Although comedy and disability are linked time and again, particularly in the arts (in film comedies, for example), there has been practically no theoretically or methodologically founded exploration of this topic in cultural studies or social sciences, let alone a correlation between “disability and comedy” in the double perspective of literature (film, theatre) as a symbolic and social system. Issues on the potential of laughter and comedy and their ambivalence are of far-reaching significance, particularly for discussions on the topic of inclusion, because laughter can include and exclude.

If one regards laughter and comedy as human reactions to impairment of possibilities for action, this ambivalence immediately becomes clear: one laughs because and despite the disability; at and with the person affected. The person who is laughing fluctuates between contradictions in feeling, wishing, thinking, judging or wanting just as much as between conflicting communications and actions. Ambivalence creates, as an inner conflict, fear – the feeling of losing control and thereby states of stress which block decisions but do however make creative solutions possible.

These considerations create individual issues which will be discussed at four theoretical levels during the conference (individual examples, role of the body, normative aspects, comedy criticism). Two discussion rounds with people who have practical experience in this field will help to gauge the practical consequences of comedy in the field of disability. The speakers are representatives from social sciences, educational science, literary, culture, media, theatre and film studies.