Symptomatic Comedy. On Alenka Zupančič’s The Odd One In and Happiness

Introduction

Comedy, understood in a widest sense as “all things funny,” seems to thrive on relation between “the two.” The proponents of relief theories of humour would claim that there are two steps for a laughter to appear: 1) a tension building up in a body, followed by 2) a rapid release. The phenomenologists of the joke would note that there is a narrative scheme at the heart of the joke that hinges on two phases: building up the expectations and resolving them in a surprising manner.^[1] The famous line from Henri Bergson essay Laughter, which claims the comedy stems from “something mechanical encrusted upon the living”^[2] also entertains the notion of two orders being necessary for the comical effect to take place. It might be said that in comedy as well as in physics the two is indeed a magical number.

These brief musings serve a purpose beyond introductory flamboyance. We are about to take a closer look at Alenka Zupančič The Odd One In: on Comedy, the book that, at its core, is dealing with dualisms. Zupančič investigates the coincidence of two separate orders and the possible linkage thereof at a particular point. A point where – according to her – the comedy dwells. Furthermore, the very thesis of our text involves the “two.” Our claim proper is that there is a very meaningful lack at the core of Zupančič understanding of comedy. The lack we reveal lies in her neglect of the conditions of possibility of experiencing comedy, which – we claim – hinges upon the relation with the other (the primal object in psychoanalytical meaning). It is such relation (between the two) that grants a subject the capability of experiencing happiness, without which the comedy could not arise. We will try to show the consequences of such omission and speculate on its reasons.

However, in order to execute such an investigation in the second part of the text, the preparations must be attended to. A methodological tool is needed to expose the said lack in Zupančič thought, the one that is rooted in both the theories of comedy and psychoanalysis (as both domains are of Zupančič interest). We will thus propose a notion of the navel of thought. We will extrapolate the reasoning of Sigmund Freud and posit the existence of a symptomatic point within any theory of comedy, that is a point at which a certain incongruence of the theory plays out. It is only when we are equipped with the theoretical tool of the navel of the thought will we proceed in our attempt to find such a point within Alenka Zupančič book.

1 The Navel

As in a novel the unmistakable truth of your character comes crashing through, having come to mean what it had been called on for, and meanwhile the tale itself, a bundle of incidents related to but separate and distinct from you, got up and did a dance and left.

John Ashbery, New Spirit

Comedy, we claim, contains a symptom. We do not merely posit – although such a proposition would not be without merit – that whenever comical appears, its very movement does reveal something more about its object than meets the eye. This however is a very bread and butter of all things comical. Characters, narrative schemes, and gags that weave the fabric of comedy more often than not are comical only because of the incongruity they either disclose or – in the case of more conservative modes of comedy – play out.^[3] The claim proper of our argument, while by no means being deaf to the above-mentioned perspective, is of a very different order. What we hope to entertain is rather a thesis that writing about comedy produces a symptom, a very particular one: when one attempts to theorize comedy, the very act reveals more about one’s theory and its inherent inclinations than it may appear.

Why would that be the case? Why the comedic privilege? Doesn’t any theoretic text do exactly that: it puts to work inclinations (and a particular scholars’ conceptual toolbox) and uses them exactly in order to explicit a thought, idea, interpretation? And doesn’t such thesis – claiming that any text does say more than the author intended – sound banal when uttered after the long and thorough lesson of “the masters of suspicions”^[4] and their inquisitive heirs of the poststructural and deconstructive order? Do we not verge on telling – pardon – a joke, a punchline of which everyone has heard too many times?

