“Don’t Think, Just Fart”: Noise and the Comic Value of Flatulence
“Don’t Think, Just Fart”: Noise and the Comic Value of Flatulence

Summary/Abstract: Starting from an elaboration on John Cage’s ominous sentence and on the stigmatization of humor in intellectual discourses, this article tries to understand the history of farts being considered funny in Western culture, with an emphasis on the role played by the sound of flatulence in this comical aspect. After all, if there isn’t something inherently funny about the sound of farts, a complex association between senses and social relations has nevertheless made fart-like sounds at best silly and at worst abominable to our ears. What does this mean for the imagination of fart-like sound effects, such as some of those produced by pedals and modular synthesizers? Isn’t the moralization of intestinal fermentation a constraint to the ways the human body can be used as a musical instrument? And how could an ANT approach enhance our knowledge of how farts “resound” socially?

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