Laughing on the Brink of Humanity

general courses

The only prerequisite is to be able to do the readings in English. The written work will be done either in English or Polish, according to the individual choice of the student (students are also welcome to do their written work in French if they wish to do so).

Students are not allowed to submit material generated by ChatGPT or any other Large Language Model. They can use ChatGPT for editorial purposes of the work they wrote themselves, on the condition however that they specify in writing the extent of ChatGPT use and provide the prompt as well as the original version of their work they submitted to ChatGPT.

This seminar offers a novel examination of laughter and its relationship to humanity by positing that crossing from humanity to nonhumanity triggers a joyless and painful laughter. It studies three frontiers of humanness – animality, machinery, and divinity – considered not as fault lines defining a God-given essence or a self-constructed existence but as permeable and malleable contours of an evanescent meaning. Laughing on the Brink of Humanity poses the question “What does it mean to be human?” in our current posthuman era, characterized by genocides, technological revolutions and environmental crises that make anthropocentrism unacceptable.

The purpose of the seminar is to demonstrate that it is possible to address the question “What does it mean to be human?” in the age of posthumanism, when the genocides of the past and the technological revolution as well as the environmental crisis of the present make anthropocentrism unacceptable. Concomitantly, the seminar ambitions to exemplify a humanist practice compatible with a flat and relationist metaphysics where humanness cannot be considered a God-given essence or a self-constructed existence.

The means to address the question of humanness in posthuman times is searching for the permeable and unstable limit between what is human and what is not. It is important to stress that the evanescent contours of humanness should not justify the supremacy of one species, the superiority of a set of ethical values, the exclusivity of consciousness, and ultimately the political domination of one group over another. On the contrary, the limits between what is human and what is not are fluid and elusive. Nonetheless, they are signaled by an epiphenomenon: an eerie laughter devoid of joy. Therefore, the laughter we will study is not a defining characteristic of human beings but a symptom of passing over from humanity to nonhumanity. We will interpret this sign in texts ranging from classical antiquity to contemporary culture.

The readings of the seminar will be composed of approachable literary texts, philosophical essays and films. They will be introduced through short lectures, to provide the basis for philosophical considerations, historical contextualization, and literary interpretation. The readings will be assigned in advance and equipped with indications regarding the issues to be considered while preparing for the seminar discussion. The in-class discussion will be conducted in English and will be closely related to the assigned readings. Students will have the option of doing their written work in English, Polish or French.

During the last part of the semester students will be invited to work on their individual (or team) Research Projects. The semester will conclude with a small Seminar Symposium during which students will present their Research Projects.

The course has three main goals:

- To train students’ interpretative skills through reading of philosophical and literary texts (in English) devoted to relationship between joyless laughter and humanness,

- To foster a constructive exchange of ideas in an academic setting,

- To promote the students’ original conceptualization of fundamental questions pertaining to the topic of the course.

The goal of this class is not to promote any particular philosophical or ideological agenda.

Plan of the course:

[UNIT 1] Introduction: Laughing at the Brink of Humanity

• October 6: Claude Lanzmann, Shoah, 1985 [fragm. of the movie]

• October 13: Władysław Szlengel, „An Account with God,” c. 1943

[UNIT 2] Laughing (Human) Machines

• October 20: Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, 1907 [fragm.]

• October 27: Brian Christian, The Most Human Human, 2011 [fragm.]

[UNIT 3] Machining (Human) Laughter

• November 3: Maurizio Mancini, Radoslaw Niewadomski, Shuji Hashimoto, Mary Ellen Foster, Stefan Scherer, and Gualterio Volpe, “Towards Machines Able to Deal with Laughter,” 2017.

• November 10: Jordan Harrison, Marjorie Prime, 2016.

[UNIT 4] Laughing Animals

• November 17: Laurent Joubert, Treatise on Laughter, 1579 [fragm.]

• November 24: Jaak Panksepp,“Neuroevolutionary Sources of Laughter and Social Joy: Modeling Primal Human Laughter in Laboratory Rats,” 2007.

[UNIT 5] Laughing Gods

• December 1: François Rabelais, Gargantua, 1534 [fragm.]

• December 8: Friedrich Nietsche, Gay Science, 1872 [fragm.]

[UNIT 6] Laughing Humans

• December 15: Plato, Phaedo, 4th c. BC [fragm.]

• January 12: Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island, 2005 [fragm.]

[UNIT 7] Conclusion:

• January 19: Seminar Symposium

• January 26: Seminar Symposium

Course Materials: They will be available on the Moodle page of the course. To get access to this webpage, please contact Prof. Miernowski immediately after registering at jmiernow@wisc.edu

[selected bibliography and filmography]

Agamben, Giorgio, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Zone Books, 1999). Originally published in 1998.

Apte, Mahadev L., Humor and Laughter. An Anthropological Approach (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985).

Bataille, Georges, “Un-Knowing: Laughter and Tears,” October 36 (1986): 89-102.

