Incitatus: reflexões sobre humor e política

INTRODUCTION

Constantino Pereira Martins

1. AN INITIATION TO POLITICAL-THEATRICAL LAUGHTER

This book begins with the 2021 symposium that had as main goal opening space to a reflection about humor, especially its privileged relationship with politics. The title of the conference gives space to questioning the primary logic of political understanding as relationship between governors and governed, power and authority, or the first equation of obedience and freedom. From corruption to bad business, from power abuse to hypocrisy and social mediocrity caricature, the kingdom of appearances in the power game has never been spared of humor’s acute inspection. Many believe that even the health of a political regime can be measured by the barometer of freedom and tolerance to laughter.

The conference proposed as a departing point the tale of Emperor Caligula, who made, or intended to make, his favorite horse a consul. Maybe the contemporary translation of such gesture would be the more I know the human beings, the more I like the animals. It does not really matter if this is a true story or not. The power of the myths and the magical thinking goes beyond fact checking. The image has an absolute power like a shadow. The game of political power often requires dissimulating, deviant and sometimes humiliating strategies. Such power has ancient roots, going back to the Greek culture and the Roman Empire and lies precisely on the razor’s edge between the strength of the power and the weakness of the exposure.

Humor shows its strength reassuring freedom – older or more modern, refined or crude, but always with the same formal, transcendental and speculative logic. In political theater, in this eternal game of light and shadow, humor comes as weapon of defense and attack, to poke fun, distract or tell the truths. Breaking the political-theatrical problem in actors, audience and critics is a well establish didactic strategy. In this scenario, laughter and politics hold hands for the celebration, the party, the enacting and the global communication destined to distraction and information. And all of us, wanting or not, are part of the show. This seems to be the engine of contemporary history. The show must go on.

1.1. Humor and freedom

Laughter is the last resource, it is the last weapon of the poor and the first fear of the arrogant. Being the subject of laughter is like falling into Thales’ pit. There is little known about the slave who laughed at the philosopher’s fall, just that she came from Thrace. It was said that in the hearts of the Thracians lived a fighting, fearless, brave spirit – not far from everything that can enliven the laughter. What we do not know is if the slave has also laughed, as well as we laugh of a man who falls unexpectedly, and if Thales himself laughed a hymn in the unifying search of the first causes (and even though we do not know if the water is or not the first origin, we know it will be the ultimate cause of all the wars in the future, as it is the elementary substance for our survival and the greatest treasure of all the planet). Or even if the subject of laughter was philosophy itself incarnated in that man out of the realm of reality.

We have reunited here all the elements for a comic historiography of philosophical laughter. In the first place, the slave laughed. That is remarkable even because it demonstrates that the death was not in her immediately reachable horizon, proving that philosophy and laughter can exist only within the splendor of life (and of course also the splendor of the stomach). There can be no philosophy in face of hunger, as well as in face of death. We do not know if the slave laughed at the happening, trying to refrain but letting it off, or if she made jokes and remarks about it.

In the second place, if the slave laughed at the idea of unifying an explanation about the things of the world, or if she laughed at the arrogance of the thoughts on everything that lives and breathes, chaos laughing at the order, because even one who knows deeply that all is one, when fallen into the pit all thoughts converge into the multiple forms of leaving it.

In the third place, maybe the laughter was addressed to all the philosophy itself, as a pathetic idea and pointless effort. Anyway remains mysterious the Thracian’s laughter, considering that Thales fell into the pit not thinking about the unity of the universe’s existence, the contemplation of cosmos or its unity for the elevation of the Greek paideia, but to prove that he could be rich if he wanted, studying astronomy and meteorology to forecast the crop of olives and earning enormous financial results the year after his decay. As popularly said, life goes round. Maybe here one could make economic-philosophical remarks to future dissertations on young entrepreneurship, considering that we must overcome the loops on our way if we want to triumph. Maybe here a new ethics of laughter could be based on the sublime equation that joins shame, vulgarity and scandal in face of elevated purposes and prime values of our civilization.

And maybe the Thracian’s laughter, in its simplicity, be one of the most important lessons of life: watch your steps. This can be understood in its generality but also regarding slavery. We must be cautious enough to know that someday we might wake up constrained to this extreme situation of existence. Research, texts and thesis on slavery are endless and involve comedy and tragedy, economics and ethics. If in the Roman comedies heirs of the Greek style Plautus focused the idea and character of the slave as a comic relief, disruptive point of the established hierarchy, the Europeans saw this matter from the mechanic and economic point of view of imperial and maritime expansion. Of course slavery can be seen as one of the oldest war institutions, supreme declaration of superiority and transversal victory of mankind. But from all the possible hermeneutic layers, the slave was, is and will be the last remaining core of all the political thought. The slave and its double, freedom.

