, laughter is a rebellion against the empty word spoken by the social, logical



self, Lacan's je. Thus, when one laughs, overthrowing the censor of culture, superego or unconscious dicta of significant "others," one expels the authoritarian "other" (the e), becoming whole, free, authentic (the moi),

Finally, in relating this discussion of laughter to literary comedy, one might view comic elements in a work as links within an inter-related structure (the work): these links connect linguistic, psychological and cultural meaning. Viewed as a reaction to linguistically ordered perceptions, laughter can, thus, be discussed in terms of technique per se (condensation, displacement, reversal and so forth). When the linguistic technique is related to the underlying tendency (or intended signification), laughter becomes a transformation link between secondary and primary orders, the signifier of a signified repressed from consciousness, thus entering the realm of psychological structure, where symbol, metaphor and metonymy find their correlates in the human psyche. Joining these structures to the cognitive function of laughter, one enters the domain of cultural meaning where laughter is the manifestation of a collision point between the logical, appropriate language of the culture (norms, values, mores) and the subjective, socially inappropriate language of desire and tension. Ul- timately, these structures form a plurivalent network of relations between signifiers and signifieds (word/symbol), where one structure has meaning only in terms of another (one signifier always relates to another), thus forming the whole which is the text.

Since the psychodynamics involved in structuring a work (and correspondingly in responding to it) involve the temporal (diachronic, metaphoric, commutable) and the universal (synchronic, symbolic, non-commutable), a dynamic dialectic is created. More specifically, the comic dialectic is made up of elements (or structures) whose words correspond to the techniques and tendencies underlying laughter, that is, to the wish to afford release from repression, to create wholeness out of lack. One can finally, then, speak in an epistemological sense of a logic of laughter, which connects internal and external structures, man and text, and thus, reaffirms the depth perceptions of writers whose genius has always opened the way to an intuitive understanding of the language of laughter.

University of Illinois at Chicago Circle



NOTES

1. Freud distinguishes between the preconscious (realm of ordinary memory, language and association to the infantile) and the unconscious (primary order of instinctual conflict and symbolic memory which is not recognizable in conscious life except in its effects). The combined areas are called the subconscious. Lacan's distinction between subconscious and unconscious is similar to Freud's distinction between preconscious and unconscious, subconscious relating to Freud's preconscious and unconscious to Freud's unconscious. Quoting Lacan, Anthony Wilden points out that "The subconscious, a reservoir of memories and images collected in the course of each life, becomes a simple aspect of memory. At the same time as it affirms its lasting nature, it implies its own limitations, since 'subconscious' refers to the fact that memories, although retained, are not always available. On the other hand, the unconscious is always empty; . . .. organ of a specific function, the unconscious limits itself to the imposition of structural laws. . . on unarticulated elements which come from elsewhere: pulsions, emotions, representations, memories. One could therefore say that the subconscious is the individual lexicon where vocabulary only acquires signification, for ourselves and for others, in so far as the unconscious organizes it according to the laws of the unconscious, and thus makes of it a discourse. . . . The vocabulary is less important than the structure" (Jacques Lacan, The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. with notes and commentary by Anthony Wilden (Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), pp. 250-51.

In this study, the discussion of Freudian theory will use preconscious, unconscious or subconscious according to Freud's usage. The discussion of Lacan's theory will refer to his concept of unconscious since it is the primary structuring function which is of interest in this study.

2. Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1961), p. 35.

3. In 1894 Freud defined emotion as psychic energy that has been repressed from conscious memory, a "sum of excitation. .. having all the attributes of a quantity-although we possess no means of measuring it-a something which is capable of increase, decrease, displacement and discharge, and which extends itself over the memory-traces of an idea like an electric charge over the surface of the body (Rieff, 20).

Arthur Koestler, in his book The Act of Creation, gives a physiological description of emotion. If one looks at thinking just in its physiological aspect, says Koestler, one learns that it is based on electrochemical activities in the cerebral cortex and related regions of the brain; however, the energy transactions involved in thought are minute compared to the massive glandular, visceral, and muscular changes that occur when emotions are aroused. Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1967), pp. 56-57.

