> >yeah but catherine y'all get the kewler status of having dossiers kept on
> you about your activities trying to smuggle irony across the borders when
> you visit the states.
I must confess that despite many years study of Irony I have never quite been
able to understand it, at least to my own satisfaction, and I was never able to define it so my students could fully understand it. Perhaps some of the participants in this discussion (which began I believe with Marx on justice)can fill in the gaps in my understanding and correct my errors.
Some forms seem pretty simple at first. The seemingly simplest and most common, for example, might be compared to a dog exposing its throat to another dog to indicate friendly intent. Wayne Booth starts out with this in his careful book on the rhetoric of irony. I don't have that book at hand now but if I remember correctly the example he gives is somewhat as follows. It is raining hard outside, and a student comes into his office dripping wet. He says to the student: "I'm glad the weather has finally turned sunny."
Now this seems to fit the dictionary definition, sense 1 (AHD: "The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning"), but if so it seems hardly worthy of all the praise successive generations of critics have piled on it. But Booth suggests a more complex construal, which lets us see part of the power. (It doesn't, however, explain why Kelley should think it would have to be smuggled in.)
Booth's paraphrase (as I remember it) is something like this. "I know you know that it is really raining outside, so by saying it's sunny I am showing that I trust you not to think I'm stupid; I also know that you will know that I don't really think you are so stupid as to think that it's sunny outside just
because a professor says so, so you will know both that I trust your intelligence and that I trust your good will, because you will neither think I'm stupid nor calling you stupid. So we can both relax and trust each other." That of course only begins to unravel the complexities of the example, and perhaps someone more skilled at glossing irony than I am can provide a better paraphrase -- and also explain to me why the U.S. should forbid the importation of such phrases, thus requiring that they be smuggled in. And of course Wayne Booth is an American, so perhaps someone can tell me who smuggled the information to him. And finally, he is (was) a professor at one of the higher institutions of learning, so I'm a little surprised (judging from comments on this list) that he should have any idea at all of what irony is, and certainly not be able to provide examples of it.
Now I think there are examples of this friendly ground-breaking kind of irony in the *Iliad*, and if so they would be our oldest examples of irony in the west, but I don't have time just now to look those up so I will take up the oldest I remember right away, those in *Oedipus Tyrannus*. The Chorus of citizens begs Oedipus to search for the murderer of Laius, and his speech answering them contains the following words:
Since I am now the holder of his [Laius's] office,
and have his bed and wife that once was his,
and had his line not been unfortunate
we would have common children -- (fortune leaped
upon his head) -- because of all these things,
I fight in his defence as for my father. . . .
If I have been misconstruing this in the many years I have taught it to ISU undergraduates it will be painful to learn that, but as Sophocles' contemporary Socrates always argued (or at least so Plato claims), it is better to know the truth no matter how painful. So if my construal is terribly wrong I hope some subscriber to this list will teach me the truth.
Basically this seems to be the same as the example Booth gives; that is, it is a way of establishing trust between writer and reader (listener), and like that example involves two different levels of knowledge, but whereas in the Booth example the speaker pretends to know less than the listener, in the Sophoclean example, the pretended speaker (Oedipus) really does know less than the listener (the audience), so the words are not ironic for the speaker but they are for the listener. But actually this is misleading, for the "real speaker" is not Oedipus, who is only a mouthpiece, but Sophocles, and Sophocles, like the professor in Booth's example, is complimenting his audience on having a higher level of understanding than the nominal or fictional speaker. And with this comparison in mind, I would think of the Booth speaker as actually being two speakers, one (the dumb one) a fictional or nominal speaker, the other (the "real" one) being an intelligent speaker intent on massaging the ego of the listener.
But this leads to trouble. Surely the U.S. censors would not object to a rhetorical technique aimed at massaging the ego of the reader. That seems to be the central aim of most WSJ editorials, for example, and no censor or customs official would dream of excluding WSJ editorials from the United States. Perhaps I simply don't understand Kelley's argument here. And if not, I'm sure she will clear up my confusion for me.
