Abstract

Philosophy and psychology have added much to the study of humor by addressing the questions of what laughter is and why we laugh. Yet often these questions separate a concept of humor and a spirit of comedy from the practice of laughter. This metaphysical approach easily leads to the reduction of laughter to an ideology of humor where many forms of laughter are restrictively measured in terms of their morality. Laughter has to be PURE, GOOD and RATIONAL to be real. ;This dissertation assumes a more social and literary stance towards the bodily practice of laughter. Laughter is a multi-coded utterance; it is involved in both projects of oppression and projects of resistance. Rather than examining the "what" and "why" questions the focus is "how" laughter is produced, and then how its meaning functions in political space. ;Structural methods are used to locate laughter in social space, tracing out who is laughing, where they are laughing, and at what time. Post-structural methods are employed to examine how laughter is not only rational, but grows out of misunderstandings. The explosive power of laughter helps us question the present and the status quo, and it especially helps us to question the construct if "us." Laughter is intertwined with difference. Laughter is powerful because it is a productive practice, often opening up a politics of possibility for further laughing and crying. As one community is questioned, a new set of relations develops--the politics comes out in tracing how these relationships interact. ;The dissertation addresses both the productive and repressive residences of laughter. The boundaries across which laughter is heard are multiple; the analysis not only engages the geographic barrier of the Pacific Ocean, but also the disciplinary borders of the humanities and social sciences. It utilizes the literary and social texts of China and the West in a comparative arena: frameworks of Western critical theory are used to examine the funny stories of China and Chinese cultural concepts are employed to question Western theory's universals and explain familiar American humor in different ways