Austerity and the Rise of Radical Comedy

Abstract

This chapter picks up previous strands from the ‘new satire’ to argue that the global financial crisis and the rise of austerity politics provided fertile ground for the return of ‘radical comedy’. Here the work of Russell Brand and Stewart Lee is discussed in terms of its ability to question and subvert the dominant mode of market agency: the neoliberal subject. For Brand, this is an opportunity to engage in wider themes of radical democracy, whereas Lee provides a more nuanced deconstruction of our place in global capital/ media flows.