The Marginal Reality of Humor

Abstract

The relevance of the work is due to the presence of a contradiction between the prevalence of humor, its ubiquity and ubiquity in social reality and its rather weak research as a phenomenon of this social reality. The main line of existing research on the nature of humor is connected with the study of it as a statement with a special (contradictory) logic. The purpose of this article is to study the nature of humor not so much within the framework of a separate statement with a special logic but as a phenomenon that constructs social reality, as well as the place of humorous reality among other types of social reality. The analysis is carried out on the basis of the constructivist approach, by the method of reconstruction of the humorous text. As a result of the study, the hypothesis of the existence of humor as a certain layer between referential realities (Zh. Derrida) is supplemented by the idea of constructing in a humorous utterance on the basis of these referential realities a special independent reality of humor, which remains marginal within the framework of the discourse in which referential realities are realized. Humor destroys the contingent logic of discourse in a certain semantic field, comparing previously disparate realities. The construction of humorous reality within the semantic field of professional knowledge performs other functions than outside of it (for example, in everyday knowledge). The absence or limitation of jokes about the knowledge sacred to the system, which belongs to the nuclear part of the corresponding discourse that constructs the system, is a protective mechanism for this system, which stabilizes society. The results of the study are a continuation of the development of the constructivist approach in ontology and social philosophy and can serve as a basis for studying the ways of constructing realities in society.

Keywords

• constructivism
• philosophy of humor
• reality
• marginality
• knowledge