Books by Iain MacKenzie
Ideology after Poststructuralism, 2002
Throughout history, comedians and clowns have enjoyed a certain freedom to speak frankly often de... more Throughout history, comedians and clowns have enjoyed a certain freedom to speak frankly often denied to others in hegemonic systems. More recently, professional comedians have developed platforms of comic license from which to critique the traditional political establishment and have managed to play an important role in interrogating and mediating the processes of politics in contemporary society.
This collection will examine the questions that arise when of comedy and critique intersect by bringing together both critical theorists and comedy scholars with a view to exploring the nature of comedy, its potential role in critical theory and the forms it can take as a practice of resistance.
Introduction: Setting the Agenda, Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Fred Francis and Iain MacKenzie / PART I: COMEDY, CRITIQUE AND RESISTANCE / Diagrams of Comic Estrangement, James Williams / ‘Against the Assault of Laughter’: Differentiating Critical and Resistant Humour, Nicholas Holm / Can We Learn the Truth from Lenny Bruce? A Careful Cognitivism about Satire, Dieter Declercq / Laughter, Liturgy, Lacan and Resistance to Capitalist Logic, Francis Stewart / Humitas: Humour as Performative Resistance, Kate Fox / PART II: LAUGHTER AS RESISTANCE? / Conformist Comedians: Political Humour in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic, Ivo Nieuwenhuis / First World War Cartoon Comedy as Criticism of British Politics and Society, Pip Gregory / A Suspended Pratfall: Mimesis and Slapstick in Contemporary Art, Levi Hanes / ‘Life’ in Struggle: The Indifferent Humour of Beckett’s Prose Heroes, Selvin Yaltir / ‘Holiday in Cambodia’: Punk’s Acerbic Comedy, Russ Bestley / ‘What Can’t Be Cured Must Be Endured’: The Postcolonial Humour of Salman Rushdie, Sami Shah and Hari Kondabolu, Christine Caruana / Political Jester: From Fool to King 201, Constantino Pereira Martins / Three Easy Steps to a New You? Or, Some Thoughts on the Politics of Humour in the Workplace . . ., Adrian Hickey, Giuliana Monteverde and Robert Porter
Book Chapters by Iain MacKenzie
Comedy and Critical Thought: Laughter as Resistance, 2018
the case of Lynndie England, 'a female American soldier' who was 'photographed pointing and laugh... more the case of Lynndie England, 'a female American soldier' who was 'photographed pointing and laughing at the naked genitals of hooded, bound Iraqis'. 6 He recalls that the judge in her trial intervened in proceedings in an unusual manner by saying, as Lee puts it, 'that he [the judge] wasn't convinced that Lynndie England knew what she was doing'. 7 Lee continues: 'Now, I don't believe that 'cause in my experience, when a woman points and laughs at a man's genitals, she's normally fully aware of the effect that will have. In my experience. Especially if he's hooded and bound. In my experience'. 8 What follows in the show is Lee's trademark dissection of the audience response to these jokes: some like it because it's topical and politically charged, others because it's 'got cocks in it as well'. As he says, 'that helps bring the whole room onside'. 9 In the transcript of this show, Lee dissects his own comedic
Papers by Iain MacKenzie
Theory & Event, 2022
The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users ar... more The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.
