大笑益生論：幽默的生命經濟與社會身體

Laughter as Therapy: The Animal Economy and the Social Body of Humor

今日風行於流行文化的「笑療法」，配合人本主義意識形態的思想遺產，已成為一個跨領域的文化工業。本文耙梳大笑養生思想的歷史文化起源，探討十八世紀生理論述如何為一個新興文化典範立基。在此體系中，「生命經濟」提供理解大笑行為的理路：藉由大笑引發的身體運動排除廢物、加速身體循環，並治療各種心疾，以促進健康。以此為基礎，「大笑益生論」試圖將個體健康平順地轉譯為社會健康，並成為文學和文化市場中自我指涉的商品：它將喜劇中反經濟的消耗、混亂轉為開懷的資源，規避其複雜社會衝突的政治文本。本文將閱讀《項狄傳》與《憨弗雷．克林克出遊記》以探究是類論述在文學語言的介質中所隱含的反諷與難題。

Laughter therapy, assisted by humanist ideologies, has become a massive cultural industry. This article traces the cultural origins of the idea of medicinal laughter in the eighteenth century, addressing the ways in which physiological discourse shaped an emergent cultural paradigm. In such system, “animal economy” laid a foundation for conceiving laughter in terms of bodily movement and circulation that were believed to promote physical and mental health. On this basis, laughter as therapy sought a smooth translation from personal health to social health. In this sense, it can be seen as a solution to the problems of comedy, transforming the waste and chaos in it into resources of mirth, while complex political texts of social conflict were sidestepped. In this way, laughter's status as a self-referential commodity was established in the literary and cultural market. This article reads The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker to investigate the ironies and conundrums of such discourses in the medium of literary language.