LAUGHTER AS A STRATEGY OF RESISTANCE TO THE PUNITIVE POWER

• Main Authors: Flávia Cristina Silveira Lemos, Flávio Valentim de Oliveira
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Estadual de Maringá 2016-11-01
• Series: Psicologia em Estudo
• Subjects: Riso; punição; subjetividade.
• Online Access: http://www.periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/PsicolEstud/article/view/29946

This article is a result of theoretical analyses from a doctoral research, in essay format, which brings contributions of Philosophy, Psychology and Society to discuss laughter, revenge and justice. Punitive practices, in addition to the medical and juridical knowledge that sustains them, are called into question. It addresses interventions of laughter in the politics of truth, which crosses resentful subjectivities eager to judge, monitor and punish. Interrogating the relationship between medical order and law as to punishment in defense of society is an important contribution of this theoretical text, which makes laughter a political weapon through which irony and tragedy call into question justice as judgment. The criticism of subjection to penalties as revenge due to a break with the social contract is suspended. In this sense, this study proposes a reflection, albeit provisional, on a problem that seems to be essential in Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s thoughts: the ties between laughter and punishment.