The World as Farce

Abstract

This chapter proposes an interdisciplinary introduction to the notion of the political world as farce. More exactly, it advances the argument that, despite experiencing the world as a joke of cosmic proportions, an individual can still create meaning even in the most meaningless conditions (concentration camps, totalitarian societies and the like). The paper traces the presence of the topic in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo and discusses the particular case of Milan Kundera, for whom the historical world appears as nothing but a cruel joke.