Interpassivity and Can’t Laughter
What follows is a passage from my new book Psychoanalytic Sociology: A New Theory of the Social Bond. Please follow the link to purchase the book to read more. If you decide to cite any passage from this book, please cite the original book (pagination is included below).
[p. 179]
Slavoj Zizek once emphasized, as one of his key examples of “interpassivity,” the phenomenon of “canned laughter.” Basically, what is the function of “canned laughter?” It permits one to “laugh […] through another” (Zizek, 2003). At the height of television during the 1990s sitcoms deployed “laugh tracks” which provided audiences with a sort of receptacle for offloading their satisfaction. The television, as a make-shift or substitute “Other,” provided relief from the unbearable satisfaction of physically laughing on one’s own. The subject’s satisfactions were thereby displaced — extended in space-time — onto this auxiliary organ that we call the television. In a word, then, “canned laughter” was a symptom.
Yet, we should go much further than Zizek (and his colleague Robert Pfaller, 2017) by asking the following: which side of the symptom is being theorized in the theory of interpassivity? The Other, in this theory, remains integral for the conceptualization of “canned laughter,” since the Other operates as a sort of waste-basket for one’s own unbearable excesses. A variation of the “laughing symptom” can nonetheless be discovered today, in the period when, as Ben Burgis once put it, we are intent on “canceling comedians while the world burns.” This most recent sociopolitical moment involves a much more troubling rejection of the very foundation upon which any theory of interpassivity might be supposed: today “canned laughter” has been replaced by what I call “Can’t Laughter”: we are not permitted to laugh since this inevitably implies the violence of complicity with the Other.
“Can’t Laughter” signals dis-insertion from the field of the Other and from any concept of “world.” So, yes, even in the period of “Can’t Laughter,” we are still laughing, and that laughter has returned to our bodies. Yet, we laugh all [p. 180] alone, in our group, isolated, together; as the world burns. We should therefore look to that other side of the symptom: from the symptom as substitute satisfaction toward the symptom as substitute satisfaction (e.g., the stubborn insistence on satisfaction without relinquishment).
Several years ago, while attending some Bougie academic conference in California, a professor walked into an elevator and remarked to all of us who were standing there: “I feel as though I’ve been in and out of this elevator all day.” Another scholar, from our group, quickly responded back (with a self-satisfied smile): “Yes, but, as Heraclitus put it, ‘you never enter the same elevator twice!’” Suddenly, all of the scholars in the elevator erupted into an embarrassing chorus of contrived laughter.
I looked to the corner of the elevator and noticed a worker in uniform who was not “in” on the joke, awkwardly staring at her shoes. It was clear to her, just as much as to myself: we were rejects of this humor. The joke simply wasn’t funny. Why, then, was there such an effort to pretend otherwise? Although there was certainly a share of laughter, it did not function to bring into relief some repressive barrier to satisfaction. Rather, the satisfaction was permitted, amongst the “in group,” but only on the condition that everybody pretend in advance that they already understood. Therefore, the joke functioned in the service of a segregative group effect. Its message was: “we are already supposed to know about Heraclitus and his philosophy, and our satisfaction is to recognize that we already know this.” You are already supposed to know, which means that the Other is not supposed to know. So much of “politics” in the West today relies upon this field of presupposition: you are supposed to know even before you are capable of knowing.
Take another example. Alenka Zupancic once philosophized about a key scene in Ernst Lubitsch’s classic film Ninotchka (1939). A man entered a cafe with his date and requested “coffee without cream” but then was offered, in its place, “coffee without milk.” “Sir,” replied the water, “I’m sorry but we only have milk … may I please bring you coffee without milk instead?” At this point, all of the men in the cafe erupted in laughter. A crucial point: the woman, who was sitting with the man, stubbornly refused to laugh. For her, clearly, the joke simply wasn’t funny. So, why presuppose that there is truth in the joke for all, which means: “it is always the case that what is not included constitutes precisely the identity of what is included.” Zizek said: “it’s not the same, coffee without cream or coffee without milk because what you don’t get is also a part [p. 181] of the identity of what you do get.” Today, in a time of non-perplexity, would it really be so striking for somebody to point out that “cream” and “milk” are derivatives of the same underlying ingredient? It’s both milk — so, “without cream” or “without milk?” In either case, you’re not having milk.
This is why we must be prepared to constantly question Lacanian and Zizekian aphorisms such as “constitutive negativity,” “interpassivity,” and “constitutive lack.” They are often presented as a logic that is for all, and so discount those for whom the world is burning. […] An alternative to the classic Ninotchka scene is already playing out in progressive Los Angeles neighborhoods: friends told me that you can now visit popular “breastmilk cafes” to order various treats such as ice-cream, coffee, and milk chocolate. In this case, what you order is not a difference that makes a difference, that is, a product whose identity is secured by what is not included in it. Rather, you are offered products precisely because of what must be included: breastmilk.
