alexlocascio at juno.com wrote:
> My point is this: you recognize irony when you see it (right???).
Wrong. Moreover, some works ("A Modest Proposal" is an example) have the same meaning whether we treat them as an irony (OED and Alex crude version) or as straight. The only difference is in the one case we condemn a fictional persona created by Swift, in the other case we condemn Swift himself, for letting That is, classification as an irony affects our judgment of the author, not our interpretation of the text.
Sometimes, of course, this makes a huge difference, because what is at issue is our interpretation of other texts by the same author -- our interpretation of the author's intention in the passage at issue, that is, determines our interpretation of other texts by the same author or the whole of the text in which the passage occurs.
This happens at several levels in a passage in one of my earleir posts, that responding to Doug's interpretation of a paragraph in *Capital*.
Doug argued that it was a simple irony -- that is, that it's meaning could be construed by simply reversing the apparent meaning of the words, and on that basis he arrived at the conclusion that Marx believed in a universal standard of Justice. I argued, in response to this interpretation, that I agreed with Doug that the paragraph *as a whole* in which the reference to Freedom and so forth occurred was indeed an irony but that the specific sentence, except for the reference in it to Bentley, was a sarcasm, so that the meaning of the sarcasm (a simple reversal) constituted the sentence's literal or non-ironic meaning, which then would in turn be modified (if not reversed) by the overall ironic construction of the paragraph, with the result that we therefore had to see the paragraph as a whole either as asserting the universal justice of capitalism *or* of denying the existence of a univeral justice at all.
Apparently my exposition, however, was woefully unclear, for later on, responding to a post which I must have missed, which contained an abbreviated paraphrase of the text in question, Doug seems to assume that because I denied that it was a simple irony (as composed to a complex one) I denied that it was an irony at all. So the topic remains confused.
(I apparently again failed to make myself at all clear in my reference to having read "thousands of pages" on irony. Doug seems to believe I thereby claim competence to judge whether a passage is irony or not. But on the contrary I only mentioned it to underline my *lack* of understanding of irony, despite many years spent attempting to study it. I thought I could thereby persuade an expert in it like Doug to help me in my ignorance.)
I am a bit confused, however by your brushing Plato aside as irrelevant, on the one hand, and on the other appealing to a possible argument by a contemporary French philosopher. Couldn't it be possible that our reasons for disagreeing on the complexity of a particular irony have something to do with our placing irony in the same category as obscenity: something that, like the good judge, we can recognize when we see it even if we can't define it. Notice that Doug and I can't even agree which of us has recognized irony in Marx. I claim to have recognized it, he claims I have not. He claims to have recognized it, I claim he has overlooked it.
For a better appreciation of Plato, see Marx's own chapter in Engels, *Anti-Duhring*. (Ch. X of Part II, "From the *Critical History*")
I am sorry to have been long winded again in this post. I find it easier to be terse when I have a more confident understanding of my subject matter. I await further help.I envy your and Doug's confidence that irony offere no difficulties of interpretation.
Carrol