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Russell's Paradox as Comic Foundation
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#01
Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy · Todd McGowan · p.43
Lack and Excess > Living with Contradiction
Theoretical move: Russell's paradox is not merely a logical curiosity but the structural condition of comedy itself: because the signifying order necessarily harbours an irresolvable contradiction (lack), it generates an excess of compensatory signifiers, and it is precisely this coincidence of lack and excess that produces comic effects.
Every joke that we tell has its basis in the problem that Russell identifies in Frege's attempt to perform a complete reduction of mathematics to logic... All great comedians have in fact made Russell's paradox the foundation of their routine, though none ever mention it.