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Comic Coincidence of Lack and Excess
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.124
Signification and Desire > The Absence of a Language Instinct
Theoretical move: Language is structurally comic because it simultaneously fills a lack and produces excess, transforming the animal into a desiring subject; this coincidence of lack and excess — which evolutionary accounts of language (Pinker) systematically suppress — is the constitutive source of all comedy.
Comedy occurs only at the moment when lack and excess coincide: when we are simply within lack or excess, there is no comedy. But it is language that installs the possibility of their overlap.