The Concept of Postmodern Irony - Essay Example

Postmodern Irony by The perception of modern thinking as thinking predominately poetic and understanding of any literary text as a model of reality leads to considering irony as additional sense in structure of this text. In many respects the concept postmodernism is based on the basis of play with mythologemes of the past, stereotypes of mass culture and also plastic deformations of reality. Thus, irony is gaining the sense of some provocative gesture concerning people`s established way of life and style of thinking. Postmodern irony is definitely radical. In traditional sense it is skeptical, destructive in relation to stereotypes, banalities, and people`s habits. However, it can be found not in the sphere of intelligence of the artistic personality but in the sphere of cross-cultural communication. Irony arises in the context of culture when the action of the author is in contrast to collective representations. Personal identity is also unacceptable for this evolved type of irony. However, total denial and parody is important but not as important the new unconventional traits irony is acquiring in the circumstances of the end of artistic history, decentralization of the subject, and loss of legitimacy. It is usage in context and a carnavalization which cause a deviation from the analogy principle making postmodern irony different. The place of irony in the literary or visual text does not lose its actual meaning despite the loss of sense of the text itself. And despite its seemingly well-established secure place among other rhetorical devices it still attracts maximum attention. According to Booth, irony as well as metaphor was always expected to progress, widen their own appeal, changing their roles in the text, gaining certain dominance and achieving unexpected results (1983, 315). Irony was determined to evolve as a concept because for many theorists it is inevitably connected with consciousness, and as awareness of humankind is progressing so must irony. For Ziegler irony is a hallmark of the people`s capacity to realize things within the evolution of mankind; and as irony can serve the indication of the process of human`s reflective process, its development marks the stages of human consciousness and development (1990, 1). Therefore, the transformation of irony within certain period must be marked by serious transformations in the whole sociohistorical process. For Wilde, the development of irony can be logically divided into several periods: premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism. In his opinion premodernist irony can be characterized by such as “confirming harmony, modernist irony by transcending fragmentation and discontinuity while postmodernist irony by contributing to fragmentation and multiplicity” (1982, 33). Postmodern irony is often also characterized as ubiquitous which means that it easily penetrates postmodern literary genres and is absolutely relevant. Nevertheless, despite all its modification irony was inseparable from meaning. Irony was supposed to show alternative meaning from what was covered initially but its sense and its purpose have changed with the transformation of the concept of a meaning itself. According to Swearingen, the culture has reached the point when there is a huge diversity of literacies and irony is becoming one of them. The meaning of anything has become enormously proliferate in postmodernism as this époque presupposes such modification. When earlier the meaning was bound to two aspects: literal and implicit, in the era of postmodernism this ambivalence lost its importance. So generally both literal and intended levels of meaning can be further interpreted in a number of ways, each of them acquiring its own meanings (Swearingen, 1991, 64). Prevarication of meaning, when it is no longer stable and unchangeable is an inevitable attribute of postmodernism, and this is evident in the postmodern texts which most often do not mean anything except what they manifest. And irony turns out to be a compulsory element in this environment because it changes to fit in the postmodern world with no strict meanings. When everything is doubted, when the meaning is completely elusive, it is possible to sense irony anywhere (Hutcheon, 1992). Moreover, postmodernism critics suggest that irony depends mostly not on the author now but on the interpreter and can appear exclusively in combination. Moreover, if there is no irony in certain communicative act it means that the interpreter, listener or interlocutor does not have necessary cognitive abilities to recognize this irony. There is not permanent existence of irony, it happens in the act of speech between a speaker and a listener and is absolutely ephemeral (Karyshyn, 1995, 971). Understanding this period of post-present as very uncertain situation, it is common to distinguish several features of a postmodernism among which a special place is dedicated to irony (Hassan, 1986, 23). Examining the development of the American literature after 1945, Hassan shows that it is moving from concreteness and credibility to grotesque, phantasy, and absurdity. The development of the novel is the process of transition from realism to new surrealism, to flexibility of a form, to opacity and the self-parody. It is explained by the collapse of American dream, the situation in which a person turns out to be a victim of his own civilization, dissolved in technocratic chaos of the world. This person is like Prometheus who plays a role of eternal victim, unlike European Sisyphus living in despair, and having technocratic hopes and illusions, continuing to pile the things that serve the symbols of civilization (Hassan, 1972, 311). Therefore the experience of absurdity which developed in America is not an awareness of fatal need