Ideology After Poststructuralism
Acknowledgement Iain MacKenzie and Sinisa Malesevic 'Introduction: de Tracy's Legacy'... more Acknowledgement Iain MacKenzie and Sinisa Malesevic 'Introduction: de Tracy's Legacy' I Part - Poststructuralism vs. Ideology 1. Iain MacKenzie 'Idea, Event, Ideology' 2. Caroline Williams 'Ideology and Imaginary: Returning to Althusser' 3. Robert Porter 'A World Beyond Ideology? Strains in Slavoj Zizek's Ideology Critique' 4. Kieran Keohane 'City life and the Conditions of Possibility of an Ideology-Proof Subject: Simmel, Benjamin, and Joyce on Berlin, Paris and Dublin' II Part - Ideology vs. Poststructuralism 1. Sinisa Malesevic 'Rehabilitating Ideology After Poststructuralism' 2. Diana Coole 'The Dialectics of the Real' 3. Michael Billig 'Ideology, Language and Discursive Psychology' 4. Mark Haugaard ' The Birth of the Subject and the Use of Truth: Foucault and Social Critique' Notes on Contributors Index
Contemporary Political Theory, 2018
Is humor critique? Many have long assumed it to be-including heads of state and government censor... more Is humor critique? Many have long assumed it to be-including heads of state and government censors. A group of people sniggering together often seems threatening, signifying a kind of antisocial collectivity, a point of view not commonly available, a subverting of the normative stitching of politics. This suggestive conflation also underlies the power of the medieval jester, the coyote trickster, the Greek cynic, the literary satirist, and-in our own time-the late-night television comedian, all of whom possess a tremendous power: the ability to say the unsayable, to confront hypocrisy, to kick the pricks. But any clear-eyed rendition of humor must also take into account its profoundly reactive qualities. Those sniggers also serve to keep others in their place. The subjects of jokes are more often minorities than governments. The cutting edge of wit can exile and humiliate. Teenagers mobilize humor against the misfit, the nerd, the overweight, the already-outcast. This would seem an odd fit for critique: cruelty against the weak does not comport with the uncovering of the truth from the exigencies and productions of capitalist cultural consumerism. Comedy also operates under a second set of procedures which misfit critical thinking. Critique requires distance from its subject, whereas humor operates through immersion. Humor operates contextually and immanently. Explaining a joke kills the joke. And a third problematic: critique depends on a profound positivism, or at least a presumption of discoverable verities. Discovery (the procedures of seeing how things operate) and actuality (the structural truth of oppression in any given situation) underpin critical thought. What is behind the curtain is real; the curtain itself must be abolished. Comedic tropes, in contrast, revel in the play between reality, intentionality, and meaning: irony, sarcasm, exaggeration, slapstick. Critique operates structurally and narratively, while humor surprises and undercuts. This volume of thirteen essays, originating in a conference ranging across lines of political science, rhetoric, history, philosophy, and media, addresses this vital
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2019
Tristan Garcia’s Form and Object has been framed primarily as a contribution to object oriented m... more Tristan Garcia’s Form and Object has been framed primarily as a contribution to object oriented metaphysics. In this article, I shall explicate and defend four claims that bring it closer to the modern critical tradition: 1) that Garcia’s Form and Object can be read, profitably, within the tradition of reflection upon the nature of possessions, self-possession and possessiveness; 2) that to read the book in this way is to see Garcia as the French heir to C. B. McPherson although it will be argued that what this amounts to is that while McPherson was the anti-Locke, so to speak, Garcia is the anti-Rousseau; 3) that this framing has significant consequences for our reception of Form and Object in that it can be understood as a book that not only marks a moment in debates surrounding speculative realism and object oriented ontology but that it also, and primarily, marks an important moment in debates about the encroachment of things and the culture of possession that, in part, defines ...
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Books by Iain MacKenzie
This collection will examine the questions that arise when of comedy and critique intersect by bringing together both critical theorists and comedy scholars with a view to exploring the nature of comedy, its potential role in critical theory and the forms it can take as a practice of resistance.
Introduction: Setting the Agenda, Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, Fred Francis and Iain MacKenzie / PART I: COMEDY, CRITIQUE AND RESISTANCE / Diagrams of Comic Estrangement, James Williams / ‘Against the Assault of Laughter’: Differentiating Critical and Resistant Humour, Nicholas Holm / Can We Learn the Truth from Lenny Bruce? A Careful Cognitivism about Satire, Dieter Declercq / Laughter, Liturgy, Lacan and Resistance to Capitalist Logic, Francis Stewart / Humitas: Humour as Performative Resistance, Kate Fox / PART II: LAUGHTER AS RESISTANCE? / Conformist Comedians: Political Humour in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic, Ivo Nieuwenhuis / First World War Cartoon Comedy as Criticism of British Politics and Society, Pip Gregory / A Suspended Pratfall: Mimesis and Slapstick in Contemporary Art, Levi Hanes / ‘Life’ in Struggle: The Indifferent Humour of Beckett’s Prose Heroes, Selvin Yaltir / ‘Holiday in Cambodia’: Punk’s Acerbic Comedy, Russ Bestley / ‘What Can’t Be Cured Must Be Endured’: The Postcolonial Humour of Salman Rushdie, Sami Shah and Hari Kondabolu, Christine Caruana / Political Jester: From Fool to King 201, Constantino Pereira Martins / Three Easy Steps to a New You? Or, Some Thoughts on the Politics of Humour in the Workplace . . ., Adrian Hickey, Giuliana Monteverde and Robert Porter
Book Chapters by Iain MacKenzie
Papers by Iain MacKenzie