Laughing on the Brink of Humanity

An Exercise in Epihumanism

Jan Miernowski

$76.95 $65.45

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

State University of New York Press
02 May 2025

Literature: history & criticism; Philosophy; Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology; Humanist & secular alternatives to religion

Series: SUNY series, Literature... in Theory

Stretching from antiquity to AI, a provocative study of the joyless laughter that emerges at the boundary of the human and the inhuman.

What does it mean to be human? And, more precisely, what does it mean to be human now, with both humanism and the humanities in crisis? In answer to these questions, Laughing on the Brink of Humanity seeks not some essence of the human but rather an epiphenomenal manifestation-a sign of the human. The book finds such a sign in the joyless, painful, and often deadly laughter that resonates when we cross the barrier between what is human and what is not: animality, machinery, divinity. Jan Miernowski brings together a wide swath of discourses and figures, from Plato and the Bible through early modern humanism, to Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lanzmann, Spike Jonze, Tom Stoppard, and Michel Houellebecq. Looking for laughter on the brink of humanity-in literature and philosophy, natural science and film, theology and computer science-the book offers an exercise in epihumanism appropriate to our posthuman age.

By: Jan Miernowski
Imprint: State University of New York Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9798855800005
Series: SUNY series, Literature... in Theory
Pages: 291
Publication Date: 02 May 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Laughing at the Death of Man 2. Laughing Animals 3. Laughing (Human) Machines 4. Machining (Human) Laughter 5. Laughing Gods 6. Laughing Men Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index

Jan Miernowski is the Douglas Kelly Professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Warsaw. He is the author of La Beauté de la haine: Essais de misologie littéraire and the editor of Early Modern Humanism and Postmodern Antihumanism in Dialogue.

Reviews for Laughing on the Brink of Humanity: An Exercise in Epihumanism

""A major contribution to the ongoing discussion of humanism, this book offers an extremely original study of a very particular form of laughter, a 'joyless laughter' that can be observed in different types of traumatizing or borderline circumstances. In building readings of this laughter into a theory of what Miernowski calls 'epihumanism,' the book also provides a defense and illustration of how the humanities and literary analysis in particular can nourish our current philosophical discussions and cultural debates."" — Yves Citton, author of The Ecology of Attention