into which a man is intertwined but perception of the world as a form of the well-ordered chaos, demonic mixture of an order and anarchy (Hassan, 1972, 315). The expression of a difficult, polyphonic, accidental state of the world in which laughter is internal quality of life disorder is characteristic for ironical playfulness or jouissance as it is often called. That is how a number of integrally inherent in post-modernist vision attributes appear: indeterminacy, fragmentation, decanonization, depthlessness, hybridization of genres, the unpresentable, carnivalization, performance, constructionism, immanence and finally irony (Hassan, 1986, 2). If to take into account the nature of romantic irony as self-creation and self-destruction, described by Shlegel, postmodern irony which differs by its uncertainty, will take two forms: connecting and disconnecting at the same time. As connecting mechanism of a fantasy and intertextuality, irony is irrational and eclectic, in the course of creativity it leads to mixture of genres, hybridization, and to fictional discourse. As disconnecting and neglecting mechanism of imagination irony splits up symbols and stereotypes, postponing the understanding of meaning, generating fragmentation. Postmodern irony creates decanonization, serving as the criticism to any taboos, accepted norms, standards of knowledge, any legitimacy. Therefore irony in postmodern reality is characterized by uncertainty and immanence though as radical irony it doubts every aspect of life, including subjectivity which is imitated in the communication so that it is not clear who the victim of irony is and who is the one creating irony (Wilde, 1982, 114). Uncertainty includes all types of ambiguities, vagueness, half-words, aspiration to silence and inconceivable which is created in word play or pun. Immanence is the boundless horizon of the cultural texts covering the reality semantically from the archives of history with secrets subconscious and opening of astrophysics. The existential sense of uncertain irony is that the person inertly resists the world of difficulties and instability and is ready to be content with small pleasures of life. In this regard postmodern irony can be also called indecisive irony with its reducing and generating sides (Wilde, 1982, 112). Postmodern irony is playful above all, its very essence is in playfulness. It exists not for the sake of serious, but for the sake of play. This play is ontologically inherent in the culture overloaded with things, signs, images, texts, and flows of information. In the situation when everything has already been told and told in all possible ways, ironical playfulness is the only way to bring secondary meaning, a certain additional component which can be designated with the help of the word "meta" – metairony, metalanguage play. Inverted commas which often mark ironical phrases and elements can serve as the signs of the depth of the text reading. The stereophonic intertextuality is manifested with "metastory" "double coding" or "metalanguage play. The concept of metalanguage play is explained by Umberto Eco. If in the system of avant-guard the only solution is to refuse this game for those who do not understand it, in postmodernism it is possible to participate in the game without its understanding and take it absolutely seriously. It is a distinctive property of postmodern ironical text and art in general. The understanding of the text does not require its denial but rather its ironical reconsideration. Postmodern irony uses stereotypes but does not take them seriously, rejecting their trivial value playing with the words behind familiar and well-known. Therefore, radical irony is play in irony (Umberto, 1984, 34). Double coding is often viewed as critical attribute of postmodern thinking, when two or more textual worlds, styles are combined. Postmodernism is continuing the practice of the well-developed tradition and is overcoming it ironically at the same time. Pastiche, a form of parody is gaining special sense in postmodern world of double coding. Historically parody was understood as imitation of a sample but after adaptation by a romantic world view, it became ‘reverent destruction’ which means that by destroying past a person creates a new space of possibilities. Postmodern irony is marked by skepticism, distance from all ideologies, and transformation of traditional mythemes. Before postmodern situation of second half of the XX century it was typical to distinguish between two forms of the parody - serious and trivial. Serious parody peculiar to aesthetic consciousness of classical age and a modernism aims to reduce negativity narrowing consciousness. Trivial parody typical to mass culture becomes its function and is focused on banalities, clichés, stereotypes of mass consciousness and therefore is primitive, scandalous, and stabilizing narrow consciousness. Nevertheless in postmodernism a new type of irony appears- an empty irony which transforms into eclectic pastiche. It develops in the situation of subject disappearance and decentralization (Jameson, 1984, 64). Pastiche is neutral and deprived of satirical impulse of parody and with the sense of absence of existence of something beyond ironical. Pastiche, thus, is parody that is completely void of the purpose of laughing at something. But lack of a satirical orientation does not mean that the edge of irony ceases to exist at all. Having plasticity and intertextual playfulness pastiche is turned against the illusory status of mass media, art of a modernism and spiritual basis of society. Pastiche can be detected almost in all the movies of Tarantino, who mixes genres stealing elements and plots from less successful movies. His movie “Kill Bill” is a pastiche from the very first shot till the end. Personages and plot twists serve