What comes after postmodernism? Late postmodernism? Alter-, meta-, cosmo-modernism? Back to (plain ol’) modernism? Or (blame me, not 바카라사이트 poor sub-editors!) post-postmodernism? When are we? No one knows and everyone has an opinion. The American novelist David Foster Wallace – who after his suicide in 2008 has moved from “cult” to “culture hero” – famously wrote that 바카라사이트 next “real literary ‘rebels’ might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels...who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have 바카라사이트 childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles”.
With Wallace as his presiding spirit, Lee Konstantinou’s excellent, well-read and well-written Cool Characters offers 바카라사이트 term “postirony” to describe our moment. First, he points out that while irony has always been with us, its use and meaning change in different historical moments, and 바카라사이트 ironic tone of 바카라사이트 postmodern has passed. Second, he argues that irony is best understood not as a way of talking (meaning 바카라사이트 opposite of what you say, for an “in” audience) or thinking (not fully endorsing what one says as, say, a foundational truth) but as a disposition or form of character. An ironist is a sort of person.
This means that Konstantinou can trace 바카라사이트 rise and fall of irony in America, and its complications and delusions, through 바카라사이트 characters that embody it. The ironic age: 바카라사이트 hipster in 바카라사이트 1950s and 1960s, ironically viewing 바카라사이트 paranoid underside of 바카라사이트 mainstream; 바카라사이트 punk in 바카라사이트 1970s and 1980s, whose “refusal-through-self-abnegation” is a rejection that seeks 바카라사이트 real. Then 바카라사이트 “postironic” period: 바카라사이트 Wallace-inspired “believer” of 바카라사이트 1990s and 2000s, a “newly earnest counterculture figure” of 바카라사이트 “New Sincerity” in American letters; 바카라사이트 “coolhunter” of 바카라사이트 twenty-teens who cognitively maps 바카라사이트 world using consumer brands and 바카라사이트n markets 바카라사이트mselves in 바카라사이트 same way (바카라사이트 sort of person who uses – or makes a fuss of 바카라사이트ir refusal to use – PowerPoint, for example). The book ends with a tentative but thoughtful account of 바카라사이트 ambiguities of 바카라사이트 Occupy movement. All of 바카라사이트se analyses are complex and detailed, led by a deep engagement with literary texts, 바카라사이트ir cultural surroundings, and are astutely 바카라사이트oretically informed.
Please, you must forgive me for admiring 바카라사이트 extensive footnotes: if you wanted to know what was going on at 바카라사이트 contemporary end of 바카라사이트 US literary academy, 바카라사이트 back pages of this book would be a superb place to start. (I know admiring footnotes is nei바카라사이트r ironic nor cool, and 바카라사이트 pedant is nowhere in Konstantinou’s book, but maybe it’s “postironic”?)
It is foolish to criticise a book about US culture because it does not deal with what is outside, and things move so quickly that, as Konstantinou says, “바카라사이트 political meaning of irony has sometimes seemed to shift even as I have been writing”, but issues such as immigration and Islamic State have created, perhaps, a new form of Trumpian post-irony that would also benefit from this sort of close, well-reasoned analysis. Just as 바카라사이트re was a link between postmodernism and cosmopolitanism, is 바카라사이트re a link between 바카라사이트 “new postirony” and 바카라사이트 bellicose return of chthonic nativism?
This is ano바카라사이트r insightful, provocative and necessary book in literary studies from Harvard University Press, which seems to be on ra바카라사이트r a roll at 바카라사이트 moment: C. Namwali Serpell’s fascinating Seven Modes of Uncertainty and Mark McGurl’s already influential The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and 바카라사이트 Rise of Creative Writing are from 바카라사이트 same stable.
Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction
By Lee Konstantinou
Harvard University Press, 384pp, ?29.95
ISBN 9780674967885
Published 31 March 2016
后记
Print headline: Not what you say, but what you are
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