The Laughing Body Politic

The Politics of Hobbes’s Theory of Laughter

I begin by briefly reviewing the accounts of laughter Hobbes offers in The Elements of Law (1640), Leviathan (1651), and De Homine (1658). I do this not to simply recapitulate what Hobbes says about laughter, but to show (1) how Hobbes identifies laughter as a political issue and (2) how his conception of the politics of laughter changes over time. This exegesis is necessary for understanding Hobbes’s critique of laughter as well as my own interpretation of his theory of laughter in the following sections.

Hobbes’s analysis of laughter in Chapter IX of The Elements of Law showcases many of the ambiguities that come to characterize later iterations of his theory. Hobbes (1994c, 45) initially describes laughter as the bodily sign of a nameless passion: “There is a passion that hath no name; but the sign of it is that distortion of the countenance we call laughter.” ² This distinction between laughter and the passions does not last long, however, as Hobbes (1994c, 46) identifies “the passion of laughter” three times on the very next page. Here he provides the first formulation of his so-called “superiority theory”: “the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly” (Hobbes 1994c, 46). An individual laughs upon feeling suddenly superior to others or oneself.

Glory constitutes the linchpin of Hobbes’s early theory of the passions. It is the first passion Hobbes discusses in The Elements, and all the other passions derive from glory in one way or another. Hobbes (1994c, 40) defines glory as “the passion which proceedeth from the imagination or conception of our own power above the power of him that contendeth with us.” An individual “glories” when he imagines that he possesses more power than someone else. By power, Hobbes at first appears to refer simply to one’s capacity to attain a future good, but he elaborates that power exists only in relations of excess and deficiency:

power simply is no more, but the excess of the power of one above that of another . . . The signs by which we know our own power, are those actions which proceed from the same; and the signs by which other men know it, are such actions, gesture, countenance and speech, as usually such powers produce. (Hobbes 1994c, 38)

My power is only the power I have in excess of your power, but this same power might be no power at all when compared with that of a third person. We identify power by its signs, which include certain patterns of acting, gesturing, and speaking. Hobbes depicts a complex network of excesses and deficiencies in which individuals must decipher relations of power by conventional signs.

As the passion of sudden glory (or as the sign of a nameless passion), laughter participates in this network of power relations. An individual who laughs suddenly feels an excess of power with respect to someone else (or himself formerly), and this sense of superiority necessarily makes reference to the prevailing configuration of power. One never laughs in a vacuum: laughter is immediately bound up with political processes that envelop and exceed the individual. As one of the “countenances” that signifies an excess of power, laughter also constitutes a move within these processes. When an individual laughs, the network of power relations undergoes a change as spectators learn that the laughing individual feels more powerful than he or she did previously. Because laughter occurs within, makes reference to, and modifies a configuration of power, laughter in The Elements is a political passion (or sign of a passion). Hobbes advances a political theory of laughter in The Elements of Law.

Hobbes returns to laughter in Chapter VI of Leviathan where he describes laughter as a bodily motion accompanying the passion of sudden glory:

Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called Laughter; and is caused either by some sudden act of their own, that pleaseth them; or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. (Hobbes 2012, 88)

One year earlier Hobbes had advanced a similar formulation in a fragment titled “Of Passions”: “sudden imagination of a mans owne abilitie, is the passion that moves laughter” (Skinner 2002b, 148). Hobbes in this period clearly prefers the thesis that laughter only signifies the passion of sudden glory, and he makes no mention of the “passion of laughter” in Leviathan. However, close attention to the structure of Chapter VI suggests that Hobbes refuses to completely abandon the notion that laughter is a passion. Laughter appears as an entry in the chapter’s long inventory of passions, and Hobbes employs capitalized typeface for laughter just like he does for the other passions. The undecidable status of laughter as a passion persists in Leviathan.

While Hobbes’s conception of laughter does not appear to change much in Leviathan, we find important modifications in how he understands glory and power, two themes at the heart of his theory. Whereas in The Elements all the passions derive from glory, in Leviathan glory is a species of the passion of joy (Hobbes 2012, 88). Hobbes no longer conceives of the passions (like joy) as radically dependent on how individuals locate themselves within networks of power relations. His notion of power reflects this change. In The Elements Hobbes describes power as analytically prior to glory and the passions, while in Leviathan power follows his analysis of the passions and is defined simply as the ability to obtain a future good (Hobbes 2012, 132). The increased focus on glory as joyful and power as instrumental de-emphasizes how laughter makes reference to and intervenes in a network of power relations, and it marks a deflation of laughter’s political significance. Rather than expressing a sense of superiority in relation to other individuals, laughter in Leviathan expresses more a private feeling of being able to act upon other people and things.

