The Last Laugh

This book investigates what the author terms “The last laugh,” which reveals itself as a crucial element in the work of grief and acceptance amid social strife and political injustice.

We hear and see the laugh emerge when engaged in situations that are not funny at first glance, at least not according to social conventions of propriety. The last laugh is seriously funny, insofar as it reveals the extent to which the laughing subject is thoroughly enmeshed in the unfunniness of social antagonisms yet also capable of accepting its position as something to laugh at and through in order to endure the pains of social life. The last laugh emerges at the hiatus between action/autonomy and passivity/non-doing. Chances are high that you have laughed this laugh.

This book is designed to help us all understand what it is and how it helps promote insight in the contemporary moment. Understanding the last laugh is necessary to enable full, open grieving of social injustice; treating the comic as a necessary component of open, or what the social sciences refer to as “adaptive,” grieving. It thus provides a new perspective on grief scholarship, as well as a new perspective on comedy studies.