Hello, my name is Kirk Combe. I teach at Denison University in the United States.\ \ 2\
I work in the field of literature and cultural studies and I've been asked to talk about a book I've recently published.\ \ 3\
This one right here called, Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film: Rant Against the Regime.\ \ 4\
It was published by Routledge in 2021. The first question I've been asked to address is the aim in writing this book.\ \ 5\
And this is a piece of academic writing,\ \ 6\
a piece of scholarship that is proposing the existence of a distinct form of political satire that has arisen over the past 40 years or so,\ \ 7\
what I'm calling speculative satire or \f1\i the Rant \f0\i0 .\ \ 8\
And it combines three distinct genres that of satire, that of science fiction and that of the monster tale.\ \ 9\
The purpose of this form of satire is to attack the dominant social orthodoxies\ \ 10\
that have grown up in our in Western culture and maybe globally in the past four decades,\ \ 11\
namely neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. This form of attack comes in major novels such as Margaret Atwood's \f1\i The MaddAddam Trilogy \f0\i0 .\ \ 12\
Mainstream films such as Bong Joon-ho\'92s \f1\i Snowpiercer \f0\i0 or Jordan Peele's \f1\i Get Out \f0\i0 and most recently in very,\ \ 13\
very popular streaming series such as \f1\i The Handmaid's Tale \f0\i0 on Hulu or \f1\i Westworld \f0\i0 on HBO.\ \ 14\
So the purpose is to talk about how this form of political satire works, the various elements of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism that it attacks,\ \ 15\
and I'm saying that the purpose of this satire is to wake us up to just how\ \ 16\
destructive these orthodoxies are and just disturb us in very spectacular ways.\ \ 17\
The second question I've been asked to talk about is how did I find the process of writing this book with some parts of it easier,\ \ 18\
some parts of it more difficult? And I must say writing an academic book is rather like deciding to run a marathon,\ \ 19\
you convince yourself it's a good idea, for some reason andnd then you just put your head down and do all the work.\ \ 20\
So there's lots and lots of work in preparation for writing a book such as this, reading other scholarship,\ \ 21\
reading all the primary materials, thinking about what theory to apply and how to apply it, etc., etc.\ \ 22\
That's a bit like the training portion of the marathon, about a lot of fun, but it can be rewarding.\ \ 23\
And then when the race starts and you start actually writing this book, it can become quite a slog.\ \ 24\
You have to be bloody-minded about it. You have to put your head down very often and just work your way through it.\ \ 25\
Now, certainly some aspects of writing this book were more pleasurable than others.\ \ 26\
I particularly enjoyed learning a lot about science fiction and the theory behind science fiction.\ \ 27\
I've always consumed and enjoyed that genre, but I've never really looked into\ \ 28\
it's critical distinctions and what various scholars and critics have thought about it and how it works.\ \ 29\
I'm very familiar, I've worked a lot in the field of satire and that of monster tales\ \ 30\
so combining science fiction and that was quite nice.\ \ 31\
I also very much enjoy writing about popular culture: films, major novels, TV series, that sort of thing,\ \ 32\
because I think we need to think most about what we're supposed to think the least about.\ \ 33\
We tend to think of popular entertainment\ \ 34\
as just that,something to consume like popcorn, not really to think about it andwhat it might mean about our culture and society,\ \ 35\
so that's always enjoyable.\ \ 36\
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of writing this book was a chapter I wrote on exactly what is neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism.\ \ 37\
It's very easy to say satire attacks these things and then not talk much about them\ \ 38\
but I thought I\'92d better give the reader a pretty good idea of what I think this form of satire is attacking in particular.\ \ 39\
So I did a lot of work in sort of looking into how those doctrines operate,\ \ 40\
the variety of their manifestations and exactly why they are destructive.\ \ 41\
So that was difficult, but I think rewarding to do.\ \ 42\
Finally, I've been asked to talk about how my time at Worcester influenced my writing, and it was absolutely foundational.\ \ 43\
My time at Worcester, I was there way back in the 1980s.\ \ 44\
I did my MLitt and DPhil there and it formed really my whole approach to university teaching and to academic writing.\ \ 45\
I had some very good mentors there. In particular at Worcester was John Wilders.\ \ 46\
A very well-known Shakespeare critic. He was wonderful. And it was my moral tutor, which we both knew was a precarious situation.\ \ 47\
And he brought me to Worcester and I thank him very much for that.\ \ 48\
I also had two thesis advisers Glenn Black at Oriel College, who was fantastic and equally \ \ 49\
Emrys Jones at New College, who was wonderful.\ \ 50\
Both of them were patient with me as I worked through my theories and my thoughts about this, about satire.\ \ 51\
I was writing about satire at that point. And they really, they really pushed me.\ \ 52\
and let me let me develop my own style.\ \ 53\
So basically, Worcester was a wonderful experience for me.\ \ 54\
And it was great to be there andnd thank you for listening to this.\ \ }