Hobbes analyzes laughter once more in Chapter XII of De Homine. This version of his theory features important and decisive changes. Here Hobbes understands laughter in terms of an individual’s self-image:

when the animal spirits are suddenly transported by the joy arising from any word, deed, or thought of one’s own that is seemly, or of a stranger that is unseemly, this passion is laughter . . . And universally the passion of laughter is sudden self-commendation resulting from a stranger’s unseemliness. (Hobbes 1991, 59)

Unlike in the earlier texts, Hobbes is unequivocal that laughter constitutes a passion. Hobbes also doubles down on the argument introduced in Leviathan that laughter derives originally from joy rather than glory. The decoupling of laughter and glory necessarily dissociates laughter from discussions of power. The universe in which laughter occurs and exerts effects shrinks dramatically in De Homine. No longer an issue of glory within a complex network of power relations, laughter instead constitutes a simple joy associated with an individual’s self-image.

The modifications Hobbes makes to his theory of laughter in De Homine serve to deflate laughter’s political significance. We can track this development in several ways. Most obviously, Hobbes dissociates laughter from the political themes of power and glory. Laughter concerns only an individual’s self-image rather than changes within networks of power. But perhaps more important is how laughter achieves unquestioned status as a passion in De Homine. Passions, according to Hobbes, belong to the study of natural philosophy, or the study of the motions of natural bodies. ³ Signs or manifestations of passions, however, reflect events that usually, but not always, follow these natural motions (Hobbes 1994c, 17–18; 2012, 44). For example, while “Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called Laughter,” laughter need not accompany all sudden glory (Hobbes 2012, 88). Laughter necessarily implies sudden glory, but sudden glory does not necessarily imply laughter (Ewin 2001, 38–39). Whether we treat laughter as a passion or as a sign of a passion determines how we understand an individual’s relation to and responsibility for laughter.

The dyad passions/signs of passions mirrors the natural/artificial dualism at the heart of Hobbes’s philosophical project (Hobbes 1991, 35; 1994a, 11–12; 2012, 16). According to Hobbes, man becomes a political animal when he creates or submits to an artificial body capable of compelling the actions of his natural body. “Politics” enters the picture only in the fraught interplay between man’s natural and artificial bodies—that is, at the intersection of what is necessary and possible in man. When Hobbes leaves laughter’s status as a passion uncertain in The Elements of Law and Leviathan, he invests laughter with political significance. Rather than constituting an entirely natural or entirely arbitrary reaction to sudden glory, laughter reflects an experience that requires an individual to negotiate the conflicting demands of a dual natural/artificial (i.e., political) existence. By insisting that laughter is a passion in De Homine, Hobbes dissolves this political question into a simple theory of man’s natural motions. For this reason (along with the dissociation of laughter from glory and power), De Homine contains no political theory of laughter.

While the basic thrust of Hobbes’s “superiority theory” never changes significantly, the politics of this theory shifts markedly throughout his texts. Depending on how Hobbes treats and arranges the concepts of the passions, glory, and power, laughter is either a political enactment that intervenes in and modifies relations of power (as in The Elements), or it is eliminated as a political issue altogether (as in De Homine). A particular type of political enactment becomes conceivable and controversial in Hobbes’s various accounts of laughter.

Hobbes’s Political Critique of Laughter

As others have suggested (Heyd 1982; Skinner 1996, 2002b), the conventional view that Hobbes advances a “superiority theory” of laughter suffers from a fatal flaw: on virtually every occasion Hobbes discusses laughter, he insists that individuals should avoid laughter because it betrays a lack of power. In this section, I explore why Hobbes objects to laughter as vainglorious. After reviewing his accounts of laughter and vainglory, I examine De Cive’s neglected treatment of laughter in light of scholarship investigating Hobbes’s laws of nature and the kind of authority Hobbes claims for himself in his texts. I argue that Hobbes instructs individuals to avoid laughter because sudden vainglory disrupts and undermines sovereign regimes of force.

