Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with specific attention to how the aesthetic dimensions of a communicative act—particularly in densely layered and highly subjective communicative exchanges such as comedycomplicate and disrupt the “doing” and the “thing done” of any performative action or communicative exchange. It begins with a broader overview of the patterns that make up and repeat themselves in the ongoing parade of “comic controversies.” The book offers a performative model of analysis as a corrective. It aims to the experience of offense into a self-reflexive resource. The book traces the contextual shifts that have occurred in comedy, moving from the live audience engagement where audiences actively worked to shape meanings with comedians in the moment.