LAUGHTER AS COMMUNICATION (IN THE RECEPTION OF F. NIETZSCHE AND A. BERGSON BY G. BATAILLE)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of “laughter” in the philosophical ideas and literary works of the twentieth century French thinker, Georges Bataille. Laughter appears as a philosophicaltheoretical instruction,a method of subversive experience and critique of the previous philosophical tradition, selfanalysis through one’s own text and metaphors (philosophical,artistic and life). Particular attention is paid to the influence of ideas about laughter by Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche on the formation in the texts by Bataille of the war period included in the Summa Atheologica cycle, a comprehensive perception of laughter as a practice, intellectual setting, metaphor and means of de-subjectivization. If Nietzsche is a guide and an accurate appeal in communication and community formation, then the ideasof Bergson (the sociological concept of laughter) are the subject of challenging and criticism. In the works of Nietzsche Bataille interprets laughter as a conscious gesture of the sovereign f ormation of a man, although Bataille himself deprives laughter of the characteristics of consciousness, but instead in laughter reveals the possibility of breaking the subject with himself and, consequently, communication with others. The fundamental characteristics of Bataille’s laughter are communication (formation of an extra-subjective community), eroticism (building an analogy with erotic desire and ecstasy), ap peal to the impossible , nonknowldge, nothi ng, loss of the self (abandonment of I), distinction with humorand intellectual laughter. Anotherkey concept in Bataille’s philosophy of laughter – “glissement” – is noted, as time to time it is used by the thinker to combine and cross all metaphors(laughter, religious and erotic experiences with the component of liquids), and to identify these meanings in the very form of one’s own writing. The development of the tradition of philosophical deconstruction (Nietzsche – Bataille – Foucault, Deleuze, Cixous) is traced, within the framework of which the specific experience of reading a text penetrated by laughter as an attitude is considered.