Hobbes concludes his entry on laughter in The Elements by condemning laughter as vainglorious. He argues that laughter does not indicate actual power: “It is vain glory, and an argument of little worth, to think the infirmity of another, sufficient matter for his triumph” (Hobbes 1994c, 47). While glory, we recall, is the triumph of the mind proceeding from a conception of power, vainglory is glory that proceeds from a false or merely imagined conception of power: “Further, the fiction, which is also imagination, of actions done by ourselves, which never were done, is glorying; but because it begetteth no appetite nor endeavour to any further attempt, it is merely vain and unprofitable” (Hobbes 1994c, 41). Laughter is vainglorious because it constitutes glory that makes reference only to another’s inferiority rather than to an individual’s own power, and it leads to no deed beyond itself (Hobbes 1994c, 52). Hobbes repeats this criticism of laughter as vainglorious in Leviathan (Hobbes 2012, 88), De Homine (Hobbes 1991, 59), “The Answer to Sir William Davenant’s Preface before ‘Gondibert’” (Hobbes 1994d, 454–55), and a 1638 letter to Charles Cavendish (Hobbes 1983, 52).

Why does laughter’s sudden display of vainglory pose a problem for Hobbes? Several commentators claim that Hobbes criticizes laughter on moral grounds, pointing to occasions when he condemns laughter as not befitting a virtuous individual (e.g., in the “Answer to Davenant,” Hobbes 1994d, 454–55, Hobbes claims that “great persons . . . have not leisure enough to laugh”). Ewin (2001, 38–40) argues that Hobbes views laughter as morally suspect because one could instead sympathize with or pity a perceived inferior. Skinner (2002b, 175–76) understands Hobbes as proposing a “moral duty” to avoid laughter in favor of more magnanimous responses. Is Hobbes’s problem with laughter that it is unbecoming of the good man? In what follows I resist this interpretation and contend that Hobbes objects to laughter on political grounds. Demonstrating this requires turning to Hobbes’s neglected treatment of laughter in De Cive.

To my knowledge, there exist seven texts in which Hobbes examines laughter at any length. The first six are the sources I have quoted or cited thus far: (1) The Elements of Law, (2) Leviathan, (3) De Homine, (4) the “Answer to Davenant,” (5) the fragment “Of Passions,” and (6) the 1638 letter to Cavendish. Given such a small archive, it is difficult to explain how virtually every commentator on Hobbes’s theory of laughter has neglected his rich discussions of laughter in De Cive, the treatise on political philosophy second only in importance to Leviathan. ⁴ If Hobbes had analyzed laughter exclusively in his philosophy of man, then the argument that he offers a primarily moral critique of laughter might be compelling. But De Cive moves the discussion of laughter squarely onto the terrain of political philosophy.

Hobbes (1991, 110) opens De Cive by considering the Aristotelian thesis that man is “born fit for society.” Against Aristotle, Hobbes (1991, 111) argues that individuals seek only the benefits from life in society, which take the form of profits from business and honor from interactions with others. After noting that the profit motive alone cannot sustain society, Hobbes turns to the issue of honor. He explains that when individuals congregate, they do so only to inflate their reputations by feigning glory to one another. Laughter plays an important role in these interactions:

if [men meet] for pleasure and recreation of mind, every man is wont to please himself most with those things which stir up laughter, whence he may, according to the nature of that which is ridiculous, by comparison of another man’s defects and infirmities, pass the more current in his own opinion. And although this be sometimes innocent and without offense, yet it is manifest they are not so much delighted with the society, as their own vain glory. (Hobbes 1991, 111)

Laughter constitutes a public display of vainglory that generates the “greatest discords” among individuals (Hobbes 1991, 114). When John laughs at Sam, Sam must find a reason to laugh at Peter to protect his honor in the eyes of John. Peter must then do the same to a fourth person, and so on: “men must declare sometimes some mutual scorn and contempt, either by laughter, or by words, or by gesture, or some sign or other” (Hobbes 1991, 115). These interactions produce a dangerous atmosphere of fear and antagonism (Hobbes 1991, 113).

The story that follows is familiar to readers of Hobbes. Awash in public displays of vainglory and lacking a natural fitness for life in society, individuals muddle along in a miserable and dangerous condition of fear (Hobbes 1991, 118). The “fundamental Law of Nature” discoverable by reason instructs man to exit this state of nature and seek peace to the extent possible (Hobbes 1991, 123). This law serves as the foundation for a host of subsidiary laws that instruct individuals to covenant with one another and avoid antagonistic conduct. De Cive’s seventh law of nature is particularly significant for our purposes: “no man, either by deeds or words, countenance or laughter, do declare himself to hate or scorn another” (Hobbes 1991, 142–43). While the laws of nature in The Elements and Leviathan proscribe vainglory and countenances that provoke antagonism (Hobbes 1994b, 101; 2012, 234), Hobbes identifies laughter by name only in De Cive. According to De Cive, laughter undermines social peace, and it violates the Law of Nature.

