This book interrogates the various receptions of the comic through a quantitative study of 210 individuals and in-depth interviews with 36 laughers whose diversity is such that the impossibility of attributing an unequivocal social or political meaning to laughter rears its head. The act of bursting into laughter is traced over the long-term of an astutely reconstructed sociological biography.
Laure Flandrin, a graduate of the École normale supérieure in Lyon, holds an agrégation in social science, and a doctorate in sociology. She is a lecturer at the École centrale in Lyon.