4. Speaking of the emotions as the basic organizing principle in all the arts, stating that the arts exhibit an interplay of "tensions," Suzanne Langer hypothesizes that "feeling and emotion are really complexes of tension." Suzanne Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), p. 74. And laughter, says Langer, is the personi- fication of emotional feeling. (Langer, 340).

5. Rieff, p. 31 and Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 21.



6. Sigmund Freud, "Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious," trans. and ed. with intro., Dr. A. A. Brill, pp. 633-803 in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (New York: The Modern Library, Random House, Inc., 1938), p. 733.

7. Koestler quotes Freud: " 'According to the best of my knowledge, the grimaces and contor- tions of the corners of the mouth that characterize laughter appear first in the satisfied and over-satiated nursling when he drowsily quits the breast. . . . They are physical expressions of the determination to take no more nourishment, an "enough" so to speak, or rather a "more than enough" . . . . This primal sense of pleasurable saturation may have provided the link between the smile-that basic phenomenon underlying laughter-and its subsequent connection with other pleasurable processes of de-tension.' " The Act of Creation, p. 59.

8. It must be stressed that it is not the fact of having hostile or sexual feelings that causes laughter, but that some aspect of these feelings must be repressed, sublimated or denied in terms of given social dicta.

9. * The comic and humor will be distinguished from wit at a later point in the paper.

10. Rabelais, Pantagruel, Oeuvres completes, vol. I, ed., Pierre Jourda (Paris: Editions Garnier Freres, 1962), p. 329.

11. Richard Wollheim, Sigmund Freud, ed., Frank Kermode (New York: The Viking Press, 1971), p. 21.

12. The Structuralists: from Marx to Livi-Strauss, ed., with intro. by R. T. De George and F. M. De George (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972), p. 35.

13. In his customary questing, humble manner Freud says, "I am unable to decide whether the lowering to the level of the child is only a special case of comic degradation, or whether every- thing comical fundamentally depends on the degradation to the level of the child" (769).

14. Sigmund Freud, "Humour," pp. 215-221 in Collected Papers, ed., James Strachey, V (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Co., Ltd., 1950), pp. 218-19.

15. Rabelais, Le Quart Livre, Oeuvres compltes, vol. II, ed., Pierre Jourda (Paris: Editions Garnier Freres, 1962), pp. 11-12.

16. Jacques Lacan, The Language of the Self. The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. with notes and commentary by Anthony Wilden (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), pp. 25-26.

17. Anthony Wilden, "Lacan and the Discourse of the Other," pp. 159-311 in The Language of the Self (Lacan), p. 226. It might be helpful to add a note here on Lacan's view of language as an instrument of "unmasking." To the contrary, contemporary philosophers such as Foucault, see words as signifying that they are nothing but eessential interpretations. Jacques Derrida views words as representations of presence in its absence. When one cannot hold or show the thing, then one signifies by going through a detour of signs, the sign (word) becoming a de- ferred presence. One might well conclude that if words have no inherent value other than as substitutes or replacements, then it is reasonable to view the word as screen, mask, instrument of deception and even destruction. Although Lacan takes the same view of language as Foucault



and Derrida in the sense that language replaces absence (Foucault's nothingness; Derrida's diff6rance; Lacan's death or void), his interpretation of such phenomenon, seeking its explanation in a Freudian view of human nature, is inseparable from human emotion, thus avoiding the pitfall which leaves Foucault and Derrida with the death of man and the disconnected word.

18. Since primordial unity is never regained, all speech is an affective movement toward the lack of a fixed point (metonymic movement).

19. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits I (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966), p. 155.

20. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits II (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971), p. 158.

21. Jacques Lacan, "The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious," pp. 287-323 in The Struc- turalists, pp. 304-5.

22. These formulae for viewing the structure of metaphor and metonymy may prove helpful: S' (superimposition of signifier)

= metaphor s (signified)

S. . . . S (juxtaposition of signifiers) = metonymy s (signified)

In each case laughter is the connecting link, the bar, which relates signifier (secondary language) to signified (primary language).


ragland _ the language of laughter

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