Joke-Work
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Where it appears in the corpus (1)
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.68
Theory and Opposition > The Familiar Millionaire
Theoretical move: By reading Freud's joke-theory as a theory of comedy against Bergson's vitalism, McGowan argues that the joke-work—like the dream-work—locates satisfaction in formal transformation rather than latent obscene content, producing laughter as an excess of psychic energy through a short-circuit that reveals identity where difference is expected; yet Freud's own extension to general comedy breaks the logic of economization, inadvertently opening toward a theory that holds lack and excess in tension.
the joke-work forces lowly smut into the form of a joke acceptable in polite society. We laugh not directly at the smut itself but at the identification of this smut with an acceptable expression.