Jokes, aporia and undecidability

• Authors: Alex Phillip Segal
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Derrida saw laughter as a version of aporia; and he linked aporia to an undecidability that he ties to fiction. I argue that such undecidability contributes to some jokes. Sometimes this undecidability enables the joke to combine plausibility and delightfulness. More interesting and more aporetic is the way that undecidability contributes to jokes that foreground their textual status (some meta-jokes for instance) and those that have an effect of unfathomability. The jokes considered include one on which Derrida commented and another which was told at his Columbia University memorial service.

Keywords

EN

jokes; undecidability; aporia; fiction

• Publisher: Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies
• Journal: The European Journal of Humour Research
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2018

online

2018-06-13

Contributors

author

Alex Phillip Segal

Identifiers

DOI

10.7592/EJHR2018.6.1.segal