Agathos: An International Review of the Humanities and Social Sciences (May 2016)
COMIC AGENTS: FROM A POETIC TO AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PARADIGM OF COMEDY (ARISTOTLE AND ALFRED GELL)
Abstract
Aristotle was concerned with the comedy genre as a kind of poetry. Its creators, the comic poets, interested him only marginally. This genological approach to its subject-matter dominated the theory and philosophy of art for subsequent centuries as evidenced by the subsequent elaborations of interpretations of Aristotle’s catharsis. The alternative approach focused instead on subjects as creators of art. As a consequence of the long-term development of anthropocentrism in the humanities, however, this approach took over. The “ performative turn” represents its more recent version. It allows one to interpret Poetics and other classical works not in the context of an object (comedy), but in the context of the acting subject. I claim that social anthropology further explores the concept of comedy and itself presumes it in its conceptual foundations and research approach. I elaborate the argument on the basis of the concept of the “spirit of comedy” coined by Alfred Gell .
