Shaun May

In my thesis, I want to use the work of Heidegger, specifically his ‘fundamental ontology’, to build a phenomenology of two areas of humour. First, the comic failure (of body and objects) and second, anthropomorphic humour.

In my view, when I skillfully manipulate an object it becomes an extension of my being. The phenomena is not that I hold a ‘thing’ which I use to cut the paper, but simply that I cut the paper. Acknowledging this is essential to understanding both object manipulation (scissors and puppets) as well as object failure. When the tool fails me it suddenly emerges as salient - an emergence which is at the heart of much comic failure. By contrasting the failed object with the failed body, and the humanlike object with the humanlike animal, I hope to unpick the ways in which the disclosure of equipmentality, animality and the organismic can be comical.

Profile

Shaun’s background is theatre and philosophy, and throughout his academic career he has tried to bring the two disciplines into fruitful dialogue with each other.

He is the Artistic Director of Square Moon Theatre, a company with which he has written and directed several productions. Additionally, he worked with the Rare Theatricall on the final production of their Leverhulme Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music and with The Dummy Company on several productions including a residency at Cambridge University. As a producer he specialises in site-specific work, with his credits including Flatpack, an opera in Ikea.

Shaun is one of the editors of Rhizome, an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional performance research website, and is a peer-reviewer for Platform, a postgraduate journal based at Royal Holloway.

He is the recipient of the Beatrice Lillie Scholarship.

For more information on his practice and research, visit www.shaunmay.co.uk

Publications

2011 (forthcoming) Equipmentality, Fundamental Ontology and the ‘Humour of the Human’, Who Do We Think We Are?, Royal Holloway University of London

2010 What Jokebots Can’t Do: A Critique of Computational Humour Theory, New Voices, Georgia State University

2010 Autism and the Spectrum of Worldhood Poverty: A Mirror Neuron Perspective, 21st Century Heidegger, University College Dublin