Thursday, December 9, 2010
Bibliography, Chaucer, Cobwebs
Pearsall, Derek, "Epidemic Irony in Modern Approaches to the Canterbury Tales," in P. Boitani and A. Torti, eds., Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature. Tübingen: Narr, 1984.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Link Share
Lady Gaga, definitely not postironic:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/2637/lady_gaga's_secret_religion_/
Friday, May 14, 2010
Definitions via other people's definitions
"Postirony is a term I use in my academic writing to talk about a range of contemporary artists (working in literature, film, comics, and music). The postironic sensibility or movement or ethos has been discussed in a scattered way, under a number of labels, including 'neosincerity,' 'New Sincerity,' 'mumblecore,' 'postpostmodernism,' and so on. My core idea is that whatever it was that we meant by 'postmodernism' is no longer the state of the art in the arts. Around the late 1980s, writers, filmmakers, musicians, and others decided to put irony back on the shelf. For writers who loved the tradition of metafiction, writers like David Foster Wallace, moving forward meant grappling with postmodern irony, wrestling it to the ground." - When Falls the Coliseum, Alex Kudera interview with Lee Konstantinou, 13 May 2010 <http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/05/13/interview-with-lee-konstantinou/>
A philippic, a glance at the bigger picture
"An orientation in aesthetic theory is not an idea, or even a premise,
but a habitual direction of reference..." - 'The Mirror and the Lamp'
p.100
but a habitual direction of reference..." - 'The Mirror and the Lamp'
p.100
I'm not sure postirony is the sole, or the primary, way of looking at
literature or culture. Surely most of this is quibbling over arcane
genres, movements, and general ivory tower mumbo jumbo.
Yet it feels somehow refreshing--and in itself "neo-sincere"--*to be
able to* quibble over such minutiae contra the choking pervasity of
late postmodernism's long, snide tendrils.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
ABC of Postirony, part I
Seeing as I'm putzing around the internet, networking-socially (by e.g. facing-book, blogging-spot, and of course tweet-tweeting) I've decided to post my very own original and poorly articulated thoughts on postirony. These will be taken more or less verbatim from a sprawling yellow legal pad sheet that uncomfortably resembles a manifesto.
To approach a nuanced answer to the question "what is postirony?"<1> I think we need to first look at things systematically, through three interrelated facets<2>:
A.)
i.) The Generational Mode<3> -- The general cultural-historical<4> marker, starting c. the late-1980s and continuing to the present.<5>
ii.) The Literary Mode -- The articulation of sincere or "post-postmodern" ideas and beliefs in art<6>, often in a postmodern/avant-garde/smart-allecky guise<7>,<8>.
B.) The objet d'étude Mode -- The scholarly/critical/theoretical study of A.) i.) and/or ii.). Note that this study does not have to be "postironic in-itself"<9>. For example a say, "pre-Lacanian Marxo-Feminist" reading<10> of a postironic work<11> or postironic culture<12> would fall under this mode.<13>
C.) The Critical Mode -- A set of theoretical/critical methods or view points themselves "post-postmodern" or "post-post-structuralist," or whatever<14>.
Where to go hence is anybody's guess but it ought to be noted that I seem to most interested in § C.).<15>
Footnotes (just a failed attempt cleverly follow DFW? you decide<16>):
<1> Incidentally is it "postirony" or "post-irony"? Here I'll use the un-en-dashed form.
<2> The myriad and confusing nature of what follows being not only a product of my schizophrenic style of theoretical definition but also due to postmodernity's own pervasive, decentralized, complex, and chaotic interface with contemporary culture, art, and scholarship.
<3> My categorical titling being last-minute, most likely nonsense, and cribbed from Northrup Frye or something.
<4> And I would say probably political as well.
<5> ? Starting point and present-day status being whole other cans of contentious worms.
<6> Here read as "literature".
<7> How often is "often" or if this is even a trend is disputable and an essay unto itself (in fact, this is much of what I spent my time on the first time I tried to draft a definition of postirony).
<8> This mode being the articulation and expression of § A.) i.), or conversely § A.) i.) being the result of this mode's expression and trickle-down into the overall culture. I guess your take depends on all sorts of personal ideologies and beliefs as to the interaction of literature/art and general/popular culture (note that reading "pop culture" for "popular culture" really is a sloppy and inappropriate substitution).
<9> Whatever that's supposed to mean. See also § C.).
<10> Said reading obviously facetious and a thinly veiled jab at theoretical/academic hyper-specialization, though if someone wants to dig up such a reading I'd be interested to look at it.
<11> i.e. § A.) ii.).
<12> i.e. § A.) i.).
<13> I may as well say right now that this category seems to be my weakest; I'm not sure you can really label something fairly after its own objet d'étude.
