Event overview
The Centre for Cultural Studies presents: Irony's Revenge: The Rise of the Theoretical Right- A Talk by Leif Weatherby, Assistant Professor of German at New York University.
Irony's Revenge: The Rise of the Theoretical Right. A Talk by Leif Weatherby.
Abstract: There is no media theory of irony. Irony has belonged to literary theory, while media theory addresses semiotic questions through the prisms of redundancy, noise, and the channel. But there is a widespread practice of media irony, most successful in the social media that have come to intersect with electoral politics over the course of the last year - reddit, 4Chan, and certain areas of Twitter. The so-called Alt-Right has borrowed liberally from literary theory to great political effect, allowing a formal language driven by irony to amplify messages and overcome channel noise. This talk argues that only a media theory of irony - one which Friedrich Schlegel laid the groundwork for two centuries ago - has the resources to elucidate the current media conjuncture.
Leif Weatherby is Assistant Professor of German at New York University and author of Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ: German Romanticism between Leibniz and Marx. His writing has appeared in venues like SubStance and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is currently working on a book about a strange encounter between cybernetics and German Idealism.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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20 Jun 2017 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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