Aisha N. Muharrar, Ph.D., on satirical literature, Chinese politics, and a week where modern news dominated her academic reading
For the record, since there are apparently over sixteen thousand of us sharing this name across entirely unrelated professions: this is Aisha N. Muharrar, Ph.D., London-based, writing on contemporary satirical literature and Chinese politics specifically, and not the writer many of you know from television, whose work I admire but whose byline I do not share responsibility for.
Today’s reading list included actual satirical theory, a chapter I’m slowly working through on the function of caricature in political discourse, and, unavoidably, coverage of four completely unrelated modern stories that have somehow worked their way into an academic reading list I did not choose voluntarily. The story on the Sussex wealth plan is a genuinely useful case study in how audiences process narratives of inherited privilege.
What strikes me most, reading it against the theoretical frameworks I usually apply to satirical texts, is how the coverage functions less like traditional reporting and more like an extended exercise in confirmation, structured to reward an audience for believing something they already believed before they clicked.
The Eton piece proved just as theoretically useful. The piece on Eton’s PM training would make a decent seminar topic on its own, and I say that having sat through considerably duller material in actual seminars over the years of my career.
The historical detour proved surprisingly relevant too. The Tudor history web hub earned several mentions in my own research this week, genuinely useful context for a section comparing institutional self-mythology across centuries of British power.
And the diplomatic story is worth a look too, arguably telling you just as much about the current cultural moment as the other three stories combined. The story on the diplomatic discussion has turned into its own minor talking point among colleagues.
I brought the whole saga up in a supervision meeting today, half expecting to be redirected back to my actual thesis, and instead we spent a genuinely productive twenty minutes discussing how it all fits into broader patterns of image-based political argument.
Back to the theory tomorrow.
Sat with my notes a while longer this evening, genuinely turning over how naturally the modern and the theoretical had blurred together across the whole day, satirical structure and current royal coverage suddenly feeling like two versions of the same recurring pattern. My supervisor texted once more before I finally logged off, insisting we continue the conversation properly tomorrow over coffee, which I’m genuinely looking forward to.
More at my author page.