讽刺作为安全阀:超越错误的隐喻

D. Declercq, Chihab El Khachab
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引用次数: 1

摘要

安全阀隐喻在讽刺文学研究中无处不在,它通常暗示,尽管讽刺文学似乎有意颠覆政治秩序,但它实际上具有意想不到的保守效果,维持了现状。尽管先前有对安全阀理论的批评,这些批评集中在其经验预测的不足或幽默相关救济理论的理论基础的缺陷上,但这个比喻仍然被普遍使用-并且继续模糊我们对讽刺的政治影响的理解。幽默研究中一直被忽视的是隐喻本身的根本错误。我们认为,将讽刺作品与安全阀进行比较总是意味着对该类型的推理是错误的,因为安全阀的机械功能无法在信息上映射到讽刺作品的政治效果。因此,安全阀的比喻是有问题的不透明(因为它的实际含义是不清楚的)和弹性(因为它意味着任何人想要它的意思)。这个比喻并不能说明讽刺作品是如何在专制政治背景下发挥作用的,比如埃及,原则上,它应该作为一块肥沃的土壤,发挥其所谓的安全阀的作用。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
Satire as safety valve: moving beyond a mistaken metaphor
Abstract The safety valve metaphor is ubiquitous in scholarship on satire and usually implies that, although the genre seems intent on upsetting the political order, it really has unintended conservative effects which maintain the status quo. Although there is previous criticism of the safety valve theory, which focuses on the inadequacy of its empirical predictions or the flawed theoretical foundations of the associated relief theory of humor, the metaphor remains in common use – and continues to obscure our understanding of satire’s political effects. What remains overlooked in humor studies is the fundamental mistakenness of the metaphor itself. We argue that comparing satire to a safety valve always implies a reasoning about the genre which is mistaken because the mechanistic function of a safety valve cannot be informatively mapped onto the political effects of satire. As a result, the safety valve metaphor is problematically opaque (because its actual meaning is unclear) and elastic (because it means whatever anyone wants it to mean). The metaphor fails to elucidate how satire works even in authoritarian political contexts, like Egypt, which should, in principle, act as a fertile ground for its purported function as a safety valve.
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