I met Dorothy at a wedding reception in L.A. in the seventies. She seemed a decent and quite cheerful woman.
I don't know about cultivating irony. It always struck me that "irony" is a mood for those who have a choice about collaboration. The vast quantity of the working class has no such choice, unless the other option is death. So "irony" is for the "middle" class, those who do have a choice. Much of agitational literature is suffused with irony. I don't think this really reflects the existential position of the working class, and I think it is demoralizing.
joanna
^^^^^ CB: Yes, I think Healey meant militant partisans of the working class, vanguard Party members , professional revolutionaries in the Leninist sense, must have patience and a sense of irony. When we get large masses who are militant partisans of the working class it's all over for capitalism anyway. It will be the end of the irony of revolutionaries having to suffer self-sacrifice when we aren't Christians (smile).
I don't know that she advocated expressing iron in mass literature. It was more for personal self-therapy for people who dedicate their lives to revolutionary struggle. It is sort of wisdom from an elder for Party members.