‘A Satire at Once Savage and Toothless’: The Politics and Aesthetics of Satire in Will Self’s Works

Abstract

While most traditional definitions of satire underline the indebtedness of the genre to a doxa or to an established social norm that it must expose and deride so that the opposite virtues can be implicitly extolled and ultimately reinforced, Will Self’s satire prompts a revaluation of the very frame within which we understand it. This paper, based on selected fictions by Self, studies the narrative strategies producing a satirical form able to accommodate a perceived current lack of common moral ground. It first examines various satirical tropes, in order to show aspects of the ‘savage’ dimension of Self’s satirical prose. Secondly, working under the assumption that these topoi constitute a coping strategy to ‘manage the anomie of our society’, it demonstrates that the inherent ambivalence of a hence ‘toothless’ satire allows for an exploration of a deregulated social body rather than for the teleologic reconstruction of an implied moral norm. Finally, in keeping with Griffin’s notion of satire as an exploratory rather than a cautionary tale, it assesses to what extent the rhetorics of provocation, play and display underlying Will Self’s bitter sense of humour may (or may not) sting and ultimately spring the reader into action.

Keywords

• Will Self
• Great Apes
• Cock and Bull
• menippea
• Dustin Griffin
• Mikhail Bakhtine