Irony in Action
Anthropology, Practice, and the Moral Imagination
280 pages
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2 halftones
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6 x 9
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© 2001
Irony today extends beyond its classification as a figure of speech and is increasingly recognized as one of the major modes of human experience. This idea of irony as an integral force in social life is at the center of this provocative book. The result of a meeting where anthropologists were invited to explore the politics of irony and the moral responsibilities that accompany its recognition, this book is one of the first to lend an anthropological perspective to this contemporary phenomenon.
The first group of essays explores the limits to irony's liberating qualities from the constrained use of irony in congressional hearings to its reactive presence amid widening disparities of wealth despite decades of world development. The second section presents irony's more positive dimensions through an array of examples such as the use of irony by Chinese writers and Irish humorists. Framed by the editors' theoretical introduction to the issues posed by irony and responses to the essays by two literary scholars, Irony in Action is a timely contribution in the contemporary reinvention of anthropology.
The first group of essays explores the limits to irony's liberating qualities from the constrained use of irony in congressional hearings to its reactive presence amid widening disparities of wealth despite decades of world development. The second section presents irony's more positive dimensions through an array of examples such as the use of irony by Chinese writers and Irish humorists. Framed by the editors' theoretical introduction to the issues posed by irony and responses to the essays by two literary scholars, Irony in Action is a timely contribution in the contemporary reinvention of anthropology.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Anthropology of Irony
Part One
Chapter 1 The Constrained Use of Irony in U.S. Congressional
Hearings on Immigration
Chapter 2 Irony and Power: Toward a Politics of Mockery
in Greece
Chapter 3 The Irony of Complicity and the Complicity
of Irony in Development Discourse
Chapter 4 What Makes the Anthropologist Laugh?:
The Abelam, Irony, and Me
Chapter 5 Kenneth Burke's "True Irony": One Model for
Ethnography, Still
Chapter 6 An Apollonian Response
Part Two
Chapter 7 Wine in the Writing, Truth in the Rhetoric:
Three Levels of Irony in a Chinese Essay Genre
Chapter 8 "Paddy's Pig":Irony and Self-Irony in
Irish Culture
Chapter 9 Irony and Paradox in the "Contact Zone":
Missionary Discourse in Northern Papua New Guuinea
Chapter 10 The Predicament of Irony and the Paranoid Style
in Fin-de-Siècle Rationality
Chapter 11 Ironic Irony
Chapter 12 The Last Discussant
Coda: Irony, Practice, and the Moral Imagination
List of Contributors
Index
Introduction: The Anthropology of Irony
Part One
Chapter 1 The Constrained Use of Irony in U.S. Congressional
Hearings on Immigration
Chapter 2 Irony and Power: Toward a Politics of Mockery
in Greece
Chapter 3 The Irony of Complicity and the Complicity
of Irony in Development Discourse
Chapter 4 What Makes the Anthropologist Laugh?:
The Abelam, Irony, and Me
Chapter 5 Kenneth Burke's "True Irony": One Model for
Ethnography, Still
Chapter 6 An Apollonian Response
Part Two
Chapter 7 Wine in the Writing, Truth in the Rhetoric:
Three Levels of Irony in a Chinese Essay Genre
Chapter 8 "Paddy's Pig":Irony and Self-Irony in
Irish Culture
Chapter 9 Irony and Paradox in the "Contact Zone":
Missionary Discourse in Northern Papua New Guuinea
Chapter 10 The Predicament of Irony and the Paranoid Style
in Fin-de-Siècle Rationality
Chapter 11 Ironic Irony
Chapter 12 The Last Discussant
Coda: Irony, Practice, and the Moral Imagination
List of Contributors
Index
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Anthropology: General Anthropology
Language and Linguistics: Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
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