Comedy and Controversy

This Element discusses general features of controlled experimentation, epistemic and practical aspects, and historical perspectives. It argues that controlled experimentation has a material-technical and a conceptual side. It shifts the focus from control experiments to controlling for the epistemologically fundamental issue in experimentation.

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This is an Element book about stand-up comedy and public speech. It focuses on the controversies generated when the distinction between the two breaks down, when stand-up enters – or is pushed – into the public sphere and is interpreted according to the scripts that govern popular political and media rhetoric rather than the traditional generic conventions of comic performance. These controversies raise a larger set of questions about the comedian's public role. They draw attention to the intention of jokes and their effects in the world. And they force us to consider how the limits of comic performance – what can be said, by whom, and why – respond to, and can reshape, public discourse across changing media contexts.