WHICHCOTE SOCIETY 2018-19
Laughter and Forgetting Thursdays, 8pm: Museum of College Life,
Emmanuel College; wine & cheese
Michaelmas Oct 11 Nov 1 Nov 22 Lent Jan 24 Feb 21 Mar 21Easter
May 9 June 13
Readings for Lent are from the following texts / materials
Jan 24 Steve Reich, Different Trains (musical composition)
Steve Reich, Writings on Music 1965-2000
Stephen Frosh,
‘Different Trains: An Essay in Memorialising’
Feb 21 Avinoam Patt, ‘Laughter through Tears: Jewish Humour in
the Aftermath of the Holocaust’
short primary readings emerging
from the above
Mar 21 Gillian Rose, ‘The Comedy of Hegel and the Trauerspiel of
Modern Philosophy’ (from Mourning Becomes the Law)
This year’s programme explores the dual themes of laughter and
memory, both separately and where they intersect. Our title is
taken from Milan Kundera’s 1979 novel, The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting, in which a character remarks early on that ‘the
struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against
forgetting’. Kundera, then living in exile, was stripped of his
Czech citizenship the year this book was published, and much of our
material comes from authors writing in the context of or in
response to political persecution, including the extreme violence
of the Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag. Here, literatures and
practices of remembering and mourning are ways of bearing
meaningful witness to suffering, and serve both as forms of
resistance and sources of renewal. Yet such literatures and
practices need not be, and indeed often are not, humourless.
Rather, laughter often materialises here in distinctive ways,
whether in the
mode of satire, or as gallows humour, or in order simply to
affirm life against negation and death. In our discussions we will
reflect on broad topics including the political power of memory and
memorialisation, the relation of joy to suffering and comedy to
tragedy, whether laughter can lead us to truth, and how laughter
and memory are connected with freedom. From this perspective we
will also consider authors who have called on similar themes and
ideas to respond to more subtle, culturally encoded forms of
oppression, and to the human condition tout court.
The WHICHCOTE SOCIETY exists to continue the poetic,
metaphysical, and literary legacy of the Emmanuel
Platonist Benjamin Whichcote.
Meetings are open to members of all Colleges and Faculties. For
more
information, please email: [email protected]
Image: Cover art for Steve Reich,
Different Trains / Electric
Counterpoint
(w/Kronos Quartet & Pat Matheny)
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]
