The Comedy of Reflexive Modernity: Reason, Religion and the Ambivalence of Humour

Abstract

This article utilizes Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‘reflexive modernity’ to account for the ambivalent view of humour in the public sphere: its celebration as a form of criticism of irrationality and injustice and its censure as a vehicle for the denigration of subordinate or marginal groups and identities. The article argues that the power and ambivalence of humour in contemporary culture can be understood with reference to the two key features of reflexive modernization: the demand for the discursive justification of all claims to cognitive and normative authority and the obligation to respect the equal rights of all individuals. Drawing on Beck’s distinction between a ‘first’ and ‘second’ modernity, the article uses the example of the Danish ‘Muhammed Cartoons’ to show that critical-emancipatory joking cannot simply lay claim to an ‘Enlightenment’ view of secular-scientistic reason in conflict with an atavistic and backward ‘religion’ due to the transformation of reason by reflexive scientization and the transformation of religion resulting from the effects of globalization and cultural cosmopolitization. The article draws on accounts of the comic practice of Muslim comedians and a consideration of the British TV sit-com Rev to demonstrate the possibility of a ‘religious’ joking that is thereby eminently ‘modern’ whilst respecting the values of human universality and individual dignity. The article concludes by reiterating the centrality of Beck’s theory for the understanding of the enduring power of comic representation to constitute a cultural reflexivization endemic in contemporary society and argues for the relevance of ‘reflexive modernity’ to cultural sociology.