First motto of political laughter: laughter is a form of game and can be used as a weapon.

2. DONKEYS AND HORSES

Another famous story about other famous philosopher is the one of Nietzsche and the Torino’s horse. A horse was being violently whipped by his conductor when refusing to march. In tears, Nietzsche hugged the horse’s neck, shielding the animal from the disproportionate, inhuman bestiality of the whip. It is not known so far if this gesture was the end of his rationality, the beginning of his madness or the despair of his quest for affection, emotion and feelings that are the basic conditions for our survival. Maybe it was the sudden illumination, the absolutely demolishing epiphany of the eternal comeback, of the repetition of evil, of the impossibility of redemption for the Antichrist, who became too much human when protecting a horse from suffering. Maybe it was the acute comprehension that, with Dostoyevsky, art imitates life, and life is dirty and lame. The art, in the end of the day, does not save the life. Nietzsche’s crime and punishment revealed itself in this gesture of justice, pity and mercy for a horse in suffering, neighing in his impossibility of evolving. A gesture of love, a religious gesture. Or maybe it is something much simpler: Nietzsche was not loved. And one may die of loneliness. Loneliness kills. We can cry or be silent forever.

Curiously and paradoxically the horse has always been a signal and symbol of power, admired for its beauty and splendor (the opposite, by the way, to what happens to the donkey and the mule). The donkey is a popular symbol, whereas the horse brings always an image reminiscent of upper classes and superiority; the horse is taller and chiseled, the donkey is small and strong. Quixote rides a horse, while Sancho rides a donkey – and nobody wants to trade a horse for a donkey. If a horse can always be associated with a distant hope of image redemption, by glamorous association and borrowed elegance, seeking refuge and the distracted gaze, when it comes to the donkey everything is much more literal and obvious, clear and exposed.

The donkey serves not only the laughter but also the serio ludere, a possibility or an image that allows us to see other symbols, a metamorphosis of senses. Since the Classical Antiquity there are tales of donkeys disguised with lion fur, or carrying salt, from Lucian of Samosata’s donkey to the Buridan’s paradox, everything seems to be always flooded by humor, satire and irony in this gentle, long-eared creature.

There is a persistent connection between the donkey and stupidity, and if according to Kant there was an endless shock and admiration between the starred sky above and the inner categorical imperative, Einstein, when choosing the same train of thought, sees both in the universe and in the human stupidity the same degree of endlessness (although he is not so sure about the universe). There is a whole dialectic opposing the donkey and the smart, the stupid and the leery, and even a great philosophical, genealogical and linguistic lineage (donkey, stupid, idiot, dumb, naive, muggle, jerk, dickhead, fool, simpleton, etc). If in the land of the blind, whoever has an eye is king, opinions diverge much in almost every field (except for one’s own life and limbs), as proven by the famous tale of the old man, the boy and the donkey. The only majestic exception to all of this seems to be impregnated with a theological-political tone, in the figure of a messianic Jesus arriving in Jerusalem riding a donkey. Except for that the donkey exists as summary especially consecrated in the rural world, where it has always been an ally for its resilience, suffering capability and strength nonetheless its character. The eyes of who plows the land can bear only understanding when dealing with the clean, city-based others.

This image of beast of burden has always fitted the people well. The people, this historic, anonymous immensity of survivors, those ones deprived of privileges except for what is built by their arms and intelligence, this mysterious movement everyone wants in the end of history. Even after used, manipulated, thrown away. The short solace of the laughter or the donkey’s heehaw remains, nonetheless. An impregnable sound that might be degrading and repulsive as much as revolting and victorious while echoes, with a mix of suffering and joy, bouncing its tail like a dog. Between the mighty horses and the poor donkeys, remains the old parable in which Diogenes refuses Alexander’s magnificent offer and just asks him not to block the sunlight. And of course, there are always the young donkeys and the old ones. To make a donkey’s elegy: if some few straws and a tad of blurred water are given to an old donkey, it suddenly gets younger in five minutes!

The best really might be to disappear. Or be silent forever. And lock my whole self in a poem, not in plane language, but in plain language (Herberto Heler).

