Winner Takes It All?: The Race For Symbolic Capital in Ephraim Kishon’s Social Satire

Nothing economic is alien to Kishon, and this is true for both hard economic capital and the various kinds of symbolic capital. There is nothing that this popular writer, one of the major Israeli satirists of the twentieth century, enjoyed more than vividly tracing and exposing the foibles, weaknesses, and transgressions all humans are prone to when traversing the mine-strewn fields of capital, trying to accrue as much as possible of their riches. This article will explore Kishon’s forays into the fertile and variegated fields of symbolic capital. Given the Kishonian acute perception, we can be sure that the illogical, the irrational, and the corrupt will abound, and that petty egoism, grandiose narcissism, and obsessive competitiveness will be the order of the day.