Comedy and Critique : Stand-up Comedy and the Professional Ethos of Laughter

''Comedy and Critique explores British professional stand-up comedy in the wake of the Alternative Comedy movement of the late twentieth century, seeing it as an extension of the politics of the New Left: standing up for oneself as anti-racist, feminist and open to a queering of self and social institutions. Daniel Smith demonstrates that the comic sensibility pervading contemporary humour is as much 'speaking truth to power' as it is realising one's position 'in' power. The professionalisation of New Left humour offers a challenge to social and cultural critique. Stand-up comedy has made us all sociologists of self, identity and cultural power while also resigning us to a place where a comic sensibility becomes an acknowledgment of the necessity of social change.Comedy and Critique explores British professional stand-up comedy in the wake of the Alternative Comedy movement of the late twentieth century, seeing it as an extension of the politics of the New Left: standing up for oneself as anti-racist, feminist and open to a queering of self and social institutions. Daniel Smith demonstrates that the comic sensibility pervading contemporary humour is as much 'speaking truth to power' as it is realising one's position 'in' power. The professionalisation of New Left humour offers a challenge to social and cultural critique. Stand-up comedy has made us all sociologists of self, identity and cultural power while also resigning us to a place where a comic sensibility becomes an acknowledgment of the necessity of social change.''-- Site de l'éditeur COMEDY AND CRITIQUE Contents Detailed Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Sociology and stand-up comedy: from Talcott Parsons to Mort Sahl Stand-up comedy and New Left politics Outline of the argument Part I. Analytical 1 1. The Art of Stand-Up Comedy Ethos and morphology of the stand-up comedian Art and the intelligence of feeling From ritual to theatre? Stand-up comedy’s anthropological antecedents The magic of the stand-up comedian The modernity of the stand-up comedian Intra-personality, or the modernism of the stand-up comedian Coda Part II. Synthetic 3. Representation Stand-up: representing whom? Stand-up in the sociology of art and culture Comedification: from abjection to New Left hegemony Truth to power: the humour of ‘millennial men’ Historicising millennial humour 4. Persona Stand-up comedy after abjection The abject ontology of comic persona The ethics of comic persona The limits of New Left hegemony Part III. Critical 5. The Critique of Comic Reason John Dowie’s grave The sociological inquiries of paranoids, detectives and comedians Comedy as critique Beautiful mediocrity: towards an aesthetical sociological critique Appendix: Methodological Tables Notes Bibliography Index "Comedy and critique explores British professional stand-up comedy in the wake of the Alternative Comedy movement of the late twentieth century, seeing it as an extension of the politics of the New Left: standing up for oneself as anti-racist, feminist and open to a queering of self and social institutions. Daniel R. Smith demonstrates that the comic sensibility pervading contemporary humour is as much 'speaking truth to power' as it is realising one's position 'in' power. The professionalisation of New Left humour offers a challenge to social and cultural critique. Stand-up comedy has made us all sociologists of self, identity and cultural power while also resigning us to a place where a comic sensibility becomes an acknowledgment of the necessity of social change"--Back cover Comedy and Critique explores British professional stand-up comedy in the wake of the Alternative Comedy movement of the late twentieth century, seeing it as an extension of the politics of the New Left: standing up for oneself as anti-racist, feminist and open to a queering of self and social institutions.0Daniel Smith demonstrates that the comic sensibility pervading contemporary humour is as much `speaking truth to power' as it is realising one's position `in' power. The professionalisation of New Left humour offers a challenge to social and cultural critique. Stand-up comedy has made us all sociologists of self, identity and cultural power while also resigning us to a place where a comic sensibility becomes an acknowledgment of the necessity of social change __Comedy and Critique__ explores British professional stand-up comedy in the wake of the Alternative Comedy movement of the late twentieth century, seeing it as an extension of the politics of the New Left: standing up for oneself as anti-racist, feminist and open to a queering of self and social institutions.