Laughter and Community. The role of humor in the constitution of a multicultural democracy

CRISTIAN PALACIOS

Fukuoka

Conferencia; International Conference on Multicultural Democracy; 2018

Kyushu University

In this work we propose to examine what is or what can be the role of humour in the constitution of a Multicultural Democracy taking the history of the democratic reconstruction after the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) as a starting point. Frequently misunderstood, humour (and not comical) has been considered by Freud as one of the methods that human beings have founded to ward off suffering, and the only one that can do it without compromising physical or psychical health. In our own Theory of Laughter, we understand that this process that Freud describes for a single individual can be extrapolated into a whole community. Unlike the comical subject, the humoristic one presents himself as unapproachable, incomprehensible, as one from whom you never know what are his real intentions. While the comical founds the universe of representations which we set up the reality, the humoristic, on the other hand, disassemble it. From this point of view, this work seeks to promote elements to the ways on what the subjects of a community think of each other, to the ways on what the social inclusion of the differences is finally possible; process in which comical and humoristic discourses play a fundamental role.