We began this study on page one with some broad observations about the nature of irony--a few standard definitions along with attempts to classify the different types of irony. On page two we offered a brief survey of the ways that the concept of irony has evolved over the past 2,500 years. Finally, on these pages, we listen to a number of contemporary writers discuss what irony means in our own time.
- Eight Misconceptions About Irony
We have a grave problem with this word (well, in fact, it's not really grave--but I'm not being ironic when I call it that, I'm being hyperbolic. Though often the two amount to the same thing. But not always). Just looking at the definitions, the confusion is understandable--in the first instance, rhetorical irony expands to cover any disjunction at all between language and meaning, with a couple of key exceptions (allegory also entails a disconnection between sign and meaning, but obviously isn't synonymous with irony; and lying, clearly, leaves that gap, but relies for its efficacy on an ignorant audience, where irony relies on a knowing one). Still, even with the riders, it's quite an umbrella, no?
In the second instance, situational irony (also known as cosmic irony) occurs when it seems that "God or fate is manipulating events so as to inspire false hopes, which are inevitably dashed" (1). While this looks like the more straightforward usage, it opens the door to confusion between irony, bad luck and inconvenience.
Most pressingly, though, there are a number of misconceptions about irony that are peculiar to recent times. The first is that September 11 spelled the end of irony. The second is that the end of irony would be the one good thing to come out of September 11. The third is that irony characterizes our age to a greater degree than it has done any other. The fourth is that Americans can't do irony, and we [the British] can. The fifth is that the Germans can't do irony, either (and we still can). The sixth is that irony and cynicism are interchangeable. The seventh is that it's a mistake to attempt irony in emails and text messages, even while irony characterizes our age, and so do emails. And the eighth is that "post-ironic" is an acceptable term--it is very modish to use this, as if to suggest one of three things: i) that irony has ended; ii) that postmodernism and irony are interchangeable, and can be conflated into one handy word; or iii) that we are more ironic than we used to be, and therefore need to add a prefix suggesting even greater ironic distance than irony on its own can supply. None of these things is true.
1. Jack Lynch, Literary Terms. I would strongly urge you not to read any more footnotes, they are only here to make sure I don't get in trouble for plagiarizing.
(Zoe Williams, "The Final Irony," The Guardian, June 28, 2003) - Postmodern Irony
Postmodern irony is allusive, multilayered, preemptive, cynical, and above all, nihilistic. It assumes that everything is subjective and nothing means what it says. It's a sneering, world-weary, bad irony, a mentality that condemns before it can be condemned, preferring cleverness to sincerity and quotation to originality. Postmodern irony rejects tradition, but offers nothing in its place.
(Jon Winokur, The Big Book of Irony, St. Martin's Press, 2007) - We're All in This Together--by Ourselves
Importantly, the Romantic of today finds a real connection, a sense of groundedness, with others through irony. with those who understand what is meant without having to say it, with those who also question the saccharine quality of contemporary American culture, who are certain that all diatribes of virtue-lament will turn out to have been made by some gambling, lying, hypocritical talk-show host/senator overly fond of interns/pages. This they see as doing an injustice to the depth of human possibility and the complexity and goodness of human feeling, to the power of the imagination over all forms of potential constraint, to a basic ethics that they themselves are proud to uphold. But ironists, above all else, are certain that we must live in this world as best we can, "whether or not it suits our own moral outlook," writes Charles Taylor [The Ethics of Authenticity, Harvard University Press, 1991]. "The only alternative seems to be a kind of inner exile." Ironic detachment is exactly this sort of inner exile--an inner emigration--maintained with humor, chic bitterness, and a sometimes embarrassing but abidingly persistent hope.
(R. Jay Magill Jr., Chic Ironic Bitterness, The University of Michigan Press, 2007) - What's Ironic?
Woman: I started riding these trains in the forties. Those days a man would give up their seat for a woman. Now we're liberated and we have to stand.
Elaine: It's ironic.
Woman: What's ironic?
Elaine: This, that we've come all this way, we have made all this progress, but you know, we've lost the little things, the niceties.
Woman: No, I mean what does "ironic" mean?
(Seinfeld)
