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.