Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony

by Linda Hutcheon

The edge of irony, says Linda Hutcheon, is always a social and political edge. Irony depends upon interpretation; it happens in the tricky, unpredictable space between expression and understanding.

Irony's Edge is a fascinating, compulsively readable study of the myriad forms and the effects of irony. It sets out, for the first time, a sustained, clear analysis of the theory and the political contexts of irony, using a wide range of references from contemporary culture. Examples extend from Madonna to Wagner, from a clever quip in conversation to a contentious exhibition in a museum.

Irony's Edge outlines and then challenges all the major existing theories of irony, providing the most comprehensive and critically challengin theory of irony to date.

Genres: Theory, Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction

258 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 1994

Reviews

[E. C. Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s probably no living person who has thought more about irony than Linda Hutcheon, whose work on postmodernism, to my mind, sits on the same plane as that of Fredric Jameson, and who, like Jameson, does the thing that academics of her stature do once they’ve achieved a certain prominence: she attempts to build a bridge connecting the aesthetic and the material branches of postmodern scholarship. The field looks a little different today than they did in 1994 when this was published, but, simply put, the aesthetic school understands postmodernism to be (what do you know?) an aesthetic practice built out of poststructural language theory, while the materialist school understands postmodernism to be an articulation of the culture’s relation to late stage capitalism and neoliberalism. As I conceive of it, these schools are split on their respective answer to the question, What causes postmodernism to happen? and the answers of one school often look myopic to the other. Jameson, the arch materialist, sees in late stage capitalism a force driving and determining how the culture looks, and so views aesthetic theories of postmodernism with a certain distain as they inevitably distract us from the threat presented by such an economic model. Hutcheon, an aestheticist, sees in aesthetic practices the keys to unlocking what postmodernism is all about, and, as any schoolchild knows, the aesthetic dimension of postmodernism is largely defined by its relation to irony (which can easily be tracked back to poststructuralism). Inevitably, owing to the fundamental disagreements upon which each school is founded, bridging these perspectives is really hard. Irony’s Edge is, however, an attempt at such a bridge, wherein Hutcheon articulates what she describes as the “transideological politics” of irony, a trope that has moved beyond of its utilitarian beginnings to become postmodernism’s prevailing mode of discourse. Until recently, my sense of irony’s co-extensive relationship to postmodernism was the one David Foster Wallace established in “E Unibus Plurum,” which, among other things, presented irony as a tool for exploding the hypocrisies of the status quo that, once wielded by everybody, left a wasteland of deracinated ideologies in its wake. Hutcheon, though she isn’t responding to Wallace, counters his representation on several points, including the implicit argument that irony only ever serves to undermine authority (though she reiterates Wallace’s other implicit argument, namely that irony has a political dimension). Her understanding of this is, however, far deeper, as she explains that since irony can only happen once differentiated discursive communities already exist, and that, since the effect of irony is the friction of the said rubbing against the unsaid, irony must also always truck in the uneven power distribution that comes from belonging to certain discursive communities that have access to the knowledge that irony sneakily alludes to without explicitly stating. In addition to the claim that irony does not create, by is instead a product of, different discursive communities, Hutcheon’s big idea here is the shift in focus from the sayer (the ironist) to the hearer (the interpreter), for irony can only ever be irony when it’s decoded as such. Given this, irony’s edge is the weight given to the unsaid which is understood by the interpreter to be critical, to cut. I see in this interpreter-oriented model of irony a particular use for periodizing contemporary literary fiction; postmodernism was tolerant (if not celebrative) of irony’s edge, the New Sincerity is not. Here, the presence or absence of irony is not the thing that determines the character of the period, it’s the culture’s attitude toward it. Due to my personal interests, I thought Hutcheon’s decision to not engage postmodernism directly impoverished the book as a whole, and Routledge’s decision to interrupt every sentence with Chicago’s fakakta parenthetical reference system made for some cumbersome reading, but if you’re working within the pomo galaxy you should probably have this on your shelf.

[Tauan Tinti · Rating 3 out of 5]

De (uma tradução meia-boca de) um parágrafo aleatório do livro: "Argumentar, como vim fazendo, que o motivo pelo qual a ironia não é 'universalmente disponível' [ref.] pode ter menos a ver com as competências de quem interpreta do que com a necessidade de um contexto discursivo compartilhado, é deslocar os termos da discussão de noções de elitismo em direção à aceitação do fato de que todo mundo possui conhecimentos diferentes e pertence a (muitas) comunidades discursivas distintas."

A Hutcheon conseguiu a proeza de fazer um livro sobre ironia completamente desdentado, uma espécie de cruzamento entre PR Speak (ou propaganda de banco) e teoria literária que tem medo de interpretar. Fazia tempo que um negócio de "teoria" não me irritava tanto.

[meeners · Rating 3 out of 5]

eminently readable, and certainly very engaging. didn't find it quite as necessary (for me) as her theory of parody if only because the points she laid out for irony were ones i had already encountered. she emphasizes "discursive communities" quite a lot but never really goes into issues of power. frustrating! she does gesture to femininist/postcolonial theory but i don't think you can (and certainly don't think you should) neatly separate the issues like that.

side note: have a hankering to re-watch kenneth branagh's henry V after reading this. realized that's what i want my own lit crit to do - inspire people to go back and re-visit things they thought they had all figured out. (re-)reading: it's what's for dinner!

[Katherine Baber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful and informative, especially since it summarizes most of the work-to-date in the field, but less than pleasant to read. I hate MLA style citation. Perhaps because she is primarily a scholar of postmodernism this book reads more as a pastiche than anything else.

[Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do NOT agree, largely.... but it's interesting. For me to rebutt in my thesis!!!