Introduction

Introduction: Disability, Humour and Comedy It has increasingly become apparent that the study of around disability about more than the a certain discourse treats a certain object. As Rebecca Mallett has discussed, in more than one paper, critical theories of the representation of disability that unproblematically position non-disabled laughter at disability as the product, the symptom, and the cause of negative and discriminatory attitudes, fall short when they attempt to deal with the complexities of humour. As a response to this, scholars have searched elsewhere, with both Mallett and Tom Coogan jumping disciplinary boundaries in search of alternative critical approaches. For Coogan, this involved borrowing from theory (in areas such as the study of ethnic'Vracist humour) in order to examine the use of disability in satirical humour. The special issue further demonstrates the usefulness of demolishing such boundaries and acknowledging that studies of and studies of disability have much to offer, and to learn from, each other. This not to say that valuable work on disability and has not already been conducted, but that it may be time to substantially revisit this area in the light of recent theoretical developments in both areas of study.The timeliness of this re-examination apparent, for example, in the fit between David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder's concept of narrative prosthesis and incongruity theory, which, as Morreall points out, the current pre-eminent theory of humour. Narrative prosthesis identifies disability as the crutch upon which narratives lean for their representational power; incongruity theory, as Morreall explains, attributes to situations where something odd, abnormal or out of place, which we enjoy in some way (68). We highlighted this congruence in the CFP for the issue, but it represents just one of many productive junctures between disability and humour. Disability studies and studies share an intriguing slipperiness of terminology, and it tempting to think that studying both in tandem might allow us to get a firmer grasp on each. As Frances Hasler puts it, the big idea of British disability studies the social model of disability, which simply and clearly demonstrates the distinction (although open to further debate) between socially constructed disability and impairment. Humour studies would benefit from such attempts at clarity: as Carmen Moran has observed, humour a term with a multitude of meanings. She describes it as a cognitive style; a term for a stimulus (e.g. a joke) or the response to it (e.g. laughter); a term for complex interactions between individuals, or for a broader social process; a personality trait, or an inherent characteristic; an ability to generate a response, produce a response, or detect/observe the two. To add to the complexity, we also have the notion of to contend with; a notion which brings with it another set of interpretations and expectations.There have been two particularly notable volumes of work focusing on disability, humour, and/or comedy to date: a 1999 issue of Body and Society and a 2003 Disability Studies Quarterly symposium. The former comprises a paper by Ian Stronach and Julie Allan, and responses from notable disability studies figures such as Tom Shakespeare and Mairian Corker. Stronach and Allan argue that, while the latently comic structurally present in some situations involving disabled people, the comedy of these situations is phenomenally impossible because of a (supposed) on laughing at disabled people (39). Shakespeare refutes this, observing that Most people with visible impairments will have experienced people laughing directly at them. He argues that there no taboo - that our society, in fact revels in the shared joke about the outsider - but that people feel embarrassed about the violence which it perpetrates (48). …