as background to the stylish solutions of the director which become central. The script is scarce and fragmentary with no meaningful and satirical dialogues unlike as in his previous movies. Kill Bill is composed of clichés which in combination of selected soundtrack serves as the best manifestation of postmodern irony. Black humor is another type of postmodernist manifestations connected to irony .Many authors that later were proclaimed ironical were initially perceived as black humorists. Such type of irony is also peculiar to postmodernism because it could be considered as its unavoidable modification in the realms of absurdity and surrealism. It serves as a principle of denial of common humanistic values and mundane routine. Additionally it is acquiring new features –it manifests a sensation of total chaos and rejection of any legitimate institutions and socially accepted illusions. Black humor is a performance which accepting chaos and mess opposes them with some feeling and effort (Brier, 1986, 34). Black humor appears in America avanguard literature of the 60-s in the works of such authors as J. Barth, D. Hawkes, T. Pynchon, and B. Freidman. The sense of despair and gloomy comedy combined with cheerful nihilism which arose in post-war America due to the threat of nuclear war, the realities of Cold War, hysteria of ideology, crime and violence serving as the source of the grotesque and menacing feeling of reality. On the other hand, it appeared as a reaction of writers to a consumption civilization with its lack of spirituality, pragmatism and vulgarity of life, nihilistic attitude towards the ideological image of institution, and system. New postmodern irony which was really close to black humor was born by the reality itself with the crash of " American dream" when even the simplest reproduction of truth without any exaggeration sounded ironically. Irony served as idealism demonstrated from the inside out (Bier, 1986, 114). Black humor appears in most of the texts of Pynchon or in the above mentioned movies of Tarantino. The director saturates his films with fake blood and drugs making them hyperreal and black. In “Kill Bill” he refers to the concept of revenge but puts the weapon in the hands of a mother and a wife laughing at everything from marriage, family values, to culture and death. Such humor aims to make the reader/viewer look at some really frightening taboo topics from the joker`s perspective: death, murder, degeneration, disbelief in everything moral or spiritual. In Donleaver`s “The Ginger Man” the main hero dares to laugh at Christmas and Jesus over the Christmas dinner and the public accepts its black humor patiently because it is so outrageous and unconventional. Black humor becomes a part of ironical postmodern world, permitting people to survive in this metacultural chaos. Mocking these concepts releases the power of postmodern irony which at the same time provides these well-known phenomena with new breath. So the concept of irony was always expected to change with sociocultural evolution and postmodern era with all absurdity and eclecticism influenced irony as well. Irony has become a necessary element among other attributes of the époque: indeterminacy, fragmentation, decanonization, depthlessness, hybridization of genres, the unpresentable, carnivalization, performance, constructionism, immanence. Postmodern irony is definitely radical. In traditional sense it is skeptical, destructive in relation to stereotypes, banalities, and people`s habits. Irony with its playfulness become a background of literary text but loses its primary meaning and purpose acting in the realm of double coding and metalanguage. Irony also becomes dependent on the reader and viewer and not on the creator of irony questioning what or who was laughed. Irony in postmodernism takes form of pastiche - eclectical borrowing or imitation of genres, styles, plots that. This type of irony challenges mass media, art, literary forms with its emptiness. Black humor which is aimed at questioning and dealing with serious things which always remain taboo, such as death or those which are culturally significant such as religious events, relationships. Such transformation of irony in postmodernism is connected to serious pressure on people of the world full of information when everything had already been analyzed and said in all possible ways. So irony, nihilism, loss of meaning serve as the ways to cope with chaos of postmodern reality.   References  Brier, J. (1986). The Rise and Full of American Humor. New York. Booth, W. (1983). The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Hassan, I. (1986). Postmodern perspective, Critique inquiry, 12. Chicago Hassan I. (1972). Contemporary Literature. New York. Hutcheon, L. (1991). Splitting images: Contemporary Canadian ironies. Toronto Jameson, F. (1984). Postmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism, New Left review, 64. New York. Karyshyn, J. (1995). Ironys Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony by Linda Hutcheon, Comparative Literature Issue, 110 (4). The John Hopkins University Press. Rorty, R. (1989). Contingence, Irony and Solidarity. Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press Swearingen, C. (1991). Rhetoric and Irony: Western literacy and Western lies. New York: Oxford University Press Umberto, E. (1984). Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable. Postscript to the Name of Rose. London: Harcourt Brace Ziegler, V. (1990). Irony, Postmodernism, and the Modern. Stuttgart University. Retrieved from: http://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/opus/volltexte/2013/8597/pdf/zie13.pdf Wilde, A. (1982). Horizons of assent: Modernism, post-modernism, and the ironic imagination. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Read More