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Aesthetic Ideology Volume 88

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Aesthetic Ideology Volume 88 Theory and History of Literature Edited by Wlad Godzich aDd Jochen Schulte-Sasse Aesthetic Ideology Volume 88. Theodor W. Adorno Aesthetic Theory Volume 87. Renate Lachmann Text and Memory: IIl te l1extllaiity in Rw;s ian Modernism Volume 86. Doris-Louise Haineault and Jeao-Yves Roy Unconscious for Sale: Advertising, Psychoanalysis, and the Public Volume 85. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge Pu.blic Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis ojthe Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sp here Volume 84. Mari.a Paganini Reading Prousl: In Search ofthe Wolf-Fish Volume 83. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe The Subject of Philosoph" Paul de Man Volume 82. Maurice Blanchot The i nfinite Conversation Volume 81. Gregory Jusdanis Belated Modernity (ln d Aesthelic Cultllre: Inventing Natiollal Literwure Edited with an Introduction D. Emil y Hicks Border Writing: The Multidimensional Text Volume 80. by Andrzej Warminski Volume 79. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht Making Sense in Life and Litera ture Volume 78. Giorgio Agamben La.nguage Cl nd Death: The Place ofNegativity Volume 77. Heltme Cixous Readi ngs: The Poetics o f Blal1chot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, (md Ts vetayeva Volume 76. Jean-Luc Nancy The Inoperative Community Volume 75. Rey Chow Womal1 and Chinese Modernity: The Politics ofReading becween West and East Theory and History of Literature, Volume 65 Volume 74. Paul J. Thibault Social Semiotics as Praxis: Text. Social Meaning Making, Clnd Nabokov 's Ada Volume 73. Helene Cixous Reading with Clarice Lispector Volume 72. N. S. Trubetzkoy Writings on Literature Volume 71. Neil Larsen Modernism and Hegemony: A Materialist Critique ofAesthetic Agencies Volume 70. Paul Zu mthor Oml Poetry: All Introduction Volume 69. Giorgio Agamben Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Cullllre Volume 68. Hans Robert Jauss Question and A ns,ver: Fonns ofDialogic UnderslQll dillg Volume 66. Paul de Man Critical Writings, 1953- 1978 Volume 65. Paul de Man Aesthetic Ideology Volume 64. Didier Coste Na rrative as Communicution Volume 63. Renato B arilli Rhetoric Volume 62. Daniel COllom Text and Citlture: The Politi cs ofInterpretation Volume 61. Theodor W. Adorno Kierkegaard: Constfllction oftile Aesthetic Volume 60. Kristin Ross The Emergence ofSocial Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune Volume 59. Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich Reading de Man Reading Volume 58. F. W. J. Schelling The Philosophy of A rt Volume 57. Louis Marin POrTrait ofthe King Volume 56. Peter Sloterdijk Thinker 011 Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism IeI University a/Minnesota Press Volume 55. Paul Smith Discern ing the Subject SO Minneapolis / London For other books in the series, see p. 197 TA V62 0 KANT AND SCHILLER with certain aspects of Deaida, or with Kant, for that matter-and the place to go would be the book on Kant-that one would see that the 'Concept Ottne iffiagmatlon tneCe:" that what happens in Heidegger's interpretation of imagina­ The Concept of Irony tion in Kant is not all that different from Schiller's pattern of the imagination. I Though of course the justification is not pragmatic, but ontological-but that doesn't make it necessar]ly ullpragmatic. There is the claim to materiality in Heidegger, but-well, I am not SUFe . I certainly cannot rapidly say. The ques­ tion is exceedingly relevant and exceedingly important, a central question. Thank you very much. The title of this lecture is ''The Concept of Irony," which is a title taken from Kierkegaard, who wrote the best book on irony that's availabl-e, called The Concept ofIrony. [t's an ironic title, because irony is not a concept-and that's partl y the thesis whi'Ch"fm going to develop. I should preface this with a passage from Friedrich Schlegel, who will be the main autho~o talk about, who says the following, talking about irony: "Wer sie nicht hat, dem bleibt sie auch nach dem offensten Gestandnis ein Ratsel."l "The one who doesn't have it (irony), to 'The Concept of Irooy" was transcribed and edited by Tom Keenan-and revised by the editor­ fr2m the !l.!!_diQgI£~_~J~ IID:_Jl!