I have more problems of understanding remaining, understandings or misunderstandings which may also have affected my teaching over the last 40 years. I always told my students that irony has to be sharply distinguished from sarcasm. If Booth's example is seen as sarcasm rather than irony, one would have to see the professor as mocking the student, rather than complimenting him as is the case if we interpret it as irony.) The AHD gives, as the first sense of "sarcasm," "A sharply mocking or contemptuous remark, typically utilizing statements or implications pointedly opposite or irrelevant to the underlying purport."
This leads to a problem with Doug's analysis of a passage from *Capital*, a passage which I had always taken as, first, sarcasm, and *then*, irony, with the result that it ends up with a repudiation of the concept of justice.
Doug first speaks of there being "no small bit of irony here" [i.e., in Marx's general argument as to the justice of exploitation under capitalism], and then quotes the passage beginning "The sphere of circulation . . .is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. . . ."
I have two difficulties. The first is minor. I had always thought of irony as being like pregnancy: it either was or wasn't, and one cannot speak of varying quantities of it. But perhaps Doug could explain that. The second understanding or misunderstanding I bring to the passage quoted involves the distinction between sarcasm and irony. The passage seems distinctly sarcastic to me, clearly being an instance of what the AHD calls statements "pointedly opposite" to the underlying purport. In particular, there seems to be no miming of the naivete or ignorance (in contrast to the reader's knowledge) always characteristic of irony. I have always assumed that an important distinction of sarcasm, as distinct from irony is that sarcasm offers no difficulty of paraphrase, and that a paraphrase of it is usually adequate to the underlying "literal meaning," while in the case of irony paraphrase is always (as is clear from the Booth example) wholly inadequate to express the trope's content. (In fact, it seems to me that for many purposes, irony is the only trope that is *not* paraphraseable, while sarcasm, if a trope at all, is the most paraphraseable of all tropes.)
In reference to the passage in question, then, one might as well say (assuming it to be sarcastic) that the literal meaning is that the sphere of circulation is the hell denying all human rights, the realm of unfreedom, inequality, and deprivation of property. And it therefore asserts, quite literally, that Bentham denies all these values. (The last is not satisfactory: perhaps in the reference to Bentham we have an irony inside a sarcasm inside an irony.) But if the passage is ultimately ironic, and I think I agree with Doug, then it is an ironic denial of the justice, equality, and freedom of life under capitalism, and must, therefore, be in some subtle sense (ironic not sarcastic) an affirmation of the justice of capitalism -- but since that is impossible, it must be an ironic denial of the meaningfulness of the concept of justice. (Remembering that an ironic denial is never a simple denial, and that the paraphrase is never adequate to the original trope.)
But Doug proceeds beyond the mere construal of this passage, asserting the following:
<<Though Marx's style was often ironic, his heirs have often been rather irony-challenged, it seems to me. I guess that's what happens when critique gets transformed into dogma. Which reminds me, I must re-read Lefebvre on irony, soon.>>
[I am interested in all/most critiques of irony myself, and will have to get ahold of Lefebvre.]
I have some problems of understanding here too, some of which may be gotten at by more attention to the complexities of irony, this time with what is probably the single most famous ironic statement in English, the opening sentence of *Pride and Prejudice*. (Its fame and wide use as an example is partly due to the fact that it is the opening sentence, and thus in appearance at least requires no discussion of context, since an opening sentence rather provides its own context. We shall see.) The sentence (which also makes up the novel's first paragraph): "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
The first point about the sentence (and the primary point needed to understand not only the whole of *Pride and Prejudice* but the collected fiction of Jane Austen) is that the sentence is not about single men, wives, etc. but about the reader -- *any* reader. No writer in English is more careful -- and few are as careful -- of the accuracy of his/her diction as Austen, so "universally acknowledged" must be a statement about anyone who ever picks up the novel. Hence it states that the reader recognizes the truth (and "truth" and "absolute truth" would be synonymous for Austen) of the need (want) of all rich men for a wife. And of course practically all readers would at once be prepared to deny the universal acceptance (one rejection will do the trick) of the proposition. And so, as with Booth's statement, the reader must immediately make a judgment: Is Austen a fool or does she believe me to be a fool -- or is there some third alternative.
