Two Laughs

Someone checking the results list is still tense; he finds his name, sees the word “admitted,” and laughs out loud. Late in life Su Shi inscribed a portrait of himself: “My heart is like wood already burnt to ash; my body like a boat untethered. I ask you, what has your life’s work been? Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou.” The three are the places of his banishment. The poem does not mention laughter; to read a laugh into it is the reading of the Laughter Series’ third paper.

The two laughs, one with delight and one with bitterness, have one thing in common: the construct laughed at is the laugher’s own purpose. This is 14DD. SAE’s psychoanalysis series defines it as self-with-purpose, the self with a direction, drawn from the Ego-Ideal line of Freud’s superego, the line of “what I should become”; the punitive-conscience line is reassigned as a pathological form of 13DD, or as a residue of colonization at 14DD. The bridge to 14DD is finitude: knowing that one will come to an end and acting all the same; action needs reasons, and purpose emerges from this. Its remainder is: I am not the only end; the other is an end too.

At 13DD laughter acquired an owner; at 14DD one’s own purpose enters the construct laughed at. It enters in two ways. The purpose may be the construct itself: what I strain toward, my life’s work, is seen to still have such a remainder; the laughter of triumph and wry laughter are of this kind. Or purpose may enter a comparison: I measure others against myself, and self-elevation enters the construct laughed at; comparative laughter and derision are of this kind. And there is a third matter, often mixed in: doing things with laughter, the action around a laugh, holding back, pointing out in public, satire, pranks. Actions have purposes, but the purpose of an action is not the same as my purpose being in the construct laughed at.

So the paper records each case in three columns: the relation judged this time, construct and remainder; the laugher’s operation at that moment, the layer at which he stands; and the action around the laugh. No column fills in for another. Behind this lies a distinction that must be set up first: laughter as judgment and doing things with laughter are two different things. The first is the event “the construct still has such a remainder,” and it comes irresistibly; the second is action around that judgment, and can be assessed as cultivation or severing. Keeping them apart has two advantages. One need not deny that a laugh is a real judgment just because it was used to wound; the derider has often really seen a remainder. And one need not defend what a laugh does just because it is a real judgment. Making someone laugh at a certain point by means of consequences is colonization insofar as it claims a judgment on his behalf; “what colonizes is the action, not the judgment.”

Already Done

Hobbes, in chapter 6 of Leviathan, says that sudden glory is the passion that produces the grimace called laughter, and that it is caused either by some sudden act of one’s own that pleases oneself, or by seeing some defect in another, by comparison with which one suddenly applauds oneself. The superiority theory of laughter is often put down to Hobbes, but what he gives is two causes, and the first need not go through comparison with anyone’s defect. The paper reads the two causes as the laughter of triumph and comparative laughter. Both are at 14DD; they differ in how one’s purpose enters.

Look at how the laughter of triumph actually arises. Still tense at the results list, one sees “admitted” and laughs out loud. At the moment of breaking the tape, the athlete’s whole body is still driving, and the race is already won. The structure is the same. The construct is a frame still straining, not yet complete: the body is tense, the mind still inside “not yet.” The remainder is “already done.” The frame has a place only for “not yet” and none for “already,” so “already done” is exactly the point it has not taken in at this moment. Attention falls on “already,” and there is laughter; if it stays on “it nearly didn’t come off,” what comes out is belated fear.

Here the gap stands guard: “this laugh comes only if the thing is accomplished while the frame is still taut.” If success comes step by step, one sees it coming well ahead, the frame relaxes first, and when it arrives what one feels is satisfaction, not this laugh. So not every accomplishment brings laughter. The laughter of triumph has delight in it, delight at a purpose achieved. But the delight is an emotion that comes along; the laugh is the jolt of cannot-not; the two meet at that moment and are not the same thing. The bitterness of wry laughter is also an emotion. So triumph and wry laughter are a pair at 14DD: in both the construct is my purpose; the remainder is “already done” on one side, and on the other the cost and the place the purpose has taken one to; the emotion that comes along is delight on one side and bitterness on the other.

