Risible: Laughter Without Reason and the Reproduction of SoundRisible explores the forgotten history of laughter, from ancient Greece to the sitcom stages of Hollywood. Delia Casadei approaches laughter not as a phenomenon that can be accounted for by studies of humor and theories of comedy but rather as a technique of the human body, knowable by its repetitive, clipped, and proliferating sound and its enduring links to the capacity for language and reproduction. This buried genealogy of laughter re-emerges with explosive force thanks to the binding of laughter to sound reproduction technology in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing case studies ranging from the early global market for phonographic laughing songs to the McCarthy-era rise of prerecorded laugh tracks, Casadei convincingly demonstrates how laughter was central to the twentieth century's development of the very category of sound as not-quite-human, unintelligible, reproductive, reproducible, and contagious. "A virtuoso meditation on laughter, music, and sound reproduction, moving from transfixing insights to a bold vision of laughter as a sonorous force that troubles our conceptions of humanity and rationality. How sounds acquire meaning, how they make sense or nonsense or lie somewhere between the two: Delia Casadei's Risible considers these fundamental issues in startling and thought-provoking ways." -- CAROLYN ABBATE, coauthor of A History of Opera "A thrillingly unclassifiable and profound work of cultural theory. Casadei reveals how laughter holds relevance for every dimension of life and its biopolitical regulation via gender, race, labor, and reproduction. She also reminds us that there is much genealogical work yet to be done on mediatized, electrified soundworlds of the twentieth century and offers a powerful, welcoming push in new directions." -- AMY CIMINI, author of Wild Sound: Maryanne Amacher and the Tenses of Audible Life. |
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accessed February accessed June accessed May 11 aesthetic African American Alexa animal Aristotle Aristotle’s audible audience aural Baubo biopolitical Black voice Blacksound Cambridge Cantalamessa caquets chap chapter cholera comedy contagion contrafacts convulsive coon songs cylinder Death in Venice definition discourse Duke University Duke University Press essay feminist Fred Gaisberg Gaisberg gendered gestation Giambattista Vico gimmick gramophone Hagar Hennefeld history of laughter human humor ideology Johnson jokes Joubert kind Laff Box language laugh tracks Laughing Song laughter Léry listening logical logos Maldacea means Naples nature Neapolitan Ngai original performance phenomenon philosophical phonograph phrenes phronesis political Porphyry precisely prerecorded Propp Rabelais race racialized recorded laughter relationship reproductive labor Requerimiento risa Risible 2.0 Sarah signifier singer sitcoms sonic sound reproduction specifically subaltern surrogacy surrogate technique Theory thought tion tradition trans Translated twentieth century Unsettling the Coloniality Vico vocal writing Wynter YouTube