My special issue
focuses on the everyday life and how to use cultural studies to approach and
understand the complexities that surround the seemingly mundane routines that
comprise our day-to-day lives. Gregory J. Seigworth and Michael E. Gardiner use
the ideas of sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre in their article to describe
the everyday life “as a whole moving alongside all of the other moments of the
day-to-day” (142). These little moments taken together as a singular experience
make up our everyday lives. These moments happen across different social
spaces. Another article in the issue is sure to point out that the intersection
between official (institutions like the workplace, school, etc.) and unofficial
social spaces (personal relationships) is central to our sense of space and
time in everyday life.
An important part
of our social relationships is laughter. So in my paper I want to explore the
place that laughter occupies in both the official and unofficial spaces of
everyday. Does laughter contribute to our sense of everydayness or does it
sometimes disrupt the flow of our daily routines? And what place does laughter
serve in our different social spaces? I will likely turn to Anca Parvulescu’s Laughter: Notes on a Passion to help
discuss a concept so abstract as human laughter, among other research I conduct
as well.
I want to
understand the place of laughter within our culture. It appears frequently in
many our cultural products and it is a fundamental part of our everyday social
interactions so laughter should be discussed from a cultural perspective.
Works Cited:
Seigworth, Gregory and Michael Gardiner.
“Rethinking everyday life: And then nothing turns itself inside out.” Cultural Studies. 12.2-3 (2004):
139-159. Web.
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