New books by David Le Breton
Two new books by David Le Breton, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Strasbourg, and USIAS Chair of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds, entitled Rire : une anthropologie du rieur. He is co-writer of L’Homme douloureux (with Guy Simonnet et Bernard Laurent).
About Rire : une anthropologie du rire
Who has never laughed in their life? Even if it is involuntary, this fleeting turmoil that affects all men and women is, along with tears, intangible proof that we are well connected emotionally in very specific ways.
David Le Breton, in a continuation of his work on the anthropology of the body, here tackles the “body of laughter” of which we are often the victims. He shows that it is something that is part of both historical moments and our personal history and that it also forms a much needed interlude in our daily lives that have become complex and cumbersome. It is “through laughter that the world becomes once again a place that is dedicated to play, a sacred area, and not a place of work” the poet Octavio Paz assures us, and that is what David Le Breton shows us in his masterful demonstration which leaves out nothing that involves laughter.
The law of laughter turns irony, derision, Oriental laughter, humour, lewd folklore and even text messages into things that amuse us or can be made fun of in our different smiling societies.
About L’Homme douloureux
From the different perspectives of three experts - a neurobiologist (Guy Simonnet), a pain management specialist (Bernard Laurent) and an anthropologist (Breton David) - this book shows that pain does not develop in an amnesiac brain, but within a nervous system shaped by the singular past and experiences of each individual.
That is why, without neglecting the considerable progress of biomedicine and neuroscience, it is urgent to make sure that the patient is at the heart of the phenomenon of pain.