The purpose here is purpose along the line of “what I should become.” An intention is not a purpose: a laugh at some passing intention suddenly fulfilled does not belong here, and is often what the second paper called suddenness within one person. The boundary with the knowing smile of the fourth paper lies in what the laugh judges: the laughter of triumph judges my accomplishment; the knowing smile judges that my old grasp still has the place where he stands, and lets that place remain his. Joy by itself does not change the layer assignment.

“I’d Never Be That Stupid”

Hobbes’s second cause is seeing another’s defect and, by comparison, suddenly applauding oneself. The construct laughed at is someone else’s, and the remainder is his defect; but my own purpose has entered too: I measure myself by him, and in the measuring raise myself up. Comparative laughter and the onlooker’s laughter of the second paper sit in the same cell of the seeing grid, “I see, he does not”; the difference is whether comparison comes in. Someone reading the story of the man of Chu marking his boat may laugh simply at seeing him trapped in his construct; that is onlooking. If, while laughing, he says inwardly “I’d never be that stupid,” his own purpose has come in; that is comparison.

Hobbes did not praise comparative laughter. In the same chapter he says that much laughter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity, and that one of the proper works of great minds is to help others and free them from derision, and to compare themselves only with the most able. The caution leads straight to derision.

Derision is a kind of comparative laughter: I see the remainder of the other’s construct, yet what I laugh at is the person; my own construct is tacitly exempted, as if I had no remainder; the end point is often the other’s embarrassment. It contains a judgment and an action: the judgment is “his construct still has such a remainder”; the action is imposing this judgment on him in public while placing oneself outside the construct. Schopenhauer describes derision as announcing to a defeated opponent how badly his ideas fail to agree with reality; the description catches a common end point: the other is defeated.

The remainder of 14DD is “the other is also an end,” and derision is precisely a failure of this test: “in derision, the other is used as material for my self-elevation, his construct is treated as my entertainment, and his embarrassment as my gain.” If a purpose can be sustained only by denying the other’s independence, it stays structurally at 14DD and even moves toward forced closure. Derision can thus slide toward severing: the object of the laughter slides from the construct to the person. There is a second-order structure too. The derider tacitly assumes that his own construct has no remainder, which is exactly the posture he derides: treating a construct as though it had none. So the derider often becomes the object of the next laugh.

Three Tests

Derision and teasing both point with laughter at the remainder of someone else’s construct, and they cannot be told apart by the laugher’s motive alone. What the series offers is three tests, not a single criterion. Is it the construct or the person that is laughed at? Teasing laughs at the construct, derision at the person. Does the laugher exempt himself? Teasing often counts him in, “I was like that once”; derision tacitly assumes he has no remainder. Can the other decline to laugh, and correct it without being punished? This test matters most. If the other has no way to disagree, then whatever the laugher has in mind, no room has been left.

End points can overlap: a single tease can at once embarrass the other, make him laugh too, and lead him to repair his construct. The end point is only one aspect; it does not by itself decide between cultivation and severing. The three tests have to be taken back to the concrete case and walked through one by one.

The paper walks them through a hard case. A New Account of Tales of the World records that when Kong Rong was ten he went with his father to Luoyang, and Chen Wei, a Grand Master of the Palace, remarked to others: “Bright as a child does not mean fine as a man.” Kong Rong answered at once: “I imagine, sir, that as a child you must have been very bright.” And, the text adds, “Wei was greatly discomfited.”

First, who is doing what. The text records one remark by Kong Rong and Chen Wei’s discomfiture; it records no one laughing. Kong Rong produced speech, not laughter; the ones who laugh are the readers. Kong Rong’s remark turns the other’s construct back on him: the rule Chen Wei applied to the child turns out to have such a remainder too, namely Chen Wei himself. Construct or person: what is pointed at is the rule, but where it lands is the man; both are present. Self-exemption: not discernible. Can the other decline and correct without penalty: Chen Wei is a high official and Kong Rong a ten-year-old; this passage alone cannot determine which side would be punished for answering back, and the text does not say Chen Wei was silenced. Walked through, the three tests do not establish derision. The end point is embarrassment, but the end point does not decide on its own.

The reader’s laugh is recorded separately. What it judges is that this rule still has such a remainder, namely the very man who states it. A reader who sees only the rule turning back on its speaker is an onlooker; one who delights in Chen Wei’s discomfiture and inwardly raises himself up has let his own purpose in, and the tests must be walked again. The case is kept as a hard case, and that is its use: “it shows that a clever remark cannot be characterized by its consequences.”

Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou

The construct of wry laughter is one’s own purpose: the plans, the vocation, the lifelong ambition along the line of “what I should become.” It still has such a remainder: the cost paid for it, or the unexpected place it has taken one to. At that moment the laugher still stands within this purpose and still owns it as his own; the remainder is in view too, and the cost is not small. Attention falls on the remainder, and there is laughter; if it falls on the loss of the purpose, there is weeping. The bitterness comes from the cost; the laugh comes from focus. As the Overview puts it, cost sorts the kinds of laughter but does not separate laughter from weeping; wry laughter is a case in point.

Back to Su Shi. “Life’s work” is a construct of purpose, what a scholar-official strains toward over a whole life. Asked about it, the answer is three places of banishment. The three names are the remainder of this construct: what the construct of achievement did not take in is precisely the places it brought him to. On the reading the paper chooses, he still asks about his “life’s work,” and so still owns it; though the asking does not by itself rule out that he is looking back at a construct already set down. The remainder is there too, the three places each distinct and countable. The force of the lines lies in attention not stopping at the loss of achievement but falling on the string of remainders, “Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou,” and giving them as the answer, as the achievement itself. The cost is extremely heavy, and it is still laughter.

Schopenhauer also discusses this laugh: the laugh one gives oneself when an expectation one held with complete conviction is exposed. It agrees with the paper, except that he still reads it as victory and defeat: the expectation has lost to reality. On the paper’s reading, the expectation is still owned as one’s own, the point that exposes it is in view together with it, and the laugh does not judge who won.

Wry laughter and the laughter of despair of the fourth paper can both carry very heavy costs, but their layers differ. Wry laughter is at 14DD: the purpose is still operating, and one still stands within it, only seeing its cost as a remainder. The laughter of despair is at 15DD by the fourth paper’s definition: the subject is convinced that no option whatever remains, a grasp that claims to have no remainder, and sees that he is, astonishingly, still searching. Readers may also read Su Shi’s lines toward the laughter of despair; the paper takes only the side of the construct of purpose, and leaves the other side to the fourth paper.

Holding It Back

The seeing grid’s cell “I see, the other doesn’t” holds several laughs: sly laughter, teasing, derision, the laughter of love. Their judgment is the same: his construct still has such a remainder, and he has not seen it yet. What differs is the action around the judgment, what one does with the gap. The paper sorts them by the manner of pointing.

Sly laughter is able to point, yet does not. It is not sudden but persistent, because it waits for the moment the other finds the remainder. There is a story about Nasreddin, known to Chinese readers as Afanti. He borrowed a pot from his neighbour, and when he returned it he added a small pot, saying the pot had given birth; the neighbour gladly accepted. Next time he borrowed the pot and did not return it, saying it had died. When the neighbour asked how a pot could die, he replied: if you believed it could give birth, why not believe it could die? From the first return onward Nasreddin saw that the neighbour’s construct, believing anything when there is a bargain to be had, still had such a remainder; he held it back and waited; the story ends with him spelling it out himself. Once it is spelled out, whether the neighbour is embarrassed or laughs too, the story does not say.

“The slyness of sly laughter lies not in the laugh but in holding back.” Holding back is an action, and what it is for decides which way the laugh goes: to watch the other get stuck, and it slides toward derision; to let the other chisel it out himself, and it comes close to what SAE’s education paper calls cultivation: not blocking, letting the subject chisel for itself. “A teacher holding back an answer and a prankster holding back the trick may make exactly the same judgment, yet the actions differ.”

Recorded in three columns, the layers come apart too. The judgment of sly laughter, “I see, he does not,” requires representing the other’s present not-knowing as another subject’s state, so it is at 13DD at the earliest, for reasons of structure, not of age; before that, the giggle in hide-and-seek is a tendency of the sly-laughter structure. Holding back, as an action, has a purpose that can be spoken of, and so is discussed here; but the purpose of the action does not fix the layer of that laugh’s judgment.

