Virno: The Joke and Rule

The relationship between the mind and language, biology, or politics work at every level of analysis in Virno's Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation.  The human decision in the systems of rules that govern the institutions of law and language create a "state of exception" (17) to the rule, allow for innovation, and enable "contingent application[s]" (117) or "concrete actions" (39) to occur outside of what is collectively considered the norm.  Virno writes that the "concept of regularity [the common behaviour of humankind] indicates the threshold at which the language grafts itself repeatedly onto prelinguistic drives and reorganizes them profoundly” (34).  The threshold, alternately, for chaos (the place of action and innovation, the state of exception) is the human decision that results in the application of the rule (in law) and the notion of the "decree" (89) in language.  “In contrast to a law (nómos), a decree (pséphisma) concerns a circumscribed event which has limited duration in time” (89) and is subject to phrónesis: knowing what to do in a given situation; "the practical know-how and the sense of proportion that guide those who act without a safety net in the presence of their equals” (73).  This reasoning--embedded in language and human experience--leads to Virno's logic of the joke: "Only in a decree does the ‘just mean’ (to meson, the behavior appropriate to a specific circumstance), far from presupposing its own extremes (excess and defect), actually create them or make possible their definition. Every joke that hits its target has something of this pséphisma in it” (89).  A joke enacts both the principles of known language and common experience (which is based on regularity or "the common behaviour of humankind" (33-34))--the rules, as such--"and the application of the principle" (89), the human decision that keeps Virno's system open and innovative even as the deciders in the system are subject to the rules and common behaviours that make innovation possible--all of which articulates the concept of chôra.  The formal structure of the joke is therefore an image of thought that breaks with routine. I tried to diagram this dynamic in the image below (the space of application/decision is indicated by the black space above the line that is identified as the rule).  It is difficult to represent all of these factors occurring simultaneosly, but I think Virno's whole system is a space of contingent becoming (chôra):

The joke, Virno states, draws from species-specific norms (regularity) which are articulated through language.  The joke disrupts these norms by enacting a moment of decree using phrónesis (rooted in regularity) and breaking through known structures (of language, action, routine) into something new that is only bounded by the articulation of its own expression before the space in time closes and reverts back to the norm.  This space of unbounded articulation--laughter, for example, a space outside routine, or creativity--is (I think) the ultimate definition of chôra in electracy.

Insight exists on the condition that the appropriate norm is enunciated; but the appropriate norm exists on the condition that there is insight. This circularity, always experienced anew by the person who acts by speaking, is the mental equivalent of the decree: in both cases, the unit of measure is itself measured precisely by that which it measures. (Virno, 90)