Abstract

In 1991, Stephen Halliwell published "The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture", an essay that, among other things, rejected totalizing definitions of laughter and the laughable in favor of a more nuanced view that emphasized a distinction between laughter perceived as friendly and non-consequential, i.e., not injurious to the reputation of anyone, and laughter seen as abusive, hostile, or belittling, and so deleterious to the reputation of the target. His point was not that laughter could be classified so easily but that there was a gray area at the interface of these two categories, capable of being perceived either way, and that even for non-problematic cases the dynamic quality of the phenomenon allowed non-consequential laughter to metamorphose with alarming speed into laughter perceived as aggressive, confrontational, and potentially violent.