Humour as Politics

Nicholas Holm is a lecturer in Media Studies at Massey University, New Zealand. He has written widely on the politics and aesthetics of popular culture, in particular contemporary humour. He is author of Advertising and Society: A Critical Introduction (2016).

• 1. Introduction: Living in Comic Times.- 2. Dissent in Jest: Humour in the Liberal Moment.- 3. Telling Jokes to Power: The (A)Political Work of Humour.- 4. Humour without Anaesthetic: The Discomfort of Reality Comedy.- 5. Humour without Pity: The Scandal of Provocative Humour.- 6. Humour without Reason: The Nonsense of Absurd Humour.- 7. All That is Solid Collapses into Giggles: Examining the Political Aesthetics of Contemporary Humour.- 8. Conclusion: The Last Laugh.

“Holm provides deeper insight into the political work of humor in general, observing how the logic of humor might affect our current thinking about liberalism, authority, and dissent. … It provides many conceptual insights and will be of interest to academics in humor studies. … This book is a good start at engaging with comic content from across a few countries in the Western world, through an interdisciplinary lens.” (Veena Raman, International Journal of Communication, Iss (12), 2018)