Humour and the public sphere
Humour and the public sphere

Summary/Abstract: In this article, which serves as an introduction to a special issue on humour and the publicsphere, we argue that humour has become increasingly central to public discourse in the 21stcentury, and that this necessitates a rethinking of the relationship between humour and thepublic sphere in contemporary democracies. In the article, we bring together the dispersedacademic literature on humour and the public sphere, and show how humour and comedyscholars have engaged with the long-standing academic debate around this contested concept,which was coined by Jürgen Habermas in 1962. We also introduce the eleven contributions tothis special issue and situate them within this ongoing debate.

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