~eo at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 4 April 1977. ~e c t1J r~ b as~ on two (perha s even three) sets of ootes (some pages of which go back to his seminar at Yale on eory 0 frony" in spring 1976): one set inc u es an outline titled "!rony-tlJe story of irony-"; a second set is the continuation of an u.nflOiS hed essay titled '"Ironies of Allegory." I Some material from these notes (cited as 11'1 an d N2j has b..een included in the footnote ~ here, and some Wis used t;rec_uct a gap between the two sides of the audiotape. Sio 'fiCa:iiriiiSeiliOns or addi­ tions are in square brackets. De Man's own parenthetical remarks are in parentheses 10 brackets within quotes). Translations are de Man's unl ess otherwi se indicated. All Dotes were supplied by Tom Keenan. I. Friedrich Schlegel, Lyceum Fragment 108, in Charakterislikell und Kriliken I (1796- 1801 ), ed_ Hans Eichner, in Kritische Friedrich Schlegel A.usgabe (Paderborn-Vienna-Munich: Verlag Ferdinand Schbningb, 1967), 2:160. In English, see Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue all Poetry and Literary Aphorisms. trans. Ernst Behler and Roman Struc (Universi ty Park and London: Pennsylvan ia State University Press, 1968); and Friedrich Schlegel"s "Lllcinde " and the Fragme-ntJ, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971). De Man generally refers to the Behler and Slruc translation or provides h.is own. The editions will be cited as KA.. 2; Behle r and Struc: and Firchow. 163 "'" Ir' 164 0 THE CONCEPT OF IRONY V'( .) l., ~f I\. ~ \ him it remains, even after the most open disquisition, an enigma." You will never a,vay of the mean ing, which is certainly involved in all traditionaJ definitions of .., understand-so we can stop right here, and al!go home. irony, such as "meaning one thing and saying something else," or "praise by There is indeed a fundarnemal problem: the fact that if irony were indeed a blame," or whatever it may be-though one feels that this turning away in irony concept it should be possible to give a definition of irony. Ifone looks into the his­ involves a little more, a more radical negation than one would have in an oretinary toric aspects of that problem, it seems to be uncannily difficult to gi ve a definition rope such as synecdoche or metaphor or me~ony~y. lro?y .~ eems to be t~e~ ~ of irony-although later, in the course of ~e, J will attempt a defini­ of tropes, the one that names the term as the ·turmng away, but thaLnollo n 15 so tion, but y~ ~ on 't be much rg.t wiser fo..!J1. It seems to be impossible to get hold "'iilI-encompaSStng-ttmt il wQwe-mdude atl lfopes. Arid Lo say-tnat irony includes of a definition, and th.is is itself inscribed to some extent in the tradition of the all tropes, or is the trope of tropes, is to say sometrung, but it is not anything that'!. l ) writing on the texts. If! take the period I will be mostly referring to, namely, the equivaJent to a definition. Because: what is a trope, and so on? We certainly don't writings on irony, the theorization of irony in German Romanticism in the early know that. What is then the trope of tropes? We know that even less. Definitional part of the nineteenth century (the period when the most astute reflection on the language seems to be in trouble when irony is concerned. _ problem of irony is gOFng on), even in that time it seems to be very difficult to get Irony also ~r)' clearly has lLperiQJ:mative function. Irony consoleS-and. it I hold of a definition. The German aesthetician Friedrich Solger, who writes per­ promises and it excuses. It allows us to perform all kinds of perfonnative linguis­ ceptively about irony, complains at length that August Wilhelm Schlegel-who is tiC functions Whichseem to Jail out of the tropological field, but also to be very the Schlegel we will be talking about the least (Friedrich is the one we want)­ closely connected with it. In shOlt, it is very d.iffi cult, impossible indeed, to get tQ although he had written on irony, really cannot define it, cannot say what it is. A a conceptualization by means of de tT~n. - ­ little later, when Hegel, who has a lot to say about irony, talks about irony, he - It belps a little to think of ItTntenns of the ironic man, in tenns of the tradi-\ complains about Solger, who writes about irony, he says, but who doesn't seem to tional opposition between eiron and a/alOll, as they appear in Greek or Hclleruc know what it is he is writing about. And then a ]ittle later, when Kierkegaard comedy, the smart guy and the dumb guy. Most discourses about irony are set up writes on irony, he refers to Hegel, whose in fluence he is at that moment trying to that way, an t J WJ I also be set up that way. You must then keep in mind '1. get out of, and he more ironicaUy complains about the fact that Hegel doesn't that the smart guy, who IS by lIecessity-the-speaker, always turns out to be the I really seem to know what irony is . He says what and where Hegel ta~ks about it, dumb guy, and that he's always being set up by the person he thinks of as being \ but then he complains and says he really doesn't have much to say aboUlit, and the dumb guy, the alazan.
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