A life may be tragic; it may be comic; or, it may be tragic and comic, what, perhaps, can be referred to as tragicomic. But what do these determinations of human existence, and its treatment in works of art, mean? What makes a thing tragic or comic, or tragic and comic? Is existence fundamentally a thing over which one weeps or laughs? And what does it mean if one does not know if what one ought to laugh or cry, feel sadness or joy? Is Modernity tragic, comic or tragicomic? And what does this tell us about who we are?

The seminar will approach these questions through both works of art generally conceived, and theoretical texts that will allow us to conceptualize not only the difference but the vertiginous intersection between the tragic and the comic, tears and laughter. We will explore the ways in which the tragic and comic are both responses to life’s horror, and the horror of being an animal incapable of squaring what is with its sense of what ought to be.  The discrepancy between being and appearance, signs and their signification serve to situate an animal that is tragic and comic.