>On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Amie Barrodale wrote:
>> Can anyone tell me of a writing in which Foucault addresses laughter?
>> That's all,
>> Amie
>
>somewhere f. talks about his own laughter:
>it is i believe in the preface to 'the order of things' where foucault
>says that that book grew out of a laughter that came to him when he read
>borges' description of a fictitious chinese encyclopedia. (it contains a
>very funny classification of animals.)
>
>
And then later in the same book, FOucault laughs again:
'To all those who still wish to talk about man, about his reign or his
liberation, to all those who still ask themselves questions about his
essence, to all those who wish to take him as their starting-point in their
attempts to reach the truth, to all those who, on the other hand, refer all
knowledge back to the truths of man himself, to all those who refuse to
formalize without anthropologising, who refuse to mythologize without
demystifying, who refuse to think without immediately thinking that it is
man who is thinking, to all these warped and twisted forms of reflection we
can answer only with a philosophical laugh--which means, to some extent, a
silent one' (pp. 342-343).
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Campbell Jones
University of Otago
New Zealand
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