Event overview
‘The Transideological Politics of Irony’: Disrupting Historiographical Metanarratives in Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie and Mona Hatoum
Umberto Eco writes that postmodernism ‘consists in recognising that the past, since it cannot be really destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently.’ Eco positions irony as the antithesis of innocence, implying that irony can be revelatory, that it can reveal something beyond what is said directly in the text. It implies that irony can be an interrogation of that which was previously accepted ‘innocently’––information previously taken for granted as undeniable truth. In this sense, postmodern irony seeks to embrace the aforementioned unmasked, ambiguous world and creates the potential for a plurality of interpretations, a chaos of different meanings within a text which undermine the idea of pursuing a single meaning, either in a text or otherwise. Dispelled of the innocence brought by certainty, the postmodern text is able ‘revisit’ the past with the ability to reveal the biases, ambiguities and uncertainties that were previously viewed as unquestionable truths in the dominant metanarratives of history. The ability of irony to disrupt these previously innocently accepted narratives is part of what Hutcheon calls its ‘transideological’ power: irony bridges the intersection between postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism and other political standpoints depending on the context in which it is used. In this paper I will be using this framework to interrogate some works which are often only featured on the ‘outskirts’ of the 20th century postmodern canon as well as looking to Mona Hatoum’s art as a way to take irony’s power beyond the limitations of postmodern literary theory.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Mar 2019 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm |
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