Practically all readers assume an alternative. As we shall see, *practically*
all but NOT all readers, and this (we will see later) leads us close to the heart of one of the features of irony not yet mentioned in this paper. Moreover, even of those who assume a third alternative, a large number (perhaps a majority) are mistaken as to the exact natuare of the alternative. Or, rather, perhaps as the reader of Marx (if my assumption of a sarcasm inside an irony is correct), most see the sarcasm but not the irony in the sentence. Seeing the latter requires not only a careful reading of the sentence but a *re-reading* of it after having finished the entire novel. Like *Finnegan's Wake*, its final sentences begin its first sentence.
The sarcasm (and the irony?) is developed (and slightly enrichened) on the same page, where we see it applies, within the fiction of the novel, to Mrs. Bennet, who is quite unable to recognize either an irony or a sarcasm. She wishes her husband to call on a new (single and rich) neighbor:
"What is his name?"
"Bingley."
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? how can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?
And so forth. Obviously Mrs. Bennet *acts* as though she believes that every single man of fortune needs one of her daughters as a wife. It is the only principle which will give coherence to her actions. And Mr. Bennet is a powerful wielder of irony -- or at least sarcasm. Mrs Bennet is a fool, as all victims of irony are (or seem to be), and Mr. Bennet's pleasure in his marriage comes from exhibiting her foolishness, over and over again. But as the narrator (speaking for Elizabeth) notes later in the novel:
===== To his wife he [Mr. Bennet] was very little otherwise indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.
Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she had endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now, the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents which rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.
=========
The second paragraph above lacks the delight of "but where other powers of...," but nevertheless is worth the consideration of anyone placing great stress (outside the bounds of imaginative literature) on the powers of irony.
(For those unacquainted with Austen's fiction, *Pride and Prejudice* is no more than an introduction to the three masterpieces which follow it. In comparison with Mrs. Norris in *Mansfield Park* Shakespeare's Iago is a mere boy scout.)
While the sarcasm of the opening paragraphs, then, is at Mrs. Bennet's expense, the irony of the page, perhaps of the whole novel, is at *MR.* Bennet's expense.
The richness of the opening sentence (and the uses of irony in general and not just in Austen) becomes fully visible only when the reader comes to realize that it is *also* literally true: Darcy *does* need a wife in order to be Darcy. (A development of this point would require a rewriting, focusing on Austen, of my article on Milton.) That is, irony only achieves its full richness if it overlaps allegory (conceived as a story that is both literally true *and* carries an independent meaning which can be played off against its direct story. Another famous example would be the second paragraph of Chapter 1 of Book 2 of the *Travels of Lemuel Gulliver*, copied from a book of travel so jargon heavy as to parody itself -- but the whole of *Gulliver* loses its richness unless one sees that Gulliver is both a fool and a person of considerable technical expertise and shrewdness. Hence that paragraph is *both* an ironic
parody of bad technical writing *and* also an exhibition of Gulliver's real learning. Anyone who fails to see these conflicting aspects of irony can be said to be irony-challenged.
But that is almost everyone who is not either, like Austen, Swift, and Marx, what bourgeois critics call "a genius *or* has not, as I have, made the study
of irony (both ironic works and scholarship devoted to irony) a central concern of decades of one's life. For example, almost *all* of my students over many years of teaching *Pride and Prejudice* failed to understand the following passage:
Elizabeth had the satisfaction of seeing her father taking pains to get acquainted wih him [Darcy]; and Mr. Bennet soon assured her that he was rising every hour in his esteem.
"I admire all my three sons-in-law highly," said he. "Wickham, perhaps, is my favourite; but I think I shall like *your* husband quite as well as Jane's."
Wickham is the nominal villain of the book, and this statement by Mr. Bennet endlessly confused students, even after the preceding 378 pages in which his love of irony/sarcasm had been endlessly emphasized -- both by the author and by the instructor in class. This of course immensely heightened the self-esteem of those few students who *did* understand the sentence. Nothing is more soothing to the ego than the contemplation of those who are more irony-challenged than oneself.
