>This Hutcheon woman makes out that the typically Canadian response to its
>marginalisation manifests as parody and irony (could be - it does so in Oz,
>too, to my mind - so, fine so far) but then says Canadian women are this
>way because their assigned gender keeps 'em on the sidelines as those
>assigned the 'masculine' tag go about the masculine business of running
>things - of making history.
>
>Now, I reckon this is a case of class before gender. Not class instead of
>gender, but class first, nevertheless. Here's why. Many men (and believe
>me, I'm one of 'em) experience life just like this, and a lot of 'em (I'm
>one of these two - or so I like to think - the Reverend Tom is definitely
>one, and Doug another) respond with a parodic and ironic tone as well.
>Like Hutcheon, we do occasionally get to watch the machinations, mebbe even
>meet one or two of the divine circle as they move in their mysterious ways,
>but we'll never get into that circle - ours is the margin.
I don't intend to defend Hutcheon's generalization. Hutcheon is not known for an astute analysis of class in representation, and I posted the excerpt for a lark, mainly. I'd qualify your comments & add that nearly all leftists at this moment in history are masters of irony, since we are all marginalized politically.
That said, no less an authority on gender as Hegel -- place a smiley mark here -- remarked that womankind is "the everlasting irony in the life of the community" (_The Phenomenology of Spirit_, trans. A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977, p.288). Hegel intended his remark to be a way of showing the limited sphere that should be allowed for women; women are to be the guardians of the "sacred claims of the family," instead of using their intrigue to pervert the higher moments of civil society & the state: "[M]an has his actual and substantive life in the state, in learning and so forth, as well as in labour and struggle with the external world....Woman, on the other hand, has her substantive destiny in the family and to be imbued with family piety is her ethical frame of mind" (_The Philosophy of Right_, trans. T.M. Knox, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1967, #166). Instead of simply criticizing Hegel's sexism, feminists might appropriate Hegel's remark to illuminate the ill fit between concrete women & rights-bearing abstract persons of the social contract theory; womankind is indeed "the everlasting irony in the life of the community" -- irony that shows up the limits of liberalism (the kind of irony that Jane Austen -- Marquis de Sade's contemporary -- highlights through the prices of moral choices imposed on women).
Alternatively, feminists might, like Seyla Benhabib, appropriate the remark to critique Hegel's dialectic: "Hegel's Antigone is one without a future; her tragedy is also the grave of utopian, revolutionary thinking about gender relations....Repeatedly the Hegelian system expunges the irony of the dialectic,...[yet, ironically]...what remains of the dialectic is what Hegel precisely thought he could dispense with: irony, tragedy, and contingency....The vision of Hegelian reconciliation has long ceased to convince....What women can do today is to restore irony to the dialectic, by deflating the pompous march of historical necessity...by giving back to the victims of the dialectic...their selfhood." ("On Hegel, Women and Irony" in _Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory_, eds. Mary Shanley and Carol Pateman, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1991, p. 142-3).
Yoshie