Anaesthesia of the Heart

Humour as a cultural practice

In a text on comedy from 1900, the French philosopher Henri Bergson describes laughter as a “momentary anaesthesia of the heart”, as flexibility in the face of rigidity, and as something profoundly human.

Humour can act as a social bond – or break apart old rigidities: Far beyond satire, caricature or irony, humour often appears in contexts of artistic activism, as a strategy of resistance or civil disobedience. Queer or BIPoC artists, for example, show how humorous art can not only be an escape from a hopeless situation, but can also make people resilient and resistant, especially in illiberal contexts.

However, "humorous" statements can also have the opposite effect: they can exclude, harm and undermine. We are currently witnessing how new right-wing movements, in particular, are continuously undermining democratic processes with ostensibly amusing posts on the internet. As a form of cultural expression, humour therefore often entails major ambivalences. The program "Anaesthesia of the Heart" focuses on precisely these tensions.

Areas of tension

• Can humour help us live with the world's many contradictions?
• What does humour as a cultural strategy tell us about the current state of the world?
• Is there still room for humour in polarised societies?
• And if new technologies such as artificial intelligence make it harder to recognise humanity, should we pay more attention to humour as a deeply human form of communication?