A big congratulations to Lecturer in Film and Media Studies, Dr Dieter Declercq, who has recently published his new book, Satire, Comedy and Mental Health. Coping with the Limits of Critique (Emerald, 2021).
Dr Declercq gives an insight to his new book: “Satire, Comedy and Mental Health. Coping with the Limits of Critique is about coming to terms with our limitations in an imperfect world. Satire is a genre which critiques social injustice, but satirists typically also signal their limits to change the world. Of course, there are issues we can and should work hard to improve, but our world does seems sick beyond full recovery. This situation introduces challenges to our mental health. We may become so angry at the world – or so disappointed with it – that we become disconnected and ultimately even depressed. Conversely, we may want to devote every waking moment to improving the life of others – and become completely exhausted or consumed by obsessive guilt as we fail to reach this unattainable goal. The book identifies this issue as a fundamental tension between care of self and care for others. Fortunately, satire is a resource that we can use to help negotiate this tension between what we can and cannot do in the service of political critique. It offers aesthetic strategies like entertainment, humour and irony that can help us cope with – but not resign in – a political world that is never going to fully recover.”
Dr Dieter Declercq has been actively researching satire for the past decade, and is the reason behind his postgraduate studies and ongoing academic research. Dr Declercq explains, “The book presents a lot of what I want to say about satire – what I think it is, what it can do (and not do) and why we should care about it. So it’s a book for people who are similarly interested in the role of satire in our lives, and it touches on academic debates in media studies, philosophy and health humanities. For me, this book presents a neat conclusion to my research about satire I’ve developed in the last decade, but it also set out an agenda for my ongoing research into media, mental health and wellbeing.”
For University of Kent staff and students, Satire, Comedy and Mental Health. Coping with the Limits of Critique, is available as an e-book through the Templeman Library.