Those two questions – the alleged special status of theorizing comedy and the surplus of the meaning of any text – are entwined and need to be addressed before we venture forth. It may sound trivial to remind us that a text always conveys more meaning than intended, but it is important to remember that texts generate this surplus at different rates. On the one hand, texts belonging to academic discourse attempt (and inevitably struggle) to limit this excess to the bare minimum in order to maintain clarity and comprehension of the message. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we could place this “strange institution called literature,” as Jacques Derrida called it, whose whole premise is to generate such unexpected surplus as a result of exploring freedom of the very possibility of “saying everything.”^[5] It is not within this text’s frame to delineate the potential positions of philosophical writing as a genre on such a spectrum. It is clear however that – even if we narrow the texts to a very particular domain of philosophy – various texts will occupy different positions on this imaginary axis that stretches between mathematical precision and nomadic excursions of poetry, prophetic visions, etc. What we want to stress is that those shifts – for we do talk about shifts only – do not hinge solely upon the literary style and inclinations of a given author; there are also structural forces at play. To put things bluntly, the further we venture into the untheorized and transdisciplinary, the more excessive information text generates, exactly because of the loosened corset of academic obligations. The strings that get loosened seem to be of dual nature: the extent of previous attempts at theorising the subject (that is the sheer volume and quality of texts one needs to take upon examination^[6] in order to satisfy academic standards) and the disciplinarian purity of it, by which we mean genealogical habitus of a subject of inquiry, its “home discipline.” Such relaxation gives way to certain freedom when it comes to both the strategy chosen and the toolset applied to achieve its goal, the freedom that goes beyond a very natural and common tendency to apply intellectual framework we are most at ease with (i.e. a scholar grounded in Karl Marx’s thought will most likely than not use Marxist categories etc.). Lastly, it is worth noting that “untheorized territory” does not infer a niche or obscure subject of inquiry (although it very well may be the case), and it is often the overarching categories and popular yet elusive notions (sex, culture, body) that prove a great cornerstone for a philosophical inquiry.

Here, so to speak, the comedy begins. The comedy is exactly such a blanket term that can designate a particular genre of drama, a structure for the comical to take place, or even “all things funny.” Such a starting point allows an author to delineate an object of investigation with little regard to any petrified understanding of the term, mostly because no standardized definition had been coined. So when Zupančič writes in the very first sentence of her book The Odd One In: on Comedy: “It may come as little surprise to say that comedy is an extremely difficult subject of investigation,”^[7] one has to take this claim with a grain of salt. For it is exactly the relative lack of interest in comedy on behalf of philosophers, coupled with the conceptual elusiveness of the very subject that sets the scene for her remarkable argument. But let us put Zupančič text on a shelf for a couple of paragraphs and elaborate on the nature of freedom that theorizing comedy provokes.

In order to illustrate the thesis, two steps must be taken. First, we must extend the scope and consider comedy at its conceptual widest, as “all things playfully funny.” This movement will allow us, albeit briefly, to provide examples of the discussed freedom.^[8] Furthermore, this very point, a safe haven from shackles of obligation will return in our argument as a crucial one. Second, we would like to evoke a Freudian distinction between purpose and technique of (obviously) a joke.^[9] Purpose^[10] of the joke is an intention, the driving force behind it, and technique denotes all the means harnessed to execute the purpose. We propose to use this distinction in the process of constructing the theoretical text, particularly the text tackling the comical. The methodology applied and the conceptual framework chosen by an author constitutes his or her technique. The purpose, however, is more intriguing, for it – if we go hand in hand with Freud’s reasoning – cannot be reduced to the explicit aim or thesis (i.e. proposing an innovative take upon a subject of inquiry, providing a critique of another text, etc.), since these are obvious components of a text willing to meet academic standards. If we are to take purpose seriously, we must note, so to speak the purpose of a purpose. And what would that be, according to Freud? unsurprisingly, the production of pleasure.^[11]

It is at this point that freedom comes into play: freedom that emerges when we enter the untheorized, freedom to utilize whatever means we see fit. There is a reverse side to this joyful moment, however. As Peter Sloterdijk noted when meditating upon Rousseau’s transformative retreat at Lake Brie, freedom is a state when one finds oneself “in an ecstasy of being-with-oneself.”^[12] This point seems to be more than a neat bon mot, since in psychoanalytical terms it could be formulated: loosening of a tight grip of the superego allows one’s defence mechanisms to lower their guard, making the symptomatic more visible. That is Schillerian “relaxation of the watch upon the gates of Reason,” Freud discusses in The interpretation of dreams.^[13] If – in an academic context – the experience of freedom is indeed being with oneself, it follows that the product (text) of such freedom is indeed as truly ours as it gets. By “ours” we mean the text that reveals the purposes, the tendencies of the author, perhaps to an unforeseen extent – it is in this condition that the kernel of one’s thought is exposed.

The subject, in our case, the comedy, the joyful, and the playful, not only meet these criteria, as a matter of fact they might magnify discussed freedom. These phenomena occupy the overlapping section between cultural and purely biological, their mechanisms are largely unknown, and their spontaneity fuels their elusiveness. At the same time, they denote experience that is common, that is both: ordinary, accessible to most human beings and relational (to the latter point we shall come back to at the later stage of the text).