How, exactly, does the Law of Nature obligate individuals? Here we encounter an old and complex debate. On the one hand, Hobbes describes the laws of nature as simple maxims of prudential reason designed to help an individual preserve his or her life:

A Law Of Nature, (Lex Naturalis,) is a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same. (Hobbes 2012, 198; see also Hobbes 1991, 123)

The fundamental Law of Nature instructs one to seek peace because reason dictates that peace is necessary for self-preservation. Along the same lines, De Cive’s seventh law of nature forbids laughter because laughter increases the risk of social discord and danger.

But the laws of nature also function in an additional way. Besides constituting prudential maxims, Hobbes describes these laws as prescribing moral obligations: “The laws of nature . . . are the sum of moral philosophy.” (Hobbes 1991, 152; see also Hobbes 2012, 242). It is thus morally right to seek peace (and avoid laughter). As Oakeshott (1991, 309) notes, a subtle “change of idiom” marks Hobbes’s analysis: “The conditions of peace, first offered to us as rational theorems concerning the nature of shameful-death-avoiding conduct (that is, as a piece of prudential wisdom), now appear as moral obligation.” Importantly, the laws of nature only morally obligate endeavors in the state of nature. Blindly conforming one’s actions to these laws in the absence of an enforcement mechanism that compels universal obedience might inadvertently increase danger to one’s life. Hobbes writes, “The Lawes of Nature oblige in foro interno; that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place: but in foro externo; that is, to the putting them in act, not alwayes” (Hobbes 2012, 240; see also Hobbes 1991, 149). With this stipulation in place, Hobbes argues that it is just for an individual to endeavor to obey the laws of nature: “He that endeavoureth their performance, fulfilleth them; and he that fulfilleth the Law, is Just” (Hobbes 2012, 240; see also Hobbes 1991, 150). The laws of nature morally obligate an individual’s endeavors in the state of nature.

The mechanism by which Hobbes’s laws of nature transform from simple prudential maxims into full-blown moral obligations remains enigmatic. Many have described how Hobbes struggled with the challenge posed by moral skepticism (Flathman 2002; Skinner 2002a; Tuck 1989, 1996). Because private passions influence the names an individual assigns to conceptions, the values “good” and “evil” signify nothing more than idiosyncratic appetites and aversions—that is, what is prudentially good for particular individuals (Hobbes 1994c, 25–26; 2012, 62). The establishment of a rigorous moral philosophy appears to be impossible because “scarce two men” can agree “what is to be called good, and what evil” (Hobbes 1994c, 26; see also Hobbes 1991, 47; 2012, 196). Hobbes attempts to solve this problem by identifying a value that all individuals necessarily hold to be prudentially good. Social peace fits the bill because everyone reasons that the warlike state of nature endangers his or her life. In De Cive, Hobbes explains how prudential calculations morph into moral obligations:

They are, therefore, so long in the state of war, as by reason of the diversity of the present appetites, they mete good and evil by diverse measures. All men easily acknowledge this state, as long as they are in it, to be evil, and by consequence that peace is good. They therefore who could not agree concerning a present, do agree concerning a future good; which indeed is a work of reason . . . Reason, declaring peace to be good, it follows by the same reason, that all the necessary means to peace be good also; and therefore that modesty, equity, trust, humanity, mercy (which we have demonstrated to be necessary to peace), are good manners or habits, that is, virtues. The law therefore, in the means to peace, commands also good manners, or the practice of virtue; and therefore it is called moral. (Hobbes 1991, 150–51; see also Hobbes 2012, 242)

The laws of nature constitute moral obligations because the prudential reason of all dictates that peace is good. Peace becomes the foundation of Hobbesian moral philosophy and the index of true moral virtue. Because the laws of nature prescribe moral duties, an individual has a moral obligation to endeavor to avoid laughter.