Bergson, Henri, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1998). Originally published in 1907.

Braidotti, Rosi, Posthuman Knowledge (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019).

Cheney, Dorothy L. and Robert M. Seyfarth, Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Christian, Brian, The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches us about Being Alive (New York: Anchor Books, 2011).

Cicero, De Oratore, trans. Harris Rackham, Edward William Sutton, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988-1992).

Critchley, Simon, On Humor (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).

Ding, Yu, Jing Huang, and Catherine Pelachaud, “Audio-Driven Laughter Behavior Controller,” IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 4, no. 8 (2017): 546–58.

Freud, Sigmund, “Humor,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 9, 1928, p. 1-6.

Freud, Sigmund, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious (London: Penguin, 2003). Originally published in 1905.

Galen, On Problematical Movements, ed. Vivian Nutton and Gerrit Bos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Houellebecq, Michel, The Possibility of an Island, trans. Gavin Bowd (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). Originally published in 2005.

Jaulin, Annick, “Le rire logique: usages de geloion chez Aristote,” in Le Rire chez les Grecs: Anthropologie du rire en Grèce ancienne, ed. Marie-Laurence Desclos (Paris: Éditions Jérôme Millon), 319–31.

Lanzmann, Claude, interviews with Marc Chevrie and Hervé Le Roux in Les Cahiers du Cinéma, 374 (1985): 18–23.

Lanzmann, Claude, Shoah (1985).

Le Goff, Jacques, “Le Rire dans les règles monastiques du haut moyen âge,” in Mélanges Pierre Riché: Haut Moyen Âge, éducation et société (Nanterre: Publidix, Érasme, 1990), 93–103.

Mancini, Maurizio, Radoslaw Niewadomski, Shuji Hashimoto, Mary Ellen Foster, Stefan Scherer, and Gualterio Volpe, “Guest Editorial: Towards Machines Able to Deal with Laughter,” IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 2, no. 4 (2017): 492–94.

Ménager, Daniel, La Renaissance et le rire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995).

Montague, Patrick, Chełmno and the Holocaust: The History of Hitler’s First Death Camp (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Nałkowska, Zofia, Medallions, trans. Diana Kuprel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2000). Originally published in 1946.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Originally published in 1882.

Panksepp, Jaak, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Panksepp, Jaak and Lucy Biven, The Archeology of Mind: Neroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (New York: Norton, 2012).

Pawlicka-Nowak, Łucja, ed., Ośrodek zagłady Żydów w Chełmnie nad Nerem w świetle najnowszych badan (Konin: Muzeum Okręgowe, 2004).

Pearlstein, Ferne, The Last Laugh (2016).

Plato, Apology; Crito; Phaedo, trans. Cris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).

Plessner, Helmut, Laughing and Crying: A Study of the Limits of Human Behavior, trans. James Spencer Churchill and Marjorie Grene (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970). Originally published in 1961.

Sejnowski, Terrence J., The Deep Learning Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018).

Szlengel, Władysław, What I Read to the Dead, trans. Marcel Weyland (Blackheath: Brandl and Schlesinger, 2012). Originally published in manuscripts in 1943.

MA Student:

K_W02 knows how to use terms used in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences

K_W04 knows how to use methods of analysis and interpretation of scholarly texts

K_W06 knows how to use various methods of analysis and interpretation of cultural texts and artworks

MA Student:

K_U02 knows how to select and apply specific research tools to analyse artworks, scholarly publications, and visual materials

K_U05 knows how to use interdisciplinary research methods to analyse various cultural phenomena

K_U06 knows how to participate in academic conferences, symposiums, and debates

K_U07 knows how to complete an academic writing assignment using digital solutions and respecting the principles of protection of intellectual property

K_U08 knows how to analyse scholarly publications in the area of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences in Polish and a foreign language

K_U09 has a good command of a foreign language at the upper-intermediate level

K_U10 knows how to outline and deliver a speech for target audiences

K_U11 understands and knows how to implement the principles of teamwork

MA Student:

K_K03 is competent to carry out a self-appointed task using appropriate solutions and methods

K_K05 is empathetic and respects the cultural diversity of a community

K_K06 respects the cultural and natural heritage of a community

K_K07 respects the cultural and natural diversity of a community

In order to be successful in this class you should:

- read and annotate carefully all the required readings and work on all the required lectures

- participate actively in all the in-class discussions

- strive to develop your own personal interpretation of readings and your own conceptualization of problems under discussion

- respect the deadlines of all the assignments in this course.

The final grade of the course is composed of:

- 50% for the Research Project;

- 30% for quizzes written during the semester. The quizzes will have the form of “take home exams”: the students will have up to 48 hours to complete each quiz and they will be allowed to use any notes or library sources they wish (all sources have to be acknowledged). 3 out of 4 best grades for the quizzes will count toward the final grade.

- 20% for the preparation of readings and film viewings, as demonstrated by the assiduity and the quality of participation in the discussions in class.