Everyone joins the fight

the dialectic of comic action

pp. 47-68

in: Dmitri Nikulin, Comedy, seriously, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

The logic of comedy reveals a rational enterprise meant to promote human well-being. In this chapter, I will examine comedy's own account of the ways in which this is achieved. Comedy is a well-ordered (inter)action that unfolds between a number of actors—as opposed to the isolation of a single subject. It moves through an inevitable complication to a resolution and a good ending. This resolution comes as a result of an intended common action of people who find themselves in undecided situations. As we shall see, comedy presupposes both a "dialogical" narrative and a "dialectical" solution.