Hegel, Marx, and the Laughing Matter of Spirit

Excavating the comedic crack in historical repetitions
What happens when those who have been denied political subjectivity fully play out their negative role in a historical drama that damned them from the beginning? Hegel, Marx, and the Laughing Matter of Spirit locates the eruption of revolutionary laughter in historical cracks across nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, where exiled philosophers, partisan fighters, and artists framed their political resistance as a historical comedy. Hegelian comedy fuels the Young Hegelian critique of Prussian censorship, Walter Benjamin’s staging of the anti-fascist resistance, and the Yugoslavian partisan attempt to begin again in fascism’s aftermath. Revolution erupts from a historical stage that can no longer look on its own contradictions with a straight face. Drawing on the defiant spirit of comedy, this Hegelian feminist manifesto defies political despair, overturning the perception that history tragically repeats itself. Invoking the phrase “Nothing changes” as a mantra, R. A. Aumiller turns a concession of defeat into a battle cry for political resistance.

R. A. Aumiller is an assistant professor in the Department of Metaphysics and Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University, The Netherlands.