Laughing out loud in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: a postmodernist reading

Abstract

In Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), laughing out loud is the most common act shared by all the characters. This laughter often surfaces during moments of tension, failure, or encounters with death. The tragicomic nature of this laughter, arising from such circumstances, mirrors a postmodernist playful stance towards assertions of singularity and unquestionable truths, operating on both structural and thematic levels. The laughter characters produce may seem as inappropriate in certain situations. However, seen from a postmodernist perspective, it can be defined as an expression of scepticism towards diseased metanarratives and absolute foundations. The postmodern tendency to question and revise claims to ultimate truth finds resonance in the loud laughter of pain and relief. Within the postmodernist context, laughter transforms into an anti-foundational nonverbal expression against constraints and oppression. This paper asserts the postmodernist nature of laughter, frequently heard in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, emphasising its playful yet serious tone.

Keywords:

• Laughter
• postmodernism
• playfulness
• nonverbal
• tragicomedy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Laughter has been theorized since Plato who was the founding father of the Superiority theory. According to Plato, we laugh at other people who are ignorant of the ridiculous side in them. Hence, our laughter is always an expression of wickedness and nastiness as it signals a sense of claimed superiority over the other. Likewise, Thomas Hobbes describes laughter as an instinctive alert sign reflecting a sense of competitiveness and egocentricity as it emanates from a desire to relish one’s success by observing the imperfections of the other (54–55). On the other hand, in his Critique of Judgement, Kant (1990) associates laughter with the concept of incongruity. Kant points that “something absurd, something in which, therefore, the understanding can of itself find no delight, must be present in whatever is to raise a hearty convulsive laugh. Laughter is an affection arising from a strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing” (199). The Relief theory, developed by thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and Freud 1991, maintains that laughter is a way to physically release the “nervous energy” inside us. Relief theorists believe that laughing is a way of discharging some emotions considered as too extreme or inappropriate to be expressed in words.

2 Hereafter referred to as Who’s Afraid?.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mourad Romdhani

Mourad Romdhani is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Letters and Humanities, University of Sousse, Tunisia. He holds a Ph.D degree in English literature. His fields of interest are American literature, Faulkner studies and literary theories.