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Gore Hall, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA

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David Shoemaker, Professor in Ethics and Public Life, from Cornell University.

 

Title of Talk: “Quarrels and Cracks: On the Values of Comic Distraction”

 

Abstract:  Quarrels and wisecracks are familiar features of interpersonal life. Quarrels are conflicts that typically take place only between friends, family, and those with whom we are personally engaged and whose attitudes toward us matter. Wisecracks are bits of improvised wit—banter, teasing, mockery, and ball busting—that also typically take place only in interpersonal life, very often also with those who we are personally engaged (note the following odd but revealing comment: “I can’t tease her like that; I barely even know her!”). Quarrels and cracks are, though, mutually exclusive. People know their quarrel is basically over once they start being amused by each others’ wisecracks again, and if you’re enjoying wisecracks with each other, it’s very hard, if not impossible, to quarrel at the same time. Why is this and what does it mean for interpersonal life? In this paper, I attempt to answer these questions via a deep dive into the nature of wisecracking humor to explore the unrecognized—and valuable—role it plays in our interpersonal lives. In particular, there is a type of wisecracking humor that has a distinctive sort of interpersonal power, the power to dissolve the anger in quarrels in a surprising and productive way. 

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