Concurrence of these conditions is, we claim, a rare and plastic material from which one can shape not only the desired form but something more subtle – a form of one’s desires, the purpose (in the Freudian sense) of theorizing comedy. If an example would be of use, what better place to start than Freud himself? His Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, published in 1905 on the level of technique mobilizes, naturally, all the conceptual apparatus psychoanalysis had to offer at the time (Freud also calls on a catalogue of very moderately, to say the least, funny jokes in the process). On a level on purpose, on the other hand, we get a materialistic project, ruled by morbidly mechanistic economies of pleasure and pain – as Terry Eagleton put it, the book “like much of his [Freuds’] work reverts in some sense to a Hobbesian image of humanity.”^[14]

But such purpose is not yet a symptom we promised and seek, since those particular techniques and purposes can be found across most of Freud’s texts, for the author can be (mostly) fully conscious of his purpose. It is exactly theorists from whom we came to expect such awareness. If we however dare to loosen the corset of our own argumentation (we are in the end somehow theorizing comedy), we may follow a series of Freudian metaphors: if comedy is a night, a condition that gives freedom,^[15] the text is then a dream, a product of our desires, but the true symptom, the thing that is not to be overlooked in this liberating sleight of hands is the peculiar point, which we shall call – if we may audaciously paraphrase Sigmund Freud – the navel of thought. This singular point would be very much like the Freudian navel of dream, a “spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable – a navel, as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown.”^[16] A small snag is that the Freudian navel, as we know, is a point impossible to interpret that “adds nothing to our knowledge of the content of the dream,”^[17] we however, being of philosophical rather than analytic disposition, are bound to be of the belief that the navel of thought will add to our knowledge something of significant importance.

But how would one go about finding such a point? As is the case with all things comical, there is not a single way, but comical techniques can be useful in so far as they may point us towards the proposed navel of thought. In Freud’s Jokes, it comes in a most classical form of a punchline. For it is in the very last sentence of his uncharacteristically laboured essay that Freud makes a cursory connection between a euphoria delivered by jokes and “the mood of our childhood, when we were ignorant of the comic, when we were incapable of jokes and when we had no need of humour to make us feel happy in our life.”^[18] It may be very easily dismissed as of no importance as it verges on banal and does not really serve any purpose in the theory of jokes (as hitherto presented by the father of psychoanalysis), it is “purpose” seems thus purely stylistic, as it is a nicely worded wind up to the book. And who can resist a nice clincher? It seems neither the author nor the reader can escape its lure. We claim however that to give in to said lure and its satisfaction would be exactly to miss the navel of Freud's thought, a symptom of stakes that he himself found hard to implement within his theory – namely, a notion (and possibility) of happiness. This proposal is elaborated by Adam Lipszyc in his book on Freud, most notably in the section on – naturally – humour, where the very same final sentences of Freud’s Jokes… are discussed.^[19] Interestingly, the similar “punchline” – which Lipszyc registers – occurs in the second of Freud’s texts concerning all things comical, his much later (published in 1927) and much more concise essay Humour. ^[20] There too at the very end of the text, an unexpected (within a Freudian framework) concept arises. To great surprise, we learn that there might be a different facet to the super-ego (which is, according to Freud, a source of humour, as the unconscious is the origin of jokes), full of, dare we say, loving care for fragile ego, to whom it “speaks such kindly words of comfort.”^[21] This concept too is not built upon, Freud leaves it hanging in the proverbial air, seemingly ignorant of the fact that he is directing towards something radically different than the main framework of techniques and purposes of the text. This sudden shift at the end of Humour, we would argue, is exactly the navel of (this particular) thought.

Not all navels dwell in the endings, however. We should look for them in the same structural spots in which the comical appears. It only follows that the traditional attempts at theorizing comedy and its techniques could be treated as a road map to navels. Three types of theories of all things funny seem to be dominant: the relief theory, the superiority theory, and the incongruity theory.^[22] The navels should therefore be looked for at the points of powerplay (positioning oneself in relation to other author, relation to ideologies, etc.), relief (of tensions, troublesome points of theory) and – perhaps most closely, since the incongruity theories seem to be most complex (and most recent) – at the points of inconsistency and dissonance. Similarly, the techniques employed can guide us in the right direction, techniques that usually utilize the different modes of surprise, repetition and – at the very last bringing us towards the Alenka Zupančič’s book – the omission.^[23]

2 The Umbilical Cord

I answer the question that should have been asked

Emmanuel Levinas^[24]

The omission is omnipresent in Zupančič Odd One In. Terms like “gap,” “lack,” and “hole” densely populate this book, yet one must not be misled into thinking that the argument itself is a whole lot of nothing. Let us ponder what is within the Slovenian philosopher’s book, before we turn our eye to what is missing, for there is plenty to discuss.