Understanding the laws of nature as moral obligations in this way does not resolve the core skeptical problem, however. While everyone may agree that pursuing peace is prudentially good (a questionable thesis given Hobbes’s skeptical starting point), agreement on the meaning of peace remains absent. Skinner (2002a, 138) notes how the skeptical challenge has not been overcome because every individual still possesses an idiosyncratic understanding of what “peace” requires: “the contention that a given action will in fact conduce to peace remains a judgment. Who, then, shall be judge?” (see also Tuck 1996, 189). An idiosyncratic determination about the meaning of peace cannot generate a moral obligation, and individuals remain without a standard for knowing when their endeavors violate the Law of Nature.

Hobbes turns to politics for a solution. He argues that in order to be effective as moral obligations, the laws of nature require a sovereign power who defines the meaning of peace: “For in the differences of private men, to declare, what is Equity, what is Justice, and what is morall Vertue, and to make [the laws of nature] binding, there is need of the Ordinances of Soveraign Power” (Hobbes 2012, 418). While Hobbes in this quotation is almost certainly describing how the laws of nature require a sovereign to obligate in foro externo (i.e., in action), the same logic also applies to in foro interno obligations (i.e., to endeavors). The laws of nature cannot impose meaningful moral obligations on individuals in the absence of a fixed definition of peace. Hobbes overcomes moral skepticism by silencing all the disagreeing voices except for one: “peace” means and requires whatever the sovereign says it does (Hobbes 2012, 272). But if this is the case and the laws of nature constitute in foro interno moral obligations only in the presence of a sovereign power, then they presuppose what has supposedly yet to occur: an exit from the state of nature. The obvious question at this point is: who is the sovereign that makes Hobbes’s laws of nature morally obligatory?

Several scholars explore the complex issue of the kind of authority Hobbes claims for himself in his texts (Kahn 1985; Martel 2007; Strong 1993). James Martel poses the question in the following terms: if, as Hobbes insists, all authority originates in the sovereign, by what authority does Hobbes write about sovereignty? “Hobbes seems to be appropriating the sovereign ‘last word’ even while appearing to defer to that sovereign authority. He seems to be surrendering to something that he is in the process of creating or authoring” (Martel 2007, 45). Following Martel on this point, I argue that Hobbes performs the office of political sovereign in his accounts of the laws of nature. That is, beyond merely describing the origin of sovereignty, Hobbes himself performs the sovereign duty of defining what counts as morally good and evil with the hope of dispelling dangerous moral disagreement. The laws of nature constitute moral obligations because Hobbes, as sovereign, says so. We find traces of Hobbes’s sovereign operation in his questionable claim that the prudential reason of all dictates that peace is good (Hobbes 1991, 150–51; see also Hobbes 2012, 242). Peace constitutes an undisputed moral value only in the presence of sovereignty (i.e., in the presence of an authority whose raison d’être is the cessation of moral disagreement). In his accounts of the laws of nature, Hobbes performs the image of sovereignty he seeks to bestow on the political and philosophical tradition.

Whether or not this textual performance of sovereignty is intentional (perhaps to illustrate the task facing prospective political sovereigns), it is clear that we cannot interpret Hobbes’s laws of nature (including his proscription against laughter) as a simple inventory of natural reason’s dictates. These moral laws are grounded in a more fundamental political interest in social peace and political decision about what peace requires; they are grounded, in other words, in a performance of sovereignty. Hobbesian moral philosophy is, from start to finish, a function of Hobbesian politics. ⁵

We can now see that Hobbes objects to laughter on political grounds in De Cive and elsewhere. Laughter threatens the sovereign interest in social peace. How, exactly, does it do this? Recall that laughter, as vainglorious, makes a claim of superiority that is undermined through its very performance. Spectators know not to interpret laughter as a trustworthy sign of an individual’s power. The problem, however, is that the laughing individual actually feels superior. When an individual laughs, an incongruity arises between his or her own conception of power and spectators’ (more accurate) assessments of the situation. This incongruity throws a wrench into the otherwise mundane processes by which individuals decipher relations of power among themselves (p. 2), and it increases the risk of dangerous misrecognitions and miscalculations by all involved. Laughter in Hobbes constitutes a counter-sovereign political enactment because it intervenes in prevailing regimes of force merely by disrupting and confusing the relations of power that compose them (rather than by establishing new regimes of force). Hobbes objects to laughter because it proliferates political confusion, uncertainty, and risk.

The Laughing Body Politic

In this section, I bring Hobbes’s theory of laughter into conversation with his more familiar account of sovereignty to demonstrate that the counter-sovereign logic of laughter operates at a key moment in his political philosophy. Reconsidering the role of sovereignty in Hobbes along these lines suggests a way to enlist Hobbes and his accounts of laughter on behalf of democratic theory.