Second motto of political laughter: the poor’s laughter is his weapon of massive destruction.

3. ON THE POLITICAL BESTIALITY

The human being is a political animal, remarked the old Aristotle. What he forgot to tell us is the amount of animals in politics, and even worse, their quality. It was in our era that this thesis was revised in the light of the Holocaust, and that from a theoretical point of view, Agamben pushed the distinction between bios and zoe. This meant, and still means, to place the horror in the horizon of politics as an extreme possibility of a naked, totally exposed life. This possibility, always present, of returning to a radical nudity of a body deprived of any humanity, seems to be either a sadistic inevitability of human politics (explained with greater depth by Girard) or a challenge that recalls the Greek fable about the scorpion and the frog.

The remaining question, not yet completely answered, is about what will be a zoopolitic. It might had as a starting point Massumi’s game zoology, with emotion and pathology in the center of the political show, or, as the book itself points out, trying to realize what we could learn with the animals about politics. When it comes to animalism, in this fruitful crossing between philosophy, anthropology and ethology, although natural and consecrated by a scientific and observational point of view, it is maybe missing a greater conceptual toolkit.

Maybe the digital, virtual and cyber politic mechanization can build in the future an external point of view that allows us to see in a mirror our animal action and condition. In a time in which we experience an evident civilizational jump, we can always be reminded of the sound of the gorilla in the jungle demanding respect over his territory. This journey to the heart of darkness is always within our reach – be it unexpectedly and surprisingly, out of a sudden after any human atrocity that shocks for bestiality, brutality or barbarity, or be it scheduled like in a visit to any zoo where we can recollect short but valuable moral, symbolic and political lessons, in case we are willing to take them. And maybe more than seeing the human zoo, what has always been at stake since the beginning was the dilemma between nature and culture, and above that the always irreducible question of the violence.

The relation between the animals and the political philosophy is more complex than the consideration of bioethics in animal life, and goes much further than the anthropomorphic animalism in force, which oscillates between charity and existential redemption to our growing solitude in our societies disguised as collective screens, or Schopenhauer’s love for animals in his reformulation of Buddhist compassion (because, in general, animals are images and figures to think politics, in the fight for selective domestication or wild freedom). And everything that is wild and escapes the usual categories is more and more exposed to the margins’ erosion or, worse, to silence and oblivion. In short, the politics circus shares its bread in a regular basis.

But there is one side of political bestiality that, not being tragic, sexual, or trans-humane, walks graciously into the realm of bullshit. It is the loving, sometimes symbolic, relationship between the power holders and their pets. They are unusual stories, or stories of unusual political laughter. The presidents of the United States are particularly used to capturing the plebe’s imagination when choosing their pets for politics. Beyond the obvious connotation of two animals (the donkey and the elephant) for the American politics, we have seen more or less adorable choices like Obama’s in favor of the Portuguese water dog, to Theodore Roosevelt’s absolute eccentricity in sheltering a hyena called Bill.

We must also underline the radical possibility of the animals themselves being candidates to political positions, as it happened in 1920’s Brazil with the goat Io-Iô; in 1950’s with the 100,000 votes gathered by rhino Cacareco, still considered a vote against corruption; and finishing with an honorable mention to the monkey Tião, famous for tossing shit to politicians and recipient of nothing less than 400,000 votes. The political bestiality is exhibited worldwide as an expression of discontentment, revolt, insubordination or simply boredom, having as privileged allies laughter and scorn. In the United States there is a mule in Washington, a gorilla in New Hampshire, Winnie the pig in London, cats in Mexico and in Serbia, and in New Zealand a town has even declared its independence having as presidents a goat and a poodle.

Politics irony and ridicule, maybe an obvious signal of our civilization’s decay, seems to coronate Diogenes as the king-philosopher of our times. Unfortunately dead and deposed. This posthumous coronation, honor and eternal glory, shows politics and laughter as immortal lovers. And just like him we must then with a lantern in daylight look for the rationality or the laughter that we are lacking. What is political bestiality today? It may have something to do with the boundaries between truth and lie mentioned by Arendt, or just the usual mind games to which rhetoric has abandoned itself in the quest for distraction, vulgarity and the foam of the days.

What is political bestiality today? Today, precisely today, by the end of February 2022, after two years incarcerated in a global pandemic, it is witnessing a schizophrenic and vain Russian dictator threatening a nuclear war on the news and nonetheless having to finish the dinner because tomorrow is a working