On May 25, Dr. Christopher Gilbert will deliver a Rhetoric Unbound lecture. Dr. Gilbert’s talk, entitled “Survival of the Funniest,” will take place at 8.00 p.m. Eastern. The lecture will last 30 minutes and will be followed by discussion.
Lecture Description
There is no shortage of axioms to proclaim the peculiar power that a sense of humor has to keep us alive, let alone to live together. Humor heals. Laughter is the best medicine. Those who laugh, last. When humor goes, so goes civilization. Et cetera. The flip side, of course, is that comic sensibilities can give way to authoritarian impulses, and they have lately done so in rather unsettling ways. Still, more needs to be done around how and why it is that comedy has become such a central aspect of what might be dubbed rhetorical survival, from claims about free expression through everyday politicking to “official” statecraft. Of particular concern should be the relative festivity that encircles our habits of ridiculing perceived “enemies;” of doing cultural politics like improv theater; of trolling, doxing, and meme-making; and of being imperious about worldviews such that making fun reinforces that olden rationale for survival of the fittest. Comedy in this setup is not about schadenfreude. It is not about so-called “humor wars.” Rather, it is about the confusion of rhetorical contests as matters of life and death (both figuratively and literally) with the affordances of comic freedom. To take issue with the idea that those who survive are those who have fun or are funny—which is the purpose of this talk—is to reimagine how humorless humor and dispirited comedy constitute troubling survival tactics that are, now as ever, rooted not in freedom but rather in oppression.
Register for Dr. Gilbert’s Lecture
Click here to register for Dr. Gilbert’s lecture.
Rhetoric Unbound 