Hobbes conceives of “politics” as a body. In contradistinction to man’s natural body, the political body (or “body politic”) is an artificial body that individuals create (or find themselves subject to via conquest) by covenanting with one another (Hobbes 1991, 35; 1994b, 122; 2012, 130). The body politic authorizes a sovereign individual or assembly to “beare their Person” to ensure its benefit and protection (Hobbes 2012, 260). Hobbes spares no opportunity to emphasize the degree of power that the body politic grants a sovereign. Members of a body politic “conferre all their power and strength upon” the sovereign (Hobbes 2012, 260); sovereignty is “so unlimited a Power” and “as great, as possibly men can be imagined to make it” (Hobbes 2012, 320; see also Hobbes 1991, 180–81). The verse above the sovereign’s head on the frontispiece of Leviathan evinces this view: “There is no power on earth that can be compared to him” (Hobbes 1985, 71). According to Hobbes, individuals inhabit a political body when they grant a sovereign absolute power to compel their obedience.

Several commentators have raised doubts about the degree of power we can actually attribute to the Hobbesian sovereign. Wolin (2004, 254–55) points out that sovereignty in Hobbes is “hollow” and consists of nothing more than a mutual agreement among subjects to not resist the sovereign’s will. The individual or assembly that is appointed sovereign does not receive any new power from the body politic; the sovereign simply retains the natural right to all people and things that everyone else relinquishes (Hobbes 1994b, 123). The sovereign’s efficacy thus depends on the willingness of subjects to honor their promises to not interfere. Connolly, meanwhile, contends that sovereignty requires subjects to believe in the binding force of natural reason and its commandment of obedience. If subjects begin to doubt or contest this faith, the system’s “principle of sovereignty would be shattered. Order would be based upon command, but sovereign commands would lack the intrinsic, obligatory status Hobbes invested in them” (Connolly 1993, 39). Finally, Martel (2007, 56) emphasizes how the efficacy of sovereign power requires that subjects believe in the person of the sovereign himself: “the sovereign is an ‘object of our Faith’; it really does matter how we think about it; without a sense of trust and ‘taking their word,’ sovereign authority disappears.” Wolin, Connolly, and Martel demonstrate how the power of Hobbesian sovereignty depends crucially on the good behavior and faith of subjects.

I would now like to bring this discussion of Hobbes’s political philosophy into conversation with the reading of his theory of laughter developed above. While Hobbes’s accounts of laughter all describe the laughing natural body, I argue that it is possible to understand the political body as laughing as well. The individuals who establish a body politic perform a counter-sovereign political enactment highly analogous to that performed by the laughing individual. The Hobbesian body politic is a laughing body politic for three reasons.

First, laughter and the establishment of a body politic share a distinctive temporality. The time of laughter is irreducibly sudden, instantaneous, and singular. Laughter in Hobbes is the passion (or sign of the passion) of sudden glory, and it occurs in quick “Grimaces” (Hobbes 2012, 88) or “distortion[s] of the countenance” (Hobbes 1994b, 45). An individual laughs at a given object only once: “Almost nothing is laughed at again and again by the same people” (Hobbes 1991, 59; see also Hobbes 1994c, 45–46). The covenant founding a body politic shares this temporality. The covenant suddenly and decisively changes the political situation in the state of nature. At one moment, there are only isolated, warring individuals; in the next, there is a “reall Unitie of them all” (Hobbes 2012, 260). The covenant establishes a body politic the instant it is agreed to, and the covenant occurs exactly once. (The individuals who institute a body politic are bound to it forever—or until sovereign protection ends; Hobbes 2012, 264.) Individual laughter and the establishment of a body politic are both sudden, instantaneous, and singular political enactments.

Second, these two political enactments both reflect instances of “glorying” that modify regimes of force. We have seen how laughter expresses a sense of individual glory that modifies the prevailing network of power relations (p. 2). Those who establish a body politic also experience glory as the quality of life in a commonwealth greatly exceeds that in the state of nature. As Hobbes (2012, 202) notes, an individual enters a covenant only because it provides “some Good to himselfe.” One can almost hear Hobbes laughing derisively at critics who insist that individuals are better off in the state of nature:

But a man may here object, that the Condition of Subjects is very miserable . . . not considering that the estate of Man can never be without some incommodity or other; and that the greatest, that in any forme of Government can possibly happen to the people in generall, is scarce sensible, in respect of the miseries, and horrible calamities, that accompany a Civill Warre; or that dissolute condition of masterlesse men. (Hobbes 2012, 282)

Just like laughter, the “glorious” political enactment of instituting a body politic modifies prevailing power relations. Individuals render themselves powerless with respect to the sovereign they authorize, and they enter into an asymmetrical relation of war with those outside the commonwealth (Hobbes 2012, 268). The establishment of a body politic constitutes a political enactment akin to the “glorying” involved in laughter.

