Humoring the Republic: Marcel Schwob's Archeologies of Laughter and Journalistic Culture

Marcel Schwob’s Lettres parisiennes (Parisian Letters) reveal an engaged journalist who questions not only law and order, but also their perversion: “La France a été le pays de la liberté. Encore peu d’années, et la liberté ira se réfugier ailleurs. (…) Il faut qu’on y prenne garde; ce n’est pas une République où nous vivons” (France used to be the country of freedom. A few more years and liberty will seek refuge elsewhere. We must be vigilant; this is not a republic we live in) (Lettres parisiennes 1077). But it is not only through these “dépêches” that Schwob challenged established order. As literary critic and social scientist, in 1894, Schwob mockingly declared that laughter was bound to disappear. Schwob’s biologizing account of laughter reflects how the physical sciences became a lens to study social practices. His text, “Le Rire” (Laughter), presents itself as both scientific study and historical document. In “Le Rire,” Schwob satirically mobilizes the figure of archeology to articulate a questioning of artifacts and the discourses that would interpret them, as well as how inscriptions—in this case textual monuments—may relate to or make social reality. I will argue that Schwob’s “Le Rire” is a seminal text, and that his literary work, known for its extraordinary erudition, attests to a deployment of destabilizing journalistic humor where erudition, education and the new democratic orator may meet.