Political Returns: Irony in Politics and Theory From Plato to the Antinuclear Movement by John Evan Seery

Author:John Evan Seery [Seery, John Evan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780813379647
Google: PChyQgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 2604051
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1990-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Prolegomenon to Politics

Why is this crazy, complex form of speech, or way of thinking about speech and language, relevant for politics? Isn't irony too cryptic and covert to be of any significance for politics, which for the most part is public and open and no t cryptic and covert? Wasn't Aristotle referring to "ordinary language" when he made a connection between language and politics? We might begin to respond to these questions by noting that ordinary language can also corrupt, enforce barriers, propagate falsehoods; that, in other words, it may encourage disengagement from politics as much as it may serve politics. We cannot presume a natural connection between language and politics because we cannot take it for granted that human beings will naturally talk to one another or that, even if they do, speech will necessarily bind them. I should hasten to add, however, that these negative comments about ordinary language need not imply that ordinary language and ironic discourse are necessary rivals, are mutually exclusive, or even that much divides them.163

In preliminary and general terms, we could say that irony is important for politics insofar as it is a way of using language that exhibits and induces a high awareness of human contexts and human limitations, and that, despite these limiting conditions, nonetheless assumes positive expr ession. We might add that irony is a way of communicating across barriers, a way of extending dialogue where there has been no firm basis. It is a way of forming remote ties of interaction, of building communities of sorts, where natural "commonality" may be in question. In irony, persons seek out and recognize each other on the basis of little more than a shared pretense. Perhaps we can take this affirmation of the importance of textual interaction and expand it into a general affirmation of the importance of human dialogue and interaction. For the ironic outlook is in a sense blind: Oedipus, in the end, is our ironic guide.164 And the blindness of irony may hold implications for politics, for an expansive political vision; for a blind affirmation means that one need not see one's opponent physically in order to acknowledge his human existence, to "see" him morally and politically.

Simpson contends that irony provides a model for reciprocating and participatory communication, as opposed to "authoritarian discourse." As such, irony might be a way of genera ting participation and commi tment out of ambivalence and deta chment--not a search for transcendence but a return to the text and to one's other.165 Charles Glicksburg categorizes irony as a philosophical expression of "subjective idealism,"166 by which he means a view of free individu ality that provides the intellectual detachment necessary for action.167 I question that formulation, for irony may begin with the individual, but it consists fundamentally in an orientation toward others, in an "intersubjectivity." And I question the use of the term "idealism," for the ironic orientation, despite its detached demeanor, contains in the author an inner imperative to manifest itself in "objective" and very "real" forms of textual expression.

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