Perilous laughter: Examples from Yuendumu, Central Australia

Against the background of popularisations of Freud's theory of laughter as anxiety release and Lustgewinn (pleasure gain), this paper presents some ethnographic examples of laughter from Yuendumu, central Australia, in which weakness and fear are considered to originate from laughter. Analysing some of the specific conceptual links that Warlpiri people make between laughter and weakness on the one hand, and between laughter and fear on the other, the paper makes a case for recognising both socio-culturally hyper- and hypocognised aspects of laughter.