Recall, however, that laughter expresses a sense of superiority incommensurate with one’s actual power, and it conduces to no end beyond disrupting and confusing relations of power (p. 6). This vainglorious quality is the third and most significant parallel between individual laughter and the formation of a body politic. The arguments advanced by Wolin, Connolly, and Martel about the precarity of sovereign power in Hobbes suggest that the individuals who establish a body politic perform a vain political enactment. The body politic claims a degree of power that the sovereign it authorizes can never hope to exercise. There are simply too many sites of sovereign vulnerability to take Hobbes’s claims about the sovereign’s “unlimited” power as an accurate assessment of the situation. Hobbes’s declarations about sovereign omnipotence betray the vanity involved in the covenant. Like the laughing individual, those who establish a body politic intervene in regimes of force not by advancing a valid claim of superiority over those regimes but rather by disrupting and confusing prevailing relations of power. To be certain, such disruptions and confusions can exert significant pacifying effects in line with the aims of sovereignty, but they remain qualitatively distinct from the sovereign consolidation of power touted by Hobbes.

To summarize: the establishment of a Hobbesian body politic involves a sudden expression of vainglory analogous to that involved in individual laughter, and the commonwealth consequently constitutes a laughing body politic at the moment of its foundation. Interpreting the pivotal moment of Hobbes’s political philosophy through the lens of his theory of laughter has yielded an unexpected result. If the Hobbesian body politic is a laughing body politic and laughter is a counter-sovereign political enactment, then the establishment of sovereign power in Hobbes constitutes an enactment of counter-sovereignty. As much as the individuals who form a body politic aim to authorize an omnipotent sovereign who secures permanent social peace, their covenant releases an energy akin to laughter that undermines this intention. That is, the body politic’s attempt to establish sovereignty (1) itself proceeds by suddenly disrupting and confusing power relations and (2) never makes good on its claim to authorize an unlimited and permanent power. Attending to the politics of Hobbes’s theory of laughter reveals the counter-sovereign underbelly of his sovereign politics as well as the latter’s inability to dispel the threat of disruption constantly haunting it; it discloses, in short, the counter-sovereign presuppositions and possibilities of Hobbes’s political philosophy. The following section explores how this reading of Hobbes helps elucidate laughter’s role in contemporary politics.

The Laughing Body Politic and Democratic Politics

Sheldon Wolin (1994) argues that democracy is not a particular form of government but rather a “fugitive,” rebellious moment in which ordinary citizens claim the right to determine how to conduct their lives in common. He writes that “democracy is not about where the political is located but how it is experienced” (Wolin 1994, 18). I conclude this article by contending that the analogy of a “laughing body politic” developed above can be deployed as a concept that illuminates one way in which democracy and the political are experienced today. To make this argument, I examine three recent episodes where democratic, counter-sovereign bodies form through the experience of collective laughter.

Late-night political satire programs like The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Saturday Night Live generate laughing bodies politic. Viewers of these programs share laughter at elite political, economic, and media figures and institutions. They do so either in real time or as video clips are shared and reposted online. According to Hobbes’s theory, these communities of laughter experience and express vainglory, or an illusory and ultimately idle sense of power over the objects of their laughter. Critics likewise lament that this laughter fails as a democratic strategy. For example, in a recent piece titled “Jon Stewart Is Not Enough,” author Thomas Frank (2014) asks, “What does it do to our larger political vision when we confine our political thinking to the crafting of hilarious put-downs of Tea Partiers and right-wing reality-doubters?” (see also Hart and Hartelius 2007). Although Frank and others are certainly correct that laughter is not all that is needed in democratic politics, the preceding analysis shows that laughter is politically efficacious precisely because of its idle, vainglorious quality. When an audience laughs at elite figures and institutions, it publicly expresses an illusory sense of power that disrupts and confuses the processes by which power relations are deciphered on a broader social scale (p. 6). Powerful figures and institutions feel threatened because they can no longer safely count on those who laugh at them to maintain ordinary levels of deference and submission. If Wolin is correct that democracy is a rebellious moment in which ordinary citizens assert their political potentialities, then the laughing bodies politic generated by late-night satire programs perform democratic political enactments. While Hobbes and critics like Frank identify sudden vainglory as the danger laughter poses to politics, I consider it to be the source of laughter’s democratic promise.

