Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Comedy and Politics (The Comedy of Political Philosophy. Democratic Citizenship, Political Judgment, and Ideals in Political Practice.)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2018-09-01 do 2020-08-31
The overall objective of this research programme was to demonstrate that comedy reflects the theoretical and methodological commitments of a strand of political philosophy called “political realism”, and to establish comedy’s contribution to political realism by drawing out its transformative potential.
Three specific research objectives were combined to support the overall objective. (a) The first objective developed an account of democratic citizenship informed by comedy by exploring Aristophanes’ comedies and Plato’s political thought. (b) The second objective developed an account of political judgment informed by comedy by analysing Machiavelli’s comedies and political writings in relation to each other. (c) The third objective developed an account of the relation between ideals and practice in politics informed by comedy via the theoretical reflections on comedy by Hegel, Vischer, and Marx.
Each of the specific research objectives corresponds to a central feature of political realism. By developing these objectives through comedy, the researcher showed that there are structural parallels between comedy and political realism. In each of the specific objectives, the transformative potential inherent in comedy was elucidated. In doing so, the researcher used insights derived from this parallel to develop a more nuanced understanding of political realism’s potential to conceptualize social transformation. Thus comedy transpires as the means through which the full potential of realism for political philosophy as a whole can be grasped for the first time. At the same time, the disruptive power of comedy in political life was explored.
Results of this MSCA will be reported in: (1) a forthcoming journal article on realism, utopianism, and the comic imagination and a forthcoming book chapter on Plato and comedy; (2) a journal article on Machiavelli and Comedy, in preparation for submission; (3) a journal article on Hegel and Vischer on comedy and one on Marx on comedy, both in preparation for submission; (5) in the long term the findings of this project will be expanded into a book; and (4) a popular essay in The Conversation, accessible at https://theconversation.com/comedy-can-help-us-tackle-the-climate-crisis-heres-how-127763
The main anticipated impact from this MSCA is a diversification within political philosphy itself. Political philosophy has to be able to account not just for politics that appears in a ‘rationalist’ or tragic mode, but also for politics that appears in a comic mode; and this MSCA provides the basis to do just that. As part of the communication activities of this MSCA, the potential use of the three objectives in changing institutions in the public sector to shift towards incorporating civic engagement in policy processes was tested in a collaboration with a non-profit. The importance of this MSCA for thinking about climate change has been explored in a popular essay in The Conversation. These are just examples for where this MSCA’s potential future socio-economic impact lies.