And this is why irony (except for the kind of strictly friendly irony illustrated by Booth) is a deadly sin in political discourse, except among admitted political elites. I use "elite" positiviely here -- for example it applies to all those who claim to understand *Capital* or to have read the *Grundrisse*. Members of that elite clearly must talk to each other -- but they must also clearly prepare to speak to others who are not and never will be readers of the *Grundrisse*. And irony is usually fatal to the latter task, for the reason given in the Thesis III. Irony (as well as mechanical materialism) "necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society." This is what Mr. Bennet's remark on Wickham did in my fiction classes. It is what irony (of any complexity) always does. This is clearly the conscious goal of all the great ironists -- e.g., Stendahl, Austen, Swift, Flaubert -- as well as of lesser ones such as Thurber or Rochester or Carew. Swift *knows* what true Christianity is, and *knows* that a (very small) audience exists which shares that knowledge with him, and which is ready and willing to join in contempt for all that do not share that knowledge. This is the only possible basis for such an incedibly complex piece of irony as "Argument against the abolishing of Christianity."
But Doug combines a one-phrase zinger attacking dogmatism with his paragraph on irony. Now I think dogmatism is a bit more complex than Doug seems to think it is, and while I can't discuss it in detail here I can offer, in the context of this discussion of irony, a few provisional observations which might point the way to further exploration.
First let's get down some of the obvious points. "Dogmatism," like "sectarianism," is an allusion to religion and religious dogma. Now the point (in Christianity anyhow) of dogma is in the proposition (quoted from memory) that "Whoso believeth in me shall attain eternal life." That is, for actual religious dogma, belief in and of itself is a positive good, in fact for Calvinist and Lutheran theologies, the greater good. (Hence the great debate, in which thousands or hundreds of thousands died, over faith vs. works.)
Now, on the margins of Marxist discourse, one encounters a sprinkling of alleged marxists who seem to believe something like this, though I have never in 30 years of activity encountered more than a few in practice. A certain Klo M on the "old" L-I list insisted that everyone should believe that Stalin was a "genius in the art of government," and never did have an answer to my proposition that geniuses in the art of government were a dime a dozen. In other words, he seemed to think that merely believing in the purity of Stalin in itself directlty contributed to the coming of the revolution.
But what seemed to characterize even the collection of "dogmatists" (scare quotes because so far undefined and thus not demonstrative of anything) was the belief that fundamental marxist principles could translate directly to practice. But it seems to me that a very common kind of critique of Marxism departs from exactly the same dogmatism. Critics discover that *Capital* (with its focus on class) does not tell us what to do when we get up tomorrow morning. It does not, for example, tell us what to think about race or abortion or the means of achieving unity or even what "unity" means. They then immediately decide that the theory is defective and that we must start all over again to build a new theory from the ground up. The first kind of dogmatism would try to cook dinner from the instructions contained in the three laws of thermodynamics; the second kind of dogmatism (which, frankly, I think dominates this list) would decide that the laws of thermodynamics were defective because they did not tell us how to cook dinner.
In any case, I think Doug owes us a developed discussion of the relationship, if any, of lack of irony and dogmatism rather than a merely dogmatic assertion that one leads to the other.
Now a couple final observations on irony. We need, I think, to distinguish between the ability or willingness to respond to irony and the ability to write it. There are some human activities in which professional competence is desirable -- such as brain surgery or navigation. I rather think that the production of irony belongs to this category -- and while I do claim some professional ability in the construal and analysis of irony, I claim no such capacity in the production of irony.
This last point should be richly demonstrated by the first two or three pages of this post, with their lame attempt at irony, but I think poorly done irony, poorly done because (like most of the alleged irony on this list) is in fact more like mere sarcasm. Irony is just too hard a style to produce for most of us, and I think it decorous for those unable to produce it to be content with the admiration and appreciation of the irony produced by others. I apologize for my rather clumsy attempts at the genre, only insisting that the pretense of ignorance in that attempt is essential to any irony, competent or incompetent.
[There's a lot more to be said on these topics, but I'll break off here for now.]
Carrol