<14> Here is where postmodernism's own complexity starts to really cause trouble, as disparate schools and systems such as post-structuralism, new historicism, post-colonialism, queer theory, and so on are all loosely gathered under the elusive aegis of "postmodernism".
<15> Let me n. very b. that I've been quite influenced by Lee Konstantinou's blog posts on postirony over at the eponymous leekonstantinou.com and, you know, don't mean to lift anything uncredited from there. So far as I know the structures here are my own, with necessary allowances made for general, unconscious-type influence/context/background. I also hold the firm hope that I'll flesh-out these §§ out a bit more in short order. We'll see.
<16> Additionally, if I could figure out how to hyperlink these notes I would. But I'm not inclined to figure it out so bear with me.
To approach a nuanced answer to the question "what is postirony?"<1> I think we need to first look at things systematically, through three interrelated facets<2>:
A.)
i.) The Generational Mode<3> -- The general cultural-historical<4> marker, starting c. the late-1980s and continuing to the present.<5>
ii.) The Literary Mode -- The articulation of sincere or "post-postmodern" ideas and beliefs in art<6>, often in a postmodern/avant-garde/smart-allecky guise<7>,<8>.
B.) The objet d'étude Mode -- The scholarly/critical/theoretical study of A.) i.) and/or ii.). Note that this study does not have to be "postironic in-itself"<9>. For example a say, "pre-Lacanian Marxo-Feminist" reading<10> of a postironic work<11> or postironic culture<12> would fall under this mode.<13>
C.) The Critical Mode -- A set of theoretical/critical methods or view points themselves "post-postmodern" or "post-post-structuralist," or whatever<14>.
Where to go hence is anybody's guess but it ought to be noted that I seem to most interested in § C.).<15>
Footnotes (just a failed attempt cleverly follow DFW? you decide<16>):
<1> Incidentally is it "postirony" or "post-irony"? Here I'll use the un-en-dashed form.
<2> The myriad and confusing nature of what follows being not only a product of my schizophrenic style of theoretical definition but also due to postmodernity's own pervasive, decentralized, complex, and chaotic interface with contemporary culture, art, and scholarship.
<3> My categorical titling being last-minute, most likely nonsense, and cribbed from Northrup Frye or something.
<4> And I would say probably political as well.
<5> ? Starting point and present-day status being whole other cans of contentious worms.
<6> Here read as "literature".
<7> How often is "often" or if this is even a trend is disputable and an essay unto itself (in fact, this is much of what I spent my time on the first time I tried to draft a definition of postirony).
<8> This mode being the articulation and expression of § A.) i.), or conversely § A.) i.) being the result of this mode's expression and trickle-down into the overall culture. I guess your take depends on all sorts of personal ideologies and beliefs as to the interaction of literature/art and general/popular culture (note that reading "pop culture" for "popular culture" really is a sloppy and inappropriate substitution).
<9> Whatever that's supposed to mean. See also § C.).
<10> Said reading obviously facetious and a thinly veiled jab at theoretical/academic hyper-specialization, though if someone wants to dig up such a reading I'd be interested to look at it.
<11> i.e. § A.) ii.).
<12> i.e. § A.) i.).
<13> I may as well say right now that this category seems to be my weakest; I'm not sure you can really label something fairly after its own objet d'étude.
<14> Here is where postmodernism's own complexity starts to really cause trouble, as disparate schools and systems such as post-structuralism, new historicism, post-colonialism, queer theory, and so on are all loosely gathered under the elusive aegis of "postmodernism".
<15> Let me n. very b. that I've been quite influenced by Lee Konstantinou's blog posts on postirony over at the eponymous leekonstantinou.com and, you know, don't mean to lift anything uncredited from there. So far as I know the structures here are my own, with necessary allowances made for general, unconscious-type influence/context/background. I also hold the firm hope that I'll flesh-out these §§ out a bit more in short order. We'll see.
<16> Additionally, if I could figure out how to hyperlink these notes I would. But I'm not inclined to figure it out so bear with me.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
errm...
It seems my last post might not actually link to a full text article... if you link to it over from Google(tm) it seems to work. Odd. Well, anyway try here: http://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf or just run a good old G-gle search for "e unibus pluram" and you should find it. Sorry for the confusion.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Instead of Answering, Citing
I've been gathering my thoughts on post-irony, but as I seem to be that type of writer least amicable to blog-writing (i.e. the hording-every-thought to be finally-and-exactly-expressed type) I'm going to just pass along a great article by David Foster Wallace (hereafter in my entries "DFW," or perhaps "Wallace"). The article's going on twenty years old now but I still think it has some interesting ideas on irony in American society and entertainment (read: TV). Though it may not be the easiest thing to follow on an LCD (or perhaps CRT) screen (and is reprinted in DFW wonderful collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again) here we go: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-5495526_ITM
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