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Monday, April 11, 2005
Ludicrosity
I feel a special affinity for Matthew Kaiser’s “A History of ‘Ludicrous’" [NB: Project Muse link]. He makes the necessary connection between Hesse’s Magister Ludi and Ludacris (635-36), just as many of my students missed a recent discussion of the former because of apparent overexcitement caused by the latter. (And good for them, I wouldn’t normally say. Gaudemus igitur, u.s.w.) In tracing the unfortunate lexicographical history of the word, Kaiser suggests that “ludic” is not an exact synonym of the 17th C “ludicrous”: “A jargony neologism invented in the 1930s and 1940s by sociologists, psychologists, and animal behaviorists, among others, ‘ludic,’ in my view, smacks of the laboratory and the clinician’s office. ‘Ludic’ refuses to partake of the activity it describes, assessing it, instead, from afar, from the outside, from an expert vantage. From behind one-way mirrors and ethnographic lenses, scientists use the word to describe the frolic patterns of kittens and the dance steps of aboriginal toddlers. I use the word selectively--and with reservations” (656 n12). As this happy note shows, we need more ludicrosity (even ludicrism) in our criticism, though I won’t combine the words because I distrust that sort of thing and so should you.
If you haven’t read “Fact and Fiction in Hippopotamology” recently, you may not remember the case of J.J. Scheuchzer, “who in 1726 mistook the skull and vertebral column of a large salamander from the Miocene of Oeningen for the ’betrübten Beingerüst eines alten Sünders‘ (sad bony remains of an old human sinner) and figured the specimen as ‘Homo diluvii testis’ (the man who witnessed the Deluge)” (109). Assertion, emphatic and immune to reason, might not be the best foundation for a new critical practice; but we also can’t tell our salamanders from sinners. We tarry, and they burn. The paleocritical imagination classifies and connects. It explicates. Sometimes it judges. It can even be ludic--a synthetic bibliography of imaginary papers such as “Bored to Life: Eutychos and Two Versions of the Word” could still surprise you, but sneeringly. (Did Paul Auster rub his fingers together to describe Ficciones, the pity of ash?)
As a concluding prolegomenon to a general theory of ludicrosity, I ask the reader to consider Joshua Fost’s “Toward the Glass Bead Game - a Rhetorical Invention." He presents two islands, semantically webbed. Would sentences thus composed be necessarily ludicrous? If the word did “magically contain the ideas which speakers have used it to express” (Kaiser 656), would its ludicrosity manifest? I could see how this might be labelled as the worst sort of naive technodeterminism, complicit with crimes ghastly and as of yet unimaginable. It’s a real concern. I argued in my class that the purpose of the Glass Bead Game might very well be thought-control. Hell, it might be extant, the work of stupendous tulpas. How would we know? But the class, both present and absent, said nothing and thought of Ludacris.
References
Kaiser, Matthew. “A History of ‘Ludicrous.’” ELH. 71.3 (2004): 631-660.
Hooijer, Dirk Albert. “Fact and Fiction in Hippopotamology (Sampling the History of Scientific Error).” Osiris. 10 (1952): 109-116.
Comments
"But the class, both present and absent, said nothing and thought of Ludacris.”
That’s RIGHT they did.
How ‘bout in the library on top of books
But you can’t be too loud...
Here’s two paragraphs of the essay I thought were interesting, but which were on the slightly different track of the semantics of the word in the present moment:
“[L]udicrous" can easily be replaced (for the most part) with “silly,” “preposterous,” “unreasonable,” or “misguided,” and, in some cases, with a neighborly “outrageous” or “groundless,” or even a friendly “stupid.” While it might be tempting to add the words “disgusting” and “contemptible” to this list, especially in light of the contorted facial expressions and shaky voices of some of the speakers, the very power of “ludicrous"—which is couched, after all, in laughter—lies in its ability to avoid, for all its underlying venom, crossing the bounds of civility. In theory, “ludicrous” targets its victim’s powers of reason, not his or her purity of soul. In the United States, of course, accusations of stupidity are less socially (and politically) damaging than accusations of immorality. . . .
Noteworthy for its contradictory textures and flavors, “ludicrous"—when leveled against another—is both bitter and sweet: a polite means to insult. Undeniably derogatory, it nonetheless exudes a faint collegial aftertaste, a prickly bonhomie. The word has a degree of self-restraint, an air of propriety, that other dismissive phrases— “piece of shit” or “moronic"—lack. Rather than kick him in the groin, “ludicrous” merely knocks the hat off an opponent’s head. The word does not have the power to destroy friendships or shatter marriages. Decidedly forgettable, its sting rarely lingers for more than a second or two, a few days at the very most. A hard word, it feels soft. It camouflages its violence with a smile, or—to be more syllabically precise—with a kiss, a smile, and a hiss. In the lip reader’s ideal universe, one’s lips should purse to form “LU,” spread into a grin with “DI,” then hiss a sibilant “CROUS.” To avoid the appearance of hyperbole or irony, it is imperative that one utter the word “evil,” for [End Page 633] instance, with a straight face. From a purely orthoepical perspective, “ludicrous” is constitutive of smiles.
Yes. A thought: Blog trolls should practice using the “L” word.
The Game was not a generalized system but was comprised of carefully chosen elements, the composition of whose set mirrored a historical problem in the sociology of knowledge (viz: the historical problem of the sociology of knowledge) which was indirectly being satirized.
Presuming Fost is a legitimate researcher in the field of hypertext and not an ironic genius, does anybody know if he’s heard of this guy named “Leibniz”?
While teaching the book now, I wonder how much of this satire is the later invention of critics.
There’s also Bishop Wilkins to consider.
For me it gets funnier every year, but when I first read it long ago I was too boggled by everything else that was going on to notice. “Funny like Kafka” is hardly a genre, I suppose.
What’s the thought control angle? Like Newspeak?
Three cheers for Hippopotamology!
Very broadly, that the Game (and Castalia in general) might serve as a propaganda center of some sort, using a technology not imaginable (or that Hesse isn’t willing or able to imagine) and that it’s a reaction to emerging mass-media its propagandistic use in the 1930s.
Wow!
Now this is interesting. What’s the objection to teaching from the more obvious historical contexts—Hegel, Richard Wilhelm’s I-ching, Huxley’s source material on the “Gray Eminence”, etc? Is there a tacit assumption that Hesse simply must have said something about politics in the 30s and of all his books, this is the most plausible place to look?
Don’t go hasty generalizing up a false dichotomy. It’s just an idea I tossed out there.
I’m genuinely disappointed! :-)