Since Zupančič book works within the paradigm of the Ljublana School, the techniques harnessed are easy to detect. The usage of Lacan and Hegel combined with the acute awareness of the traps of ideology are fuelling the process of executing the complex and ambitious purpose of the text, or rather three intertwined purposes: the philosophical, the political and, for the lack of a better word, the comical.

The main purpose of the book – its philosophical stakes – appears to be the critique of dualism(s) that result in either radical transcendence or (just as radical) immanence. The “third way” according to Zupančič is the one grounded in Lacan’s thought, particularly the very impossibility of any totality that permeates both Lacan’s theorems and their very architecture. These dualisms, she argues, of universal/concrete, finite/infinite, and internal/external can be overcome (although – it is important to note – not sublated in a Hegelian sense) by pointing to the very movement of those oppositions, that are fuelled by a dialectical motion of establishing each other. The very point at which this process can be observed, its fulcrum, is what she dubs “the real comic object” [Z 59]. It would appear that Zupančič – as Paweł Mościcki put it – “commences the possibility of exhibiting the true, materialistic infinitude,”^[25] possibility that hinges on the leak between apparent oppositions, the leak that by its very nature (of both revealing and fuelling the incongruency) is comical; thus, the comedy can be treated as a matrix, logic of sustaining the singularity of the seemingly different orders, which may – Zupančič hopes – serve some emancipatory goals. To put it bluntly: The Odd one in finds in comedy a theoretical tool to serve its philosophical stakes, while hoping (and hoping only, since the political trope, although explicated, remains underdeveloped) for it to show some political use.

This endeavour of Zupančič is very well executed and has received a warm reception,^[26] and it is not however our goal to either follow or critique her line of argumentation. If we are to ponder the location of the navel of her thought (i.e. the navel of the particular text), we might entertain the notion that such navel might be hiding in plain sight, and our claim is exactly this: the widely discussed in the Odd one in “lack” is such point, it is the gap that – perhaps unsurprisingly – points in the direction of what is missing. The thing that stands out most in her text is that it is purposely not trying to be comically entertaining. This very fact can be dismissed from at least three stances. Firstly, there is no obligation to be funny while theorizing comical matter. Furthermore, it may be viewed as a very non-academical manner of stylizing the text, rendering it – in the eyes of many – as beguilement that covers up the insubstantial argument of the text properly. It is no surprise that texts discussing comedy are not only sombre in tone but even the jokes they summon are rarely hilarious. Secondly, her argument, rather than the style itself, is by all means witty, if delivered in a dry tone – the juxtaposition of sombre style – e.g. choice of remarks and evidence – may indulge an appropriately inclined reader. Thirdly, one may be tempted by a Bloomian^[27] interpretation of the sober tone of the book. Namely one could seek the reason for Zupančič’s choice of precise prose and unwillingness to entertain, in the presence of the shadow of Slavoj Žižek, a most prominent representative of Ljubljana school, (in)famous for his overuse of all sorts of comical mannerisms.

These tropes, whether interesting or not, do not point us any closer to the proposed navel of Zupančič thought, for our claim is that what’s truly missing lies within the very gap upon which she hinges her argument. Let us examine what we understand to be the main argument of her text: two apparently separate orders (like concrete and universal) are in fact but a facet of the same phenomenon. Their true relation can be visualized by the topography of the Möbius strip; their veiled constitution does reveal itself at the very precise moment of a coincidence of the points of lack of both orders, it is only in this very peculiar situation that we might notice that link between the two sides, the “short circuit” between them, and more than that – it is this point only that “makes it possible for them to fit into each other” [Z 55–56]. This very point, when the two seemingly distinct entities speak together is an “impossible joint articulation” [Z 59], defines what the comedy is for Zupančič. One can think comedy (or the movement of comedy that can be described as an unexpected and “impossible” leak between the two heterogeneous orders of being) as a pivotal point in overcoming the apparent oppositions and creating a “concrete universal.” Understood in this way, the comedy “fully affirms itself as the genre of copula” [Z 215–216], yet by its very, comical nature the connection it establishes is both unexpected and unstable – which is not a vice at all, because it makes it (at least partly) immune to totalization, more resistant to sliding into the petrified state of dualism.

