Abstract

In order to understand the unease or discomfort I experienced during a performance of contemporary dance and theatre which tried to create a humorous sense of distance towards suffering, I reflect on several personal experiences in order to arrive at an understanding of public laughter. This theorization relies on an understanding of the singularity of our embodiment and our social development. This singularity can only be understood by relating it to the popular concepts of the grotesque body and ambivalent laughter, which Bakhtin studied in Rabelais