Brigstocke, Julian  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2455-0504
2012.
Defiant laughter: humour and the aesthetics of place in late 19th century Montmartre.
Cultural Geographies
19
(2)
, pp. 217-235.
10.1177/1474474011414637
|
Abstract
Humour was at the core of the spatial imaginary of the emerging French avant-garde of the 1880s. But what was the specific role of different forms of humour in their attempts to re-imagine urban place and community? In this article I develop a non-representational historical geography of the aesthetics of place in fin-de-siècle Montmartre. The article analyses how Montmartre artists used humour in order to inject new life and vitality into the urban environment. The ambivalence of humour made it a powerful device through which to experiment with creating a novel experience of place and stylizing an affirmative urban ethos. Two modes of humour in particular were predominant: irony and pantomime buffoonery. Through irony, they attempted to create an experience of place that encompassed the contradictory and fugitive nature of the modern city. In buffoonery, they found a way of affirming the city’s potential at the same time as remaining alive to its suffering and violence. In combination, this urban ethos can be theorized as a form of ‘affirmative pessimism’.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Status: | Published |
| Schools: | Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL) |
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Affect; affirmative pessimism; art of living; avant-garde; biopolitics; Chat Noir; humour; Montmartre; non-representational history. |
| Publisher: | SAGE |
| ISSN: | 1474-4740 |
| Funders: | ESRC |
| Last Modified: | 27 Oct 2022 09:13 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/64879 |
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