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/lit/ - Literature

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3239029 No.3239029[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Can someone explain to me why critics were so quick to claim irony was dead following the September 11th attacks? I've heard it mentioned in some articles in passing, but can't quite understand how a terrorist attack can bring about the death of an abstract literary notion.

>> No.3239057

I don't think anyone can explain that to you. It's one of those things that no one ever really got, but just repeated because it sounded sophisticated. I guess people confusing irony with humor just said it to evoke the tragedy of the whole thing ("it's so sad nothing will befunny ever again", which is still stupid), but I don't know who started it.

>> No.3239063

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/09/death-irony-and-its-many-reincarnations/42298/

behold. Also note that it didn't actually kill irony, it was just people saying it killed irony.

>> No.3239164

>>3239063

Thanks for the link.

It's still frustrating that nobody's really explained WHY irony died or in what way it did, though. Irreverence and ironic detachment died because of an attack on America? What jingoistic bullshit.

>> No.3239187

>>3239063
Maybe the were saying it... ironically
>yeeeeaaaaahhhh

>> No.3239213

Even if it did, only in AMerica.

I guess their point was; postmodernist irony is dead, cuz from now on you need to do as America says ya'll.

As far as Europe and rest of the world is concerned, I have never, REPEAT NEVER heard anyone say this..

(murrikans are such crybabies)

>> No.3240180

Adorno said you couldn't write poetry after Auschwitz. For post 9/11 irony, I think it is a combination of 'artists' overestimating the relationship of their work to the rest of the world as well as the importance of 9/11.

>> No.3240183

>>3239164
Americans think irony must have died because they can't see it anywhere.

>> No.3240186
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3240186

>>3240183
I did one better than that; I nailed the fucker into a coffin.

>> No.3240220
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3240220

>>3239187
>Directed by M Night Shyamalan

>> No.3240272

>>3240220
>Directed by M. Night Shyamamalama

>> No.3240276

People have been claiming irony is dead since the 90's
DFW even did it.

>> No.3240278

>>3240276
>Irony is dead

What does that even mean? That sounds like some pseudo-intellectual, postmodern bullshit. Either he doesn't understand what irony is, or he's being an edgy faggot. The irony, of course, is that his statement in and of itself is wrought with irony.

>> No.3240282

>>3240278
>That sounds like some pseudo-intellectual, postmodern bullshit
It's actually a statement against postmodern fiction

>> No.3240285

>>3240282
>postmodernism marked the death of irony

But one of the main modes of postmodernism is pastiche. Pastiche relies heavily on irony. This doesn't make any sense.

>> No.3240291

>>3240285
Nobody said postmodernism marked the death of irony. Only that irony was passé, which postmodernism also happens to be.

>> No.3240294

"The more total society becomes, the greater the reification of the mind and the more paradoxical its effort to escape reification on its own. Even the most extreme consciousness of doom threatens to degenerate into idle chatter. Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation. "

T.W. Adorno, Prisms

>> No.3240315

>>3239029
The same reason adorno said there should be no more poetry after auschwitz. The self absorbed idea that their pain is so profound that one should be allowed to be happy again.

>> No.3240328

>>3240315
It's the fact that the better establishment have smaller classes.

>> No.3240344

>>3240315
>>3240294

Remember kids, you heard it from me first.

>> No.3240369

Everybody is anxious for "postmodernism" to be over and done with, and so by declaring the "death of irony" they are trying to just declare the end of the postmodern age. Unfortunately they are wrong, and we'll have to sit this out a bit longer.

>> No.3240403

People always like to make out events will still be important in the future. In three hundred years I have no doubt that Holocaust denial will be seen as a mainstream view; however most won't know or care what the Holocaust was.

People move on. A Roman stadium collapsed once and killed thirty thousand people; the dead were men, women, children, dogs and senators, criminals and slaves. Do we care? Do we know?

>> No.3240420

>>3240369

this therad is so irionic.

i love /lit/. it is the smartetst board next to /sci/.

>> No.3240434

>>3240420
>i love /lit/. it is the smartetst board next to /sci/.

3/10