A recent event in Turkey provides another example of a laughing body politic that exerts democratic effects. In a July 2014 speech decrying “moral decay,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç declared that “a woman should be chaste . . . She should not laugh in public” (Letsch 2014). He continued, “[A woman] should not laugh loudly in front of all the world and should preserve her decency at all times” (Agence France-Presse 2014). Thousands of Turkish women responded to Arinç’s comments by posting photos and videos of themselves laughing in public on social media sites like Twitter (Letsch 2014). These women spontaneously formed a laughing body politic that defied Arinç’s proscription against women’s laughter while making Arinç the target of their laughter. As with the laughter generated by late-night satire programs, this laughing body politic dissipated as quickly as it formed and did not accomplish anything “tangible” (e.g., it did not lobby for new laws against domestic violence, a major issue in Turkey; Letsch 2014). However, through collective laughter, Turkish women constituted a demos that made itself seen and heard, to quote Arinç, “in front of all the world.” They claimed a political voice that rendered the cultural conservative narrative about women’s role in Turkish society newly vulnerable.

A third example illustrates the counter-sovereign and democratic possibilities of collective laughter in a slightly more unusual way. In the mid-2000s, a group of U.K. and European activists opposed to global trade policies, the Iraq War, and the “war on terror” formed the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, or CIRCA (Klepto 2004; Routledge 2012). CIRCA’s most notable protest activity occurred at the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland. The group aimed to undermine dominant military and security discourses by depicting the latter in the most absurd form imaginable. “Clownbattants” donned traditional military fatigues decorated with colorful wigs, face paint, and rubber noses, and they armed themselves with feather dusters and water pistols. According to Paul Routledge, a scholar of social movements and CIRCA participant, the clown army generated complex, vibrant scenes of laughter at otherwise tense protest sites (Routledge 2012). The clowns shared laughter at one another’s costumes and routines, and they frustrated police management of the protests in comedic ways. Routledge (2012, 446) describes how

the tactic of “staying in clown” frustrates police management protocols, since they are dependent upon negotiating with protestors (i.e., talking sense to them), rather than dealing with a rebel clown who while sensitive, acts nonsensically. An example of this occurs when a police officer approaches a group of rebel clowns and asks them who is in charge. Rebel clown logic necessitates each clown to point in a different direction (including up and down), to no-one in particular . . . It subverts the protocols of policing.

Some officers could not help themselves from laughing, and the more “serious” protesters and the onlooking public also found themselves laughing at (or perhaps with) the clown army (Routledge 2012, 443–47). CIRCA, in brief, prompted the formation of a laughing body politic composed of otherwise disparate groups of protesters, police officers, and spectators (Routledge 2012, 443). This shared laughter resisted the more antagonistic modes of relation encouraged by dominant military and security discourses. The CIRCA protests demonstrate how collective laughter can “generate bonds of solidarity” (Routledge 2012, 441) that disrupt prevailing regimes of force and invite alternative forms of political association.

The masses who gather on the National Mall to laugh at American politics, the audiences of late-night political satire programs, the Turkish women who refuse to stifle their laughter, and those who participate in and witness an army of protesting clowns all constitute laughing bodies politic that illustrate how collective laughter can generate a demos—however fugitive—that disrupts sovereign regimes of force. Those who laugh together can form a demos (in Wolin’s sense) because laughter’s sudden expression of vainglory lays claim to a degree of collective power not previously recognized by others. Attending to the politics of Hobbes’s theory of laughter reveals the unexpected counter-sovereign dimensions of his thought and the democratic possibilities of collective laughter. To be certain, Hobbes’s theory cannot explain all instances of laughter, and it fails to account for how laughter often reinforces forms of sovereignty (e.g., racist and sexist jokes). However, the reading of Hobbes advanced in this article shows that his theory illuminates a crucial dimension of the politics of laughter, namely, laughter’s capacity to undermine sovereign regimes of force, and it suggests that one task for democratic politics today may be to ensure that political bodies—especially the Hobbesian ones—keep laughing.