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Events

Humorlessness/Politics

The Lionel Trilling Seminar

dateMarch 6, 2017 timeMonday, 6:15pm EST location Jerome Greene Hall (Law School), Room 106, Columbia University
Notes
  • Free and open to the public
  • No registration necessary
  • First come, first seated

This paper addresses humorlessness as ontology, performance, and affect; and as threat and aspiration. It asks how the encounter with humorlessness structures the political scene and style of encounter, and it looks at how unlearning attachment to some styles of it without repairing its force have been modeled aesthetically as performance. Its cases range from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers' documentary, *Finally Got the News* (1970) to some contemporary political art of Steve McQueen, William Pope.L, and Claire Pentecost. The talk is humorless, among other things. This is a first foray into a new project.