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Papers by Cynthia Willett
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
ABSTRACTThe function of the comic in the midst of tragedy is not clear. After all, is it simply c... more ABSTRACTThe function of the comic in the midst of tragedy is not clear. After all, is it simply comic relief that wounded nations, communities, or individuals seek? Tragedy has long been cast as memory and mourning while comedy offers for the masses a Nietzschean moment of joyful forgetting and for the Stoic mind a measure of transcendence from our grief. The latter view came into prominence for modern American culture with the nineteenth-century satirist Mark Twain, who wrote that “the secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow,” which has been interpreted through the often-quoted formula: comedy is tragedy plus time. The assumption is that we need some distance emotionally in order to mock or transcend the tragic. While we grant the humor of transcendence can produce some momentary relief through emotional distance, we wonder if there might be another way that humor can deal with suffering? Popular psychology often speaks of five stages of grief, and while that progressio...
Interspecies Ethics, 2014
The Soul of Justice, 2018
Contemporary Political Theory, 2020
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2014
Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of e... more Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries are assumed healthy only when intact, affect studies pose individuals as nodes of biosocial networks larger than themselves. Thus rather than suggesting that the individual can only prevent societal harm by gaining command and patrolling the borders of an autonomous self, we embrace the notion that affects can exert a positive and transformative force on a social reality that is resistant to top-down policy intervention and any straightforward moral or logical plea.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
Our allegiance to individualism sanctions the insult, with or without humor, to a significant ext... more Our allegiance to individualism sanctions the insult, with or without humor, to a significant extent through free speech rights. But what if the sting of symbolic aggression––as seemingly minor as an insult dressed up in the pleasantries of a joke––in fact accounts in many instances for the more acute pain of the physical assault? To be sure, physical assaults can harm material well-being. But what if a dimension of violence cannot be understood apart from the cruelty of the joke or the sting of ridicule? What if a shaming insult constitutes the significant sting of racial discrimination or sexual assault?
Difficulties of Ethical Life, 2008
Radical Philosophy Review, 2007
Auslegung: a Journal of Philosophy, 1983
Published in 1995 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain ... more Published in 1995 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain in 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P4EE Copyright © 1995 by Routledge Printed in the United States of America Design: Jack Donner All rights reserved. No part ...
Philosophy and Literature, 1990
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2010
What a pleasure to have such subtle thinkers and scholars as Bill Martin and Andrew Cutrofello re... more What a pleasure to have such subtle thinkers and scholars as Bill Martin and Andrew Cutrofello reflect on the relation of irony and comedy to politics and philosophy through their commentary on my new book. To set the tone, Martin begins with a koan, or a parody of one, What if a ...
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2008
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2008
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2010
Ladelle McWhorter's new book claims to be a specific analysis of two aspects of oppressi... more Ladelle McWhorter's new book claims to be a specific analysis of two aspects of oppression in Anglo-Americaracism and sexuality. In fact the book is much more. It is a powerful fact-based philosophical epic of oppression in Anglo-America along its two central axesracism and ...
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
ABSTRACTThe function of the comic in the midst of tragedy is not clear. After all, is it simply c... more ABSTRACTThe function of the comic in the midst of tragedy is not clear. After all, is it simply comic relief that wounded nations, communities, or individuals seek? Tragedy has long been cast as memory and mourning while comedy offers for the masses a Nietzschean moment of joyful forgetting and for the Stoic mind a measure of transcendence from our grief. The latter view came into prominence for modern American culture with the nineteenth-century satirist Mark Twain, who wrote that “the secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow,” which has been interpreted through the often-quoted formula: comedy is tragedy plus time. The assumption is that we need some distance emotionally in order to mock or transcend the tragic. While we grant the humor of transcendence can produce some momentary relief through emotional distance, we wonder if there might be another way that humor can deal with suffering? Popular psychology often speaks of five stages of grief, and while that progressio...
Interspecies Ethics, 2014
The Soul of Justice, 2018
Contemporary Political Theory, 2020
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2014
Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of e... more Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries are assumed healthy only when intact, affect studies pose individuals as nodes of biosocial networks larger than themselves. Thus rather than suggesting that the individual can only prevent societal harm by gaining command and patrolling the borders of an autonomous self, we embrace the notion that affects can exert a positive and transformative force on a social reality that is resistant to top-down policy intervention and any straightforward moral or logical plea.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
Our allegiance to individualism sanctions the insult, with or without humor, to a significant ext... more Our allegiance to individualism sanctions the insult, with or without humor, to a significant extent through free speech rights. But what if the sting of symbolic aggression––as seemingly minor as an insult dressed up in the pleasantries of a joke––in fact accounts in many instances for the more acute pain of the physical assault? To be sure, physical assaults can harm material well-being. But what if a dimension of violence cannot be understood apart from the cruelty of the joke or the sting of ridicule? What if a shaming insult constitutes the significant sting of racial discrimination or sexual assault?
Difficulties of Ethical Life, 2008
Radical Philosophy Review, 2007
Auslegung: a Journal of Philosophy, 1983
Published in 1995 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain ... more Published in 1995 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain in 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P4EE Copyright © 1995 by Routledge Printed in the United States of America Design: Jack Donner All rights reserved. No part ...
Philosophy and Literature, 1990
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2010
What a pleasure to have such subtle thinkers and scholars as Bill Martin and Andrew Cutrofello re... more What a pleasure to have such subtle thinkers and scholars as Bill Martin and Andrew Cutrofello reflect on the relation of irony and comedy to politics and philosophy through their commentary on my new book. To set the tone, Martin begins with a koan, or a parody of one, What if a ...
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2008
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2008
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2010
Ladelle McWhorter's new book claims to be a specific analysis of two aspects of oppressi... more Ladelle McWhorter's new book claims to be a specific analysis of two aspects of oppression in Anglo-Americaracism and sexuality. In fact the book is much more. It is a powerful fact-based philosophical epic of oppression in Anglo-America along its two central axesracism and ...