Pointing with a Laugh, Never Saying It All

Teasing points with the laugh itself. Diogenes brought a plucked chicken into Plato’s lecture room and said: here is Plato’s man. The source does not record him laughing; on the paper’s reading he points with the plucked chicken at the remainder of the definition “featherless biped.” According to Diogenes Laertius, “having broad nails” was then added to the definition; the text uses the passive voice and does not say who added it. The end point of this case is absorption: the remainder is taken into the repaired construct. The story of Foyin and Su Shi, “unmoved by the eight winds, yet blown across the river by a single fart,” is often told as teasing; but Su Shi’s reaction differs from version to version, mortified in some, roaring with laughter in others. One must first choose the version and then walk the three tests, not settle it by the single consequence of whether he was angry or laughed.

Teasing can wake someone up, and can even have the effect of cultivation: it does not hand over the answer, it only points with a laugh, leaving the step of seeing to the other. But this is only a possibility; it depends on whether the other can decline to laugh and correct it without being punished.

The laughter of love has the same structure as sly laughter: I love you, and you know it, but you do not yet know that I love you that much. What has been registered is “love”; what has not is “that much.” The formula’s “such a remainder” lands here on the words “that much.” The difference is the manner of pointing: “sly laughter could say it and does not; the laughter of love says it and still cannot say it all.”

In the children’s book Guess How Much I Love You, the little hare shows again and again, with gestures, how much he loves, and every time the big hare says it out loud and reaches a little further. The book does write laughter: the little hare laughs as he speaks, the big hare answers smiling, and at the end the big hare whispers with a smile. On the paper’s reading, each time the big hare speaks, the little hare’s measure gains another remainder; saying it does not exhaust the “that much.” That the book writes laughter does not certify the layer of the laugh.

Which layer the laughter of love falls in depends first on which kind of love it is. SAE’s psychoanalysis series distinguishes: “I do things for you” is 14DD investment; “I confirm you are an independent end” is 15DD. The determination has to check the operation of this laugh, not rely on the word “love.” Nor is the laughter of love exempt from testing because it cannot be said in full: “Sooner or later you’ll understand how much I love you” can also become a reason for not letting the other disagree.

Off to a Good Start

In “Humour,” Freud gives an example: a prisoner being led to the gallows on a Monday remarks, “Well, this week is off to a good start.” His explanation is that humour saves the expenditure of emotion the situation would otherwise have called for; the superego comforts the frightened ego as an adult comforts a child, as if to say: look, this world that seems so dangerous is only a children’s game, fit to be joked about. Humour thereby rejects the demands of reality.

Which line does this superego belong to? SAE’s psychoanalysis series splits Freud’s superego in two: the Ego-Ideal line goes to 14DD, the punitive-conscience line is reassigned. Whether the kindly, consoling superego of “Humour” is the benign superego the post-Freudian literature discusses, the paper does not decide. It consoles, yet does not set out “what I should become.” The paper registers it as not yet mapped, and meanwhile does not fix the layer of the laugh by the word “superego.”

Three columns, on the paper’s reading. The relation judged: the construct used in “this week is off to a good start” is the plans for and expectations of a week; the remainder is that this week is not going to happen. He says the remainder in the grammar of the very construct, so both are in view. The laugher’s layer: undetermined. The action: he made a joke. Freud differs from the series in two places. For him the danger is shrunk and the demands of reality are rejected, close to Kant’s nothing; for the series construct and remainder are both in view, and the danger is still a danger. And his structure looks down: the superego stands above and consoles the ego.

So gallows humour has two possible places. If the prisoner at that moment stands within his own purpose, the week’s plans still his, and speaks the remainder of the week’s construct, the laugh neighbours wry laughter and is at 14DD. If he has discovered that he is, astonishingly, still thinking in terms of “a week,” still searching within a grasp that claims there is nothing left, and the fourth paper’s conditions are met, it falls toward the laughter of despair; if what he sees is a futile self, it is close to the self-mockery of 13DD. The text gives too little to decide, and the paper keeps both open.

At 14DD one’s own purpose enters the construct laughed at. The truth and basis of the judgment, and the consequences of the action of using laughter, are to be examined separately; nor is the laugher’s layer derived from the name of the laugh or from its use. Su Shi’s three place-names are still there, each distinct and countable, and so is his question about his life’s work. At 15DD laughter stands within non dubito. That is the next essay.