The Satisfactions of Satire: Neoliberalism, Populism, and the Dilemmas of Political Writing

Abstract This article sketches a history of satire during the neoliberal period, exploring novels from across the political spectrum by writers like Martin Amis, Christopher Buckley, Helen DeWitt, Ling Ma, and Colson Whitehead. It argues that a break in this history occurred sometime around 2008, when a crisis of neoliberal hegemony began, giving rise to the so-called populist explosion in 2016. It contends that these years witnessed a shift from familiar forms of postmodern cynicism to more emphatically oppositional forms of art and writing. However, in contrast to critics who celebrate satire as a mode of social critique, the article sides with satirists before and after this break who have expressed doubts about the political efficacy of their own work. Indeed, it suggests that the satisfactions of satire may in some cases be inversely proportional to its effectiveness. So it proposes that writers and critics may need to move beyond satire if they want to replace neoliberal culture with a better one.