Die komische Differenz. Zur Dialektik des Lächerlichen in Theater und Gesellschaft. Dissertationsschrift
Roth, Hans – 2022
Since the 2010s, the examination of the social interpretive struggles around migration, ethnicity, and racism has been one of the most formative, but also most controversial tendencies in contemporary theater. The study presented here is based on the insight that the potentials and ambivalences of postmigrant and racism-critical theater works manifest themselves particularly often in comic forms of representation. Critically extending the recent renewed debate about the political in the performative arts, it undertakes a redefinition of a much-discussed topos of comedy and laughter theory: the notoriously unsettled distinction between laughing with and laughing at, comedy and ridiculousness. Starting from this comic difference, the study unfolds a theory of political theater that situates itself in the intersection of theatricality research, postfoundationalist social theory, and Marxist hegemony theory.