Post-Moral Satire and the Bureaucratization of Catastrophe Foundations of a New Critical Paradigm in Contemporary Political Satire Abstract (Journal-Ready

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Chapter One

Post-Moral Satire and the Bureaucratization of Catastrophe

Foundations of a New Critical Paradigm in Contemporary Political Satire

Abstract (Journal-Ready)

This chapter introduces Post-Moral Satire as a new critical category for analyzing contemporary political satire in contexts where ethical discourse has lost its mobilizing force. It argues that modern power no longer primarily seeks moral justification but operates through administrative fluency, bureaucratic compassion, and routinized catastrophe management. Through a theoretical synthesis drawing on Arendt, Agamben, Baudrillard, Brecht, and Saramago, and through an applied reading of Elnadim’s digital satire—particularly the Gaza reconstruction text and the Shablanja corpus—the chapter establishes Post-Moral Satire as a distinct mode that replaces moral denunciation with exact linguistic replication of power. Satire, here, becomes forensic rather than oppositional.

1. Introduction: The End of Moral Address

Political satire traditionally presupposed a moral asymmetry between power and language.

The satirist exposed; the audience judged; power was shamed.

This configuration no longer holds.

In contemporary political reality:

Catastrophe is anticipated, not interrupted

Destruction is followed by planning, not remorse

Ethical language survives only as ritualized condemnation

The political system does not deny suffering; it administers it.

This chapter proposes that satire has responded structurally—not stylistically—by abandoning moral address altogether. What emerges is Post-Moral Satire: a form that operates after ethics, not against them.

2. Defining Post-Moral Satire

2.1 Conceptual Definition

Post-Moral Satire is a mode of political satire characterized by:

Withdrawal of explicit moral judgment

Exact replication of official and bureaucratic language

Presentation of catastrophe as procedural normality

Elimination of the satirical “wink”

It does not accuse power of cruelty.

It allows power to speak until coherence itself becomes obscene.

2.2 Distinction from Classical Satire

Classical Satire

Post-Moral Satire

Ethical shock

Ethical exhaustion

Exaggeration

Precision

Irony

Flat replication

Moral superiority of reader

Reader implication

This is not cynicism.

It is structural adaptation.

3. The Bureaucratization of Catastrophe

3.1 Catastrophe as Cycle

In late modern governance, catastrophe functions as:

A recurring event

A budgetable process

A rotational responsibility

Reconstruction follows destruction not as repair, but as continuation.

This logic is explicit in Elnadim’s Gaza text, where rebuilding is selected in advance, as if catastrophe were a sporting event calendar.

3.2 Administrative Evil (Theoretical Proposition)

Building on Arendt’s banality of evil (1963), this chapter introduces Administrative Evil:

A systemic condition in which harm is produced through rational procedures whose ethical implications are neutralized by their efficiency and repetition.

Unlike ideological evil (Orwell), administrative evil:

Requires no belief

Produces no villains

Generates no moral urgency

It is ethically empty but operationally perfect.

4. Theoretical Genealogy

4.1 Arendt: Evil Without Intent

Arendt demonstrated that modern atrocity often emerges from compliance, not conviction.

Post-Moral Satire extends this insight from actors to language itself.

4.2 Agamben: Permanent Emergency

When emergency becomes permanent, outrage loses leverage. Satire must therefore reveal normality as violence (Agamben 2005).

4.3 Baudrillard: Simulation Fatigue

In a world saturated with representation, exaggeration fails. Exact imitation becomes the only remaining critical gesture (Baudrillard 1994).

4.4 Brecht and Saramago (Critical Bridge)

Brecht demanded alienation (Verfremdung)

Saramago narrated moral collapse through calm, procedural prose

Post-Moral Satire radicalizes both:

no distance, no warning, no lesson.

5. Applied Analysis I: Gaza and the Satire of Pre-Planned Ruin

In Elnadim’s Gaza reconstruction text:

Destruction is assumed

Reconstruction is rotated

Compassion is budgeted

Death is acknowledged fluently

There is no irony marker.

No condemnation.

The horror lies in how reasonable it sounds.

This text represents a mature form of Post-Moral Satire, where catastrophe is not criticized but scheduled.

6. Applied Analysis II: Shablanja as the Micro-State of Normalized Absurdity

Shablanja functions as:

A sovereign micro-state

A bureaucratic ecosystem

A perfectly rational absurdity

Unlike Kafka’s opaque authority, Shablanja’s power is fully visible—and therefore unaccountable.

Unlike Orwell, no ideology is imposed.

Unlike Márquez, no magic intervenes.

Everything works.

That is the disaster.

7. Repositioning the Reader

Post-Moral Satire eliminates the reader’s ethical refuge.

The reader is not:

Amused

Mobilized

Reassured

The reader is linguistically implicated.

Satire becomes documentary.

8. Foundational Claim of the Field

This chapter asserts:

Contemporary political satire must be theorized not as resistance literature, but as a diagnostic practice operating inside post-ethical systems.

Post-Moral Satire is not the decline of satire.

It is its last viable form under bureaucratized catastrophe.

Conclusion: After Ethics, After Protest

When power no longer seeks moral legitimacy, satire cannot seek moral victory.

It can only:

Preserve language

Replicate procedure

Record coherence at the edge of horror

In this sense, Elnadim’s work does not belong to the tradition of Swift or Orwell.

It belongs after them.

References (Selected)

Arendt, Hannah. 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Viking Press.

Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre. London: Methuen.

Orwell, George. 1945. Animal Farm. London: Secker & Warburg.

Saramago, José. 1995. Blindness. Lisbon: Caminho.

Swift, Jonathan. 1729. A Modest Proposal. Dublin.

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