Engl364 - Blog 6 - Virno - Jokes and Innovative Action
The idea that Paolo Virno seems to focus on is that of rules and their inherent meaning which is inferred as opposed to truly defined. He gives the example of standing at a street sign and interpreting its meaning based on all previous knowledge by which he could use to understand what it was for and not necessarily interpret directly from it of itself. He appears to be saying that rules are ambiguous in any given case in that they can be applied differently and still maintain some form of understanding. An example of this could be in seen in linguistics, evident especially in words that contain more than one meaning, words that are spelt the same but pronounced differently (i.e.: wind, as in ‘the wind blew’ and wind, as in ‘wind up your watch’) and vice versa (i.e.: there and their). This idea is also not limited to just words but can be demonstrated through anything ranging from sports to religion. Through this theory he writes about the greatest interpreter of rules or rather the transformation of forms in order to extract different meanings, this being the joke. The idea of the joke is that it itself sits in a “no-man’s-land”, it is subject to its own form and context and generally intentionally inverts or contradicts itself entirely for its own purpose, which is precisely to create dilemmas through its application. Thus it seems to simultaneously invert and comply with rules, in that it is changing the commonly perceived rule, but complying with its own. Within all this wordiness seems to lie the simple idea of things not always having one simple meaning of which it can be universally applied. There seems to be more of a constant development in what is being able to be interpreted within any given idea, item or situation.