What emerges is a particular concept of comedy, harnessed to propose a certain mode of thinking. Nonetheless, if we take this concept of comedy as copula seriously, and we should, we may notice the fact that Zupančič perhaps misses the comical point of lack in her own argument. Preoccupied with her argument, which sits firmly on the side of conceptual abstraction, she neglects the “other side” of the strip: the concrete and material manifestation of comedy. What manifestation do we mean? As Paweł Mościcki wrote about the gag – and Zupančič really, in order to be consistent, should agree – is “entangled with the paradox of embodiment, which object is the body.”^[28] The gag does not exist without the body, and we claim that neither does comedy. Just as the piece of music (while can be analysed without listening to the particular and unique execution of the sequence of notes) is meant to be heard, the comedy is meant to be experienced. This however opens numerous consequences. Firstly, the comical is an event, which is in line with Zupančič’s claim that it is a short circuit, “an encounter of the two entities” [Z 17]. Secondly, if we consider the phenomenon of comedy in a more intuitive, everyday meaning, it is indeed, and always, a bodily experience. However, subtle is the play of notions (images, cultural scripts, etc.) that constitute the meeting of the “points of lack,” that is a kernel of Zupančič’s comedy, it is recognized as a comedy by way of being both manifested and recognized through a physiological response – be it a laughter, a relaxation of the muscles, feeling of mild bliss. An idiosyncratic, individual experience that is more than a material “plane” of the play of comedy. The comical “factor X” Zupančič, on the other hand, seeks and discusses is governed by (or follows) the production of certain “surplus-enjoyment,” enjoyment the subject did not “ask for,” which “does not simply spring from, or originate in, the body” [Z 189]. If we dare a different view, that whatever the surplus of comedy is, it does originate in the body, such assumption will point us in the direction of two phenomena that are missing from the Zupančič theory of comedy. Missing not only as a result of being of no interest to her but perhaps in a way that can be thought of as a symptom. The two notions are happiness and relation (to the other).

Let us deal with the event first. The comedy (as all things funny) is fleeting and can only be sustained [Z 69]. The event, however, is, as we are reminded, a “joint articulation,” and the very notion of articulation means that there is “a voice” (or to be more precise: voices) that speaks, and a spectator, who receives, recognizes and experiences the effect of the comedy. There is more than meets the eye in the Paolo Virno remark, that “[w]ithout the spectator, the jokes indeed would not exist.”^[29] This is not merely restating the obvious condition of possibility of any act of communication, our claim is that the spectator must be of a certain predisposition in order for such joint articulation to appear, and such predisposition “inscribes itself within the framework of práxis.”^[30] In crude words: we don’t get jokes sometimes (or do not recognize comedy), and the reason goes beyond our cognitive predisposition or the veils of ideologies at work (both of which may well be the case). We do not get them exactly because they are not bestowed upon us, but it is the spectator who must, so to speak, be in the right place in order to reach out for them. To clarify our point we should turn our attention to other phenomena, perhaps much closer to comedy than it may seem, namely, to the notion of sublime.^[31] The sublime is an event (as its temporal condition is fleeting now), Lyotard claims, that yields a contradictory feeling of joy and anxiety. Sublime feeling – he writes, following the reasoning of Edward Burke – mingles astonishment of the very existence (manifesting itself in a singular act) with terror, stemming from the fact that this monumental event may be taken away.^[32] It comes as no surprise that the feeling of sublime (just as the neighbouring notion of epiphany, traced meticulously by Ryszard Nycz^[33]) is often contemplated in a religious context, for indeed the powerful object that “giveth and taketh away” by definition must transcend the spectator. In this context, we may easily comprehend Frank Ankersmit's idea that the sublime – to paddle back to the psychoanalytical framework – can be thought of as the philosophical equivalent of trauma.^[34] And herein, the main difference between the sublime and the comical can be thought. Both are unexpected and astonishing experiences; they elevate and generate pleasure; both are of the same temporal nature, namely their dwelling is fleeting now, which we can only hope to sustain; last but not least – both are only possible as a short circuit of unforeseen leak between the two dimensions. But the comical is not traumatic, we may even risk a simplification and propose that comedy (as an experienced event) is exactly the sublime without traumatic, that is without anxiety.

