The Outsider, Art, and Humour delivers on the promise of its title. Rich in its account of connections between humor and forces contending for power in society, the text explores via humor how both the weak and the strong in society strive to achieve an upper hand. Necessarily cross-disciplinary, the book bolsters its arguments with significant quantities of social science as well humor and art theory.Clements illustrates how these theories play out through dozens of examples of visual and literary, high and popular, comic art. His visual illustrations range from Peter Bruegel the Elder’s 1559–60 The Fight between Carnival and Lent through undated contemporary alternative art. These visual and literary illustrations support Clements’s point that humor frequently functions in complex and slippery ways. From the start, Clements reminds readers that dominant classes in society have used and continue to use humor and art to keep lower classes in their place. These same dominant classes regularly use art and humor to preempt the art of the lower classes. On the other hand, creative people with far less apparent power use art and humor to poke fun at the presumptions of their “betters.”Clements is at pains to note humor’s benefits in any culture and speaks of the humanizing role of humor in culture even as he emphasizes its limits. He concludes that given the multiple variables inherent in humor and taste, it is “highly unlikely that humorous art will change the world” (184). Nonetheless, he believes elements of the contest between the strong and weak as they use humor to overcome their adversaries remain “refreshing” and even “funny” (184).Beginning to end, Clements emphasizes the difficulty of pinning down humor’s meaning except in context. Appearing on the first page of the introduction (chapter 1) and laden with irony, the book’s first figure, a photo of a piece of 2018 London graffiti that superimposes one image on top of another, speaks to many of Clements’s recurring points. This image shows how context alters meaning and makes it clear that visual humor contributes to the inclusion of some art producers and the exclusion of others. It also demonstrates that cultural knowledge, creativity, taste, morality, and political correctness can all play a role in what is or is not deemed funny. The background of the photo is the door of a boarded-up and padlocked stone and brick “gentlemen[’s]” public toilet; someone has scribbled what might be a gang sign on the plywood blocking the entrance. A crisply printed official notice warns that “bill posters will be prosecuted.” Below that, someone else has added a stenciled riposte: “BILL POSTERS IS INNOCENT.”Clements digs down through a tired old joke punning on the word “bill” and recalls historical graffiti and protests defending desperate (and sometimes innocent) prisoners. His commentary posits associations with earlier “postings” and finally adds the ironic visual association of this posting with perhaps illicit sex in a public restroom. Clements notes that “different events, understanding, and interpretation” (1) all influence a joke. Yet humor still has a way of keeping track of who is on the outside or being excluded.Toward the end of his introduction, Clements articulates what he terms the monograph’s “cross-disciplinary art-historical, psychosocial, sociological, historical and cultural studies approach” (9) and explains how he is using key concepts such as “bourgeois,” “cultural recuperation,” and “heterotopia.” He also summarizes the contents of succeeding chapters. Chapter 2 lays out a range of approaches to humor, its complexity and scope, and introduces issues such as transgression, political correctness, ambiguity, and taste that are explored more thoroughly in later chapters. Clements repeatedly returns to theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, among others, but his discussion of humor theory goes far beyond the ideas of a few favorite theorists. Chapter 2 will be of particular interest to readers of Studies in American Humor, as it evaluates key theories of humor, introduces sociocultural theories related to taste, offers political and ethical analysis, and references further works illustrating how fluid meaning can be.Chapter 3 switches focus to “the multifaceted, mediated and self-styled construct of the individual outsider” (10). That phrase is too simple to describe this chapter, which introduces and explores a wealth of related topics such as the fact that how a society values an outsider affects its evaluation of the individual’s product. Ironically, the artistic product of a prisoner or someone deemed mentally ill may, for example, be more readily accepted than that of a presumably mentally stable, law-abiding citizen. Clements spends considerable time showing how social class and particularly middle-class values have worked to shape acceptance of art.Chapter 4 investigates ways in which “outsiderdom” has changed and functions from one modern period to another, while chapter 5 explores how oppressive cultures have used comic art to aid in stigmatizing subjugated people—to reinforce racism or to disparage already disadvantaged populations. Clements ends chapter 5 by delving into chaos theory in his explanation of how this art functions. While earlier chapters use illustrations from the visual arts, chapter 6 also looks at the works of literary artists from marginal groups and a disabled singer/songwriter. Chapter 7 delves into artists’ use of heterotopia and dark humor. Clements finishes with brief afterthoughts, a recap in which he revisits many of his earlier ideas.I have a number of afterthoughts of my own. First, Clements’s work is complex but organized. The first four chapters provide a theoretical base for the rest of the work, define terms, and survey larger issues. Furthermore, each chapter begins with a paragraph that sets up its central points and a concluding section that encapsulates them. And throughout he impressively integrates ideas from multiple fields. Second, the work shows his ongoing fascination with the role of marginalized individuals and groups, which is the subject of earlier work on outsider arts, theories, and classifications. Third, North American readers will be struck by the European and particularly British flavor of most of his sources and illustrations. Fourth, by any standard, many of the examples of outsider humor he offers (particularly those in chapter 6 on the humor of marginalized artists) lack an element of hope. Instead, they feel emotionally detached. Nonetheless, they are products of Western culture. One wonders about the humor Clements might have encountered in totalitarian societies such as those in in North Korea, Taliban/Isis-controlled Afghanistan, or Communist-controlled Uyghur China. In any case, humor is neither innately good nor bad; its lack of moral comment is bound to frustrate anyone pining for the simplicity of some moral codes. Fifth, the complexity of the monograph’s ideas calls for specific language, but Clements avoids unnecessary jargon. And finally, navigating the electronic version is quite irksome.