'Stephen Colbert: Greatest Satirist Ever'?

The Global Studies Seminar welcomes Kirk Combe and Sangeet Kumar with two presentations, "Stephen Colbert: Great Satirist, or Greatest Satirist Ever?” by Combe and “Contagious Memes, Viral Parodies and the Grammar of Contention on the Indian Web,” by Kumar. The two presentations will interrogate the increasingly salient political role of parody and satire in the global public sphere. Kirk Combe’s talk will analyze the performance of Stephen Colbert to challenge dominant readings of his style as modernist. Instead, by showing how his style inhabits the ambiguous zone of indeterminacy and linguistic freeplay, his presentation will seek to position Colbert centrally within the postmodern style. In so doing Combe will also challenge interpretations of postmodernity as nihilistic “chaos” to make a case for its alignment with the genre of satire. Sangeet Kumar’s talk will analyze the emerging culture of social and political critique on the Indian web in order to understand how the convergence of a networked culture with tropes of parody and satire has created a new language for subversive discourse in India. Through analyzing specific examples of memes and viral videos he argues that this critique is defined by the syntax of “repetition with difference” both at the level of the medium and at the level of the text.