But why is that important to our argument? Firstly, if one does not differentiate between the comedy and sublime, there seems to be very little logical argument for the pivotal role of the former in the process of overcoming the apparent dualisms. Zupančič is very much aware of this and rejects the sublime mode of joint articulation on the basis of its affinity to the logic of tragedy [Z 25–26] and inevitable totalization it gives way to [Z 55]. There is however another consequence – the one involving body, relation, and happiness. We mentioned that comedy is possible in a singular haven, a “space” where the recipient is safe from anxiety, fear, or danger that emanates from the presence of what we could just as easily associate with the divine presence (and its whims) or – if we choose lacanian vocabulary – the big Other. It does not follow however that the above-mentioned presence is merely suspended. For the comedy to be possible – as we claim – to “get” us (so that we can “get” it) in such a frame of being, it is not enough to suspend the oppressive Other, it must be replaced by another object, the one that grants such a serenity, albeit momentarily. We are talking here about the object in the psychoanalytical meaning of the word, a Winnicottian “good enough object”^[35] that grants a child what is the matrix of our happiness: care, save space (for playful joy), and most importantly the relation. Not only jokes – is our claim – do not work without spectators, it is without the internalized primal other that very comedy is impossible, for it shuts the door to the paradise lost^[36] of childhood’s happiness. This is, as we remember, exactly the point that Freud arrives at (and drops) in both Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious and Humour, the point which we recognized as the navel of his thought.

Now, a detour awaits. For an objection arises, and it gives way – as objections do – to a question. The objection could be formulated as: if the very possibility of comedy relies on the matrix of happiness that was granted in childhood, it follows that only those who experienced the company of “good enough object” can truly experience comedy. This is not our claim whatsoever. Such a claim would either exclude from all things comical everyone unlucky to have such object or make comedy a very peculiar and enigmatic notion. When we talk about “a matrix of happiness,” we do however claim that it is closely related to the mode of attachment with the important other. This mode may be – from the point of view of a trained analyst or psychiatrist – flawed or even pathological, but for our argument no such evaluating criterion matters. The proposed thesis claims that comical (what individuals find funny) hinges on what constitutes a “happy” relationship for them (the usage of brackets is crucial, for a bystander may have doubts whether the mode of “happiness” is indeed beneficial to the individual, just as a bystander may be puzzled why does someone laugh at Jackass, which consists almost entirely of scenes of self-mutilation). In other words: all comical experiences do “play” out/with our model of childhood experience, when the idiosyncratic matrix of our individual desire was constructed, and our claim is that what we laugh at (and why we laugh at all) is closely related to this experience.^[37]

The question that trails such objection is: what – in the light of such argument – is happiness? Can it be reduced to a transient “experience of satisfaction” achieved once the circumstances of the present manage to create a short circuit to the past and “re-establish the situation of the original satisfaction,”^[38] hence granting the – unconscious – wish? Or is it rather the long lost “Arcadia” (regardless of whether it was truly an idyll or far from it), the lack we can but try to fill? The happiness is neither, we claim, but rather the short circuit between the two: the lost past and the transient present, the unquenchable desire and the evanescent satisfaction. It seems to impact temporal orders what comedy does, according to Zupančič: lets the oppositions not be sublated, but ecstatically brace in the joint articulation, the euphoric kind, as we argued, rather than traumatic.

The eerie structural resemblance between comedy and happiness is there not by chance. Within the proposed framework we speculate that there is a kinship at play, perhaps a descendance: happiness is a parent, that is a condition of possibility of comedy, but it is itself conditioned by the very existence of primal relation, which had a formative role at forging the singular form of what we call in this text “happiness.” But if we learned anything thus far, it is that relationality is at the heart of both, and no relation can be unilateral, every relation is a potential “short circuit.” To put things bluntly: even if there is a relation of descendance, no parent is left unchanged by the child. What follows is: there not only is a trace (and a form) of happiness in the comedy, but there must be a comical element in the happiness.^[39]

