In order for us to introduce the Unthought to our public policy topic and to our project of thinking philosophy through the medium of the internet we must devise a strategy for doing so. One of the texts in the second part of our class, Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation, describes how we as humans, with the gift of verbal speech, have the ability to modify our "forms of life, of diverging from established rules and customs" (Virno p69). Virno tells us that the joke is the diagram of innovative action, the kind of action needed in order to change the state of equilibrium. In order for us to disrupt normatives (we can think of this as introducing the Unthought) we must take innovative action. According to Virno, the joke is the best way:
"[...] jokes can offer us an adequate empirical basis for understanding the way in which linguistic animals give evidence of an unexpected deviation from their normal praxis."(Virno p72)
"if it is true that jokes are the diagram of innovative action, we will have to suppose that their logical form, or fallacy, plays an important role, since it has to do with changing the very mode of living."(Virno p73)
So...through the joke (or at the very least, it's linguistic structures - our joke doesn't necessarily have to elicit laughter) we can generate the innovative act, the Unthought, or perhaps even (in order to lead into the next quote) a creative gesture.
"human creativity is actually subnormative: it manifests itself uniquely, that is, in the lateral inappropriate paths that happen to open themselves to us just as we are forcing ourselves to conform to a determined norm."(Virno p73)
So then, could we possibly understand The Joker as the most creative/innovative villain of all time?
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