No greater foe? Rethinking emotion and humour, with particular attention to the relationship between audience members and stand-up comedians (5:1)

This article explores the relationship between stand-up comedians and their audiences focussing specifically on the question of emotion. Emotion’s relationship with humour is complicated, and current literature offers a number of contradictory models. Standup comedians’ emotional relationship with their audience is also complicated, and current literature does not explore this very thoroughly. The article argues that a fruitful way of examining both issues is through phenomenology, leading to a reexamination of these issues as performance.