Zupančič, must be said, grazes on the topic of happiness and relationality at least twice. Firstly when she discusses the difference between the suspense of a thriller and the comical suspense. While the former means that the truth is unknown, and the “crucial elements” of the plot remain a mistery, the comical suspense “springs not from such a suspended realization but, rather, from an overrealization or a prerealization” [Z 92]. It is then the presence of what is known, she says, that is necessary for the comedy to unfold. She drifts even closer to our thesis in her fascinating passages discussing love and sex. In her own words, “comedy moves broadly in the register of success, not in the register of failure (…) comedy is still essentially governed by what, in and through all these misadventures, inevitably succeeds. It does indeed presuppose a realization (an already accomplished metamorphosis)” [Z 158]. What we are faced with is a comical reverse of the causality, for a comedy succeeds because it starts in place of success (through the lens of the recipient that would translate to: I find it comical first, hence it is bound to succeed, for it has already granted me satisfaction). In this way comedy cannot fail: it must spring from the post-coital bliss of safety and satisfaction before it will find its climax. These are both very valid points that however miss the very condition of the possibility of arriving at such a blissful place. She follows Lacanian intuition that love is at the “centre of comedy,”^[40] but refrains from going a step further and never concedes that the joint articulation (that is a kernel of comedy) needs more than the lucky coincidence of the two points of lack. The comical short circuit appears perhaps only, when this conjunction is accompanied by the third lack: that of lost – or never truly had – object, relation with whom made it possible to recognize the manifestation of happiness in the form of experienced comedy. If we accept this interpretation, the navel of Zupančič thought is exactly a navel – the point that marks a non-existent umbilical cord, a severed connection to the other who made it all possible in the first place.

Before we wind up, the last question arises. If indeed the gap in Zupančič's thought is what we claim it is and the proposed “navel” of her thought is a symptom, we must ask what is it a symptom of? Two explanations seem plausible. Firstly, if the omission is conscious we must conclude that Zupančič realizes (and being well-versed in the psychoanalytic theories, she should) “the gap” we proposed, but the relational aspect (and possibility of happiness it conveys) – in her view – does not constitute the transcendental conditions of possibility of comedy. It is thus only fair she chooses not to investigate it whatsoever. Such an explanation is perfectly plausible, even if we do not agree with such a thesis. But this line of reasoning would mean that the proposed “navel” is hardly a symptom. For the symptom occurs only when there are defence mechanisms at work, guarding the subject (an author) against the contents of the unconscious, contents that pose a perceived threat. But what threat could happiness pose? The answer, perhaps, takes us back to the proposed purposes of the text, in particular – towards the political stakes. If the comedy could only work, as we argue, in a safe space possible exactly because of primal relation, the comedy then reveals itself as a potentially conservative force. Primally, the very possibility of comedy is granted by an external factor, moreover the very same “factor” which is also the source of trauma and oppression. As such it must then be treated with suspicion. It is exactly what Zupančič stresses while quoting Mladen Dolar:

Laughter [which we may easily substitute with “happiness”] is a condition of ideology. It provides us with the distance, the very space in which ideology can take its full swing. It is only with laughter that we become ideological subjects, withdrawn from the immediate pressure of ideological claims to a free enclave. It is only when we laugh and breathe freely that ideology truly has a hold on us—it is only here that it starts functioning fully as ideology, with the specifically ideological means, which are supposed to assure our free consent and the appearance of spontaneity, eliminating the need for the non-ideological means of outside constraint. [Z 4]

We find this quotation at the very beginning of Zupančič book, perhaps not by accident. For if Zupančič wants to stay faithful to the critical disposition, that urges one to remain suspicious at all times (and costs), the comedy must shun the trope of the primal object we propose. If the comedy – as we argued – were to be a gateway to “the happy place” that – as it happens – is also a source of our shackles, it follows that it must be dismissed as a potentially subversive phenomenon blunting the razor of critical thinking. Once dragged down from the heights of the abstract theory into the impenetrable bushes of actual relations and bodies, comedy renders itself useless as a tool of political change, and perhaps even worse – it reveals itself as an agent in the service of reaction.^[41] We claim that it is this anxiety of losing the critical potential that stops Zupančič from venturing in the direction we proposed in this text. Whether there can be a place for joyful happiness in the realm of serious political critique, is a question we cannot fully investigate here, yet we can’t help but remain suspicious^[42] of the notion of comedy deprived of a component of happiness